Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech, and
Speaker 1: we're going to take another look at a classic tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episode of another one that published back in. This
Speaker 1: one is called how Soundproofing Works, and Noel Brown joined
Speaker 1: me for that episode to talk about the science and
Speaker 1: tech behind sound proofing, which is a very important component
Speaker 1: of our podcasting business. Here, I am currently baffled, or
Speaker 1: at least I'm surrounded by baffling, so that we can
Speaker 1: control the way that the sound bounces around inside the
Speaker 1: studio so you guys don't get terrible vocal effects. But
Speaker 1: Noel has a lot more to say about it, so
Speaker 1: let's sit back and enjoy this classic episode. So one
Speaker 1: of the things I like to do on the show
Speaker 1: is at the end of every episode, I invite you
Speaker 1: guys to send me requests ideas topics for future episodes,
Speaker 1: and today's episode is due to that. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a little bit of listener me. You know,
Speaker 1: we used to have a whole claxon all right here
Speaker 1: he goes, hey, you tech stuff. First off, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for putting out your content as I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of this casual learning movement. Might need
Speaker 1: a better term for that. I was wondering if you'd
Speaker 1: be able to do an episode on acoustics and sound
Speaker 1: dampening for studios, like how they're measured, tuned, made, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It would be awesome and spectacular as I would be
Speaker 1: able to harness the power to put together a kick
Speaker 1: ass set up. Thanks again for what you do. Dub
Speaker 1: nosis well dubed. We're going to do that for you.
Speaker 1: And that's really the reason why I asked Noel to
Speaker 1: come in here, because Noel, as a producer and sound
Speaker 1: engineer type person, has had real world experience with this,
Speaker 1: and so we're going to rely heavily upon his um
Speaker 1: perspective some of the stories he has to tell about
Speaker 1: the process of trying to make a room more soundproof
Speaker 1: or tuning a room so that you're getting the sound
Speaker 1: you want while you're recording, because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: sound is a pretty tricky thing. When you boil it down.
Speaker 1: Sound is vibration, right, It's just particles banging together a
Speaker 1: sentile thing you gotta wrangle. It is a thing you
Speaker 1: gotta wrangle. We often consider sound to just be this
Speaker 1: thing we perceived with our ears, But what's really happening
Speaker 1: is a little more granular than that. Sound is particles
Speaker 1: that are moving vibrating. Uh. Typically we're hearing things that
Speaker 1: are coming through over the air, like actual air around us.
Speaker 1: So you listening to this right now, you can hear
Speaker 1: my voice. Well, what's actually happening is that some speakers
Speaker 1: are vibrating some air molecules, and that is compressing and
Speaker 1: decompressing those molecules. It's it's changing the pressure, increasing and
Speaker 1: then decreasing the pressure at frequencies and amplitudes that your
Speaker 1: ears pick up and then you perceive a sound. So
Speaker 1: this is happening through all sorts of media, not just air.
Speaker 1: It can pass through solid matter, it can pass through
Speaker 1: liquid and depending on how the particles are packed and
Speaker 1: the space between them, sound may move better through one
Speaker 1: medium than through another. Now, knowing that sound can travel
Speaker 1: through different media, you also need to know that it
Speaker 1: can transfer from one medium to another medium. So for example,
Speaker 1: if I'm shouting really really loudly in a little room,
Speaker 1: some of that sound when it makes contact with the
Speaker 1: wall actually causes the wall to move. Now it's not
Speaker 1: causing the wall to move a lot, but it is
Speaker 1: making the wall vibrate a little bit. Those vibrations get
Speaker 1: transferred through the wall to the other side. And that's
Speaker 1: why if you're in a place that has, you know,
Speaker 1: flimsy walls, you can hear someone in another room. The
Speaker 1: sound is actually transferring through, not to mention in the
Speaker 1: room itself, that sound is actually reflecting back at you.
Speaker 1: And the quality of the sound can depend, you can
Speaker 1: vary greatly depending on the material that the room is
Speaker 1: built out of or treated with. Right right, So some
Speaker 1: of the sounds getting transferred through the materials, some of
Speaker 1: the sound is being bounced back from the material toward you, um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that depends upon the the hardness
Speaker 1: of the material, Like a really hard material is going
Speaker 1: to bounce a lot more sound back at you, which
Speaker 1: is why if you are in a large room with
Speaker 1: a lot of hard surfaces you get that echoe sound. Um.
Speaker 1: Or if you're out someplace like at a canyon and
Speaker 1: you do a shout and you get that echo back,
Speaker 1: it's because the sound is going out hitting the walls
Speaker 1: of the canyon bouncing back to you, and that's when
Speaker 1: you get to experience that effect. Well. Obviously, this means
Speaker 1: that if you want to create a place where the
Speaker 1: sound can't escape or leak into and a lot of
Speaker 1: recording studios, you want both of those things right. You
Speaker 1: don't want the sound from the studio to leak outward,
Speaker 1: but you also definitely don't want outside sound to leak
Speaker 1: into the important Then you have to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how do we limit how do we work within the
Speaker 1: physical uh uh constraints of the way sound works, so
Speaker 1: that we can limit that as much as possible and
Speaker 1: try to have the purest experience as we can. Um So,
Speaker 1: one thing you can remember is that sound, because it's
Speaker 1: a physical activity and because it relies on on energy,
Speaker 1: the way it works is that you've got a source
Speaker 1: of the sound. Sound waves travel outward concentrically outward from
Speaker 1: that source, and they get weaker as they travel out
Speaker 1: that that energy starts to dissipate. You can think of
Speaker 1: it kind of like um uh. You know, each each
Speaker 1: time a particle has to bang up against the another
Speaker 1: one to move it, some of that energy ends up
Speaker 1: getting lost. So the further way you are from a
Speaker 1: source of sound, the quieter it is. That's why that happens.
Speaker 1: So one way you can limit the way sound comes
Speaker 1: out of a room is you make an enormous room,
Speaker 1: like you have a little room in a really big room. Um,
Speaker 1: But that's not necessarily the most practical approach. Actually, there's
Speaker 1: a studio I used to intern at in Athens, Georgia
Speaker 1: called Chase Park Transduction, and they essentially built their studio
Speaker 1: inside of a larger warehouse space. So they're renting a
Speaker 1: space in the strip of big, giant, very high ceiling
Speaker 1: warehouse spaces. But when you go into the studio, you're
Speaker 1: in the warehouse. But then there's a smaller basically building
Speaker 1: inside that warehouse that is the one that receives all
Speaker 1: the acoustic treatments. But it's like you said, I mean
Speaker 1: that is one way of dealing with it is air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the room within a room approach is often how it's
Speaker 1: referred to, and sometimes it is not as obvious as that,
Speaker 1: Like it may be that uh, it looks like the
Speaker 1: the room you're walking into might be like it's it's
Speaker 1: in a little uh alcove or hallway, but that hallway
Speaker 1: is actually showing where the the walls are, where there's
Speaker 1: an air gap between the two walls to to mitigate
Speaker 1: any sound coming into the space. Here. Even this glass
Speaker 1: window that we have in the booth that we're recording
Speaker 1: in right now, it's a double paned window. So in
Speaker 1: between these two relatively thick pieces of glass is a
Speaker 1: little layer of air, which in and of itself acts
Speaker 1: as a bit of a sound dampening insulation device, right exactly. So, uh,
Speaker 1: some other little elements of sound that we need to remember.
Speaker 1: There are two main components to a sound wave that
Speaker 1: are important to keep in mind. One is amplitude or volume.
Speaker 1: So if you are looking at the way we typically
Speaker 1: show a sound wave which is on like an X
Speaker 1: versus Y graph um, you know those those sine wave
Speaker 1: style graphs, the height and depth of the troughs that
Speaker 1: represents the amplitude how loud the sound is. Then you
Speaker 1: have the frequency of sound, the number of times sound
Speaker 1: cycles within a second that determines the pitch of a sound.
Speaker 1: So a low frequency obviously would be a perceived as
Speaker 1: a lower deeper note or tone, and a high frequency
Speaker 1: with those peaks and troughs moving gradually more closer together
Speaker 1: is going to be perceived as a higher pitch. A
Speaker 1: good way to think about this too, is if anyone's
Speaker 1: familiar with the instrument the theoremin. There are two controls
Speaker 1: on a theoreman. One is the antenna that goes upward,
Speaker 1: and there's an antenna on the side. Uh. The antenna
Speaker 1: on the side you use your hand by moving it
Speaker 1: closer to or farther away, you are changing the amplitude,
Speaker 1: and that's perceived as a change in volume. The antenna
Speaker 1: going up as you move your hand closer to it
Speaker 1: or farther away, you are changing the frequency. So with
Speaker 1: those two controls you can basically shape the way the
Speaker 1: sound is perceived. Right, And it's important to remember these
Speaker 1: things because uh, As it turns out different approaches to
Speaker 1: sound proofing are effective for different frequencies. Definitely, right. So
Speaker 1: there might be one that you're like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: this is perfect, I can't hear my neighbors anymore. But
Speaker 1: then it turns out that when your neighbors put on
Speaker 1: a an album that has a lot of base in it,
Speaker 1: it comes right through or start yelling at each other
Speaker 1: for whatever. Yeah, the amplitude is loud enough, it maybe
Speaker 1: that you're soundproofing isn't going to be uh. When people yell,
Speaker 1: sometimes they tend to raise the pitch right right right,
Speaker 1: the pitch goes up enough, but I got you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these are things that you have taken to consideration
Speaker 1: if you're trying to sound proof, and obviously what you
Speaker 1: are trying to accomplish, like the reason why you're soundproofing,
Speaker 1: that will play into it as well, because if all
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is just make it quieter so
Speaker 1: that you know, you don't have like you're designing a building,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a hotel, and you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that the the people talking in one room doesn't bleed
Speaker 1: over into other rooms. That's one type of soundproofing. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to make a professional recording studio, that's another type.
Speaker 1: From a construction standpoint, like the base level soundproofing is dryewall,
Speaker 1: So you have drywall, and that is where if you're
Speaker 1: in a hotel that only uses drywall, people are gonna
Speaker 1: be able to hear every single thing that's going on
Speaker 1: next door. It's when you start basically stuffing that dry
Speaker 1: wall with other denser materials or you know highly rated
Speaker 1: soundproofing materials. That's when you can really cut down on
Speaker 1: that transfer between the rooms, right, And also there are
Speaker 1: other some other techniques you could use as well that
Speaker 1: I'll get into that. And it's all about how do
Speaker 1: you make it harder for the sound to travel from
Speaker 1: one place to another because sound is going to travel
Speaker 1: no matter what. It's not like we have created a
Speaker 1: material that just sucks up sound totally. We've got a
Speaker 1: lot of materials that resist vibration and that means that
Speaker 1: they don't transfer sound very well. But in fact the
Speaker 1: studio has some of that around us. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's other stuff you have to take into consideration as well. Now,
Speaker 1: there are four general elements to soundproofing and we've we've
Speaker 1: kind of touched on a few of them, but one
Speaker 1: of the big ones is called decoupling. Now, decoupling is
Speaker 1: a construction term. When you're talking about decoupling, you're talking
Speaker 1: about the way the walls of the soundproofed area are
Speaker 1: actually constructed. So you were just talking about dry wall.
Speaker 1: The typical way a wall is constructed is you've got
Speaker 1: studs and attached to the studs are the anchor points
Speaker 1: for the dry wall. And in a typical wall, the
Speaker 1: studs are connected on either side by drywall for one
Speaker 1: side of the wall and dry wall for the other
Speaker 1: side the wall, So the h if you can think
Speaker 1: of it like the interior wall versus the exterior wall
Speaker 1: of a room. The problem with that is that when
Speaker 1: sound hits the drywall, then sound can travel through the
Speaker 1: dry wall through the studs, which transmit sound. They're pretty
Speaker 1: good conductor for sound to the other side of the
Speaker 1: dry wall, and then you get sound bleeding out or
Speaker 1: you have sound bleeding in from the outside. So decoupling
Speaker 1: is a process where you would build a wall so
Speaker 1: that the studs don't touch both sides of the wall.
Speaker 1: You would have a series of studs that one side
Speaker 1: the interior wall are attached to, and a different series
Speaker 1: of studs that the exterior wall are attached to. They
Speaker 1: both extend well into the gap between the two walls,
Speaker 1: but they don't touch the other side. So one side
Speaker 1: could be receiving sound waves and potentially transfer those, but
Speaker 1: since they're not touching, it's much more difficult for that
Speaker 1: to happen. Right, because air is not as good a
Speaker 1: conductor of sound as a solid object is, which is weird.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't think that, because I mean, here we are
Speaker 1: in a room talking to each other, and the air
Speaker 1: is basically what's connecting us. But the interesting thing, though,
Speaker 1: is that the way you can tell this, it's very
Speaker 1: easy way to tell. It's the old kid game of
Speaker 1: a telephone where you get two cans in a string, right,
Speaker 1: you you punch holes in the bottom of the cans,
Speaker 1: You run the string through the holes, you stretch it taut,
Speaker 1: and then you can whisper into one can and here
Speaker 1: it on the other side. But if you whisper that
Speaker 1: same volume across the room, you can't hear it. So again,
Speaker 1: that shows that the the physical media is actually more
Speaker 1: or medium i should say, is actually more efficient at
Speaker 1: transferring the sound than than air is. So air pockets
Speaker 1: are actually really important when you're soundproofing, you know, designing
Speaker 1: a soundproof room. Um, typically you would pair decoupling with
Speaker 1: some of the other elements, and I'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: mention what those elements are, and then we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about how you would put it all together. So you've
Speaker 1: got absorption another important element. This is obviously using a
Speaker 1: material that slows down sound. Uh, it absorbs some of
Speaker 1: the sounds, so that sound essentially loses some of its
Speaker 1: energy and it thus is quieter. It doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: leak out as much because the amplitude gets reduced as
Speaker 1: a result. UH. So absorption you achieve usually through using
Speaker 1: some sort of insulation material like UM. I mean, fiberglass
Speaker 1: is a simple example where you would put that in
Speaker 1: the wall, in the in the gap between the two
Speaker 1: sides of the wall, the two pieces of drywall. I
Speaker 1: saw one even saying denim. You can use different like
Speaker 1: fabric type, interialt or something like. The important thing is
Speaker 1: that whatever you use, you cannot pack two densely exactly,
Speaker 1: because if it's too dense, that's going to transfer sound
Speaker 1: and you're back to the same problem you were it before.
Speaker 1: And you also want to have still have some air
Speaker 1: gap there too. You don't want the material to make
Speaker 1: contact completely through the gap. You would pack kind of
Speaker 1: like half of the gap, a little more than half
Speaker 1: of the gap. Typically with insulating material, you leave an
Speaker 1: air gap, and that really creates a great cushion for sound. UM.
Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit more about how that can
Speaker 1: go wrong though. Uh decoupling in particular can make certain
Speaker 1: things UM a little more difficult. There's also damping. Sound dampening. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is where you use some sort of material that
Speaker 1: resists vibration. So like the foam we have here, there's
Speaker 1: some we've got some dampening foam in here. But the
Speaker 1: typically you look at a lot of things like adhesives
Speaker 1: that are used to dampen sound. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: ones I keep hearing about over and over as green glue.
Speaker 1: Green glue is yeah, so so it's very popular, particularly
Speaker 1: apparently in Canada, but it's popular along amongst sound proving technicians.
Speaker 1: It is considered to be one of the most effective
Speaker 1: for the least amount of money solutions for sound dampening material.
Speaker 1: But typically this would be a layer that would also
Speaker 1: be part of your wall that resists the vibration of
Speaker 1: sound and so it won't transfer sound as well. Um.
Speaker 1: It's again, uh, something that you would apply between two
Speaker 1: constrained layers. So it's not like it's not like you
Speaker 1: would cope this on the interior wall. That would be
Speaker 1: a bad idea. It would be on the the the
Speaker 1: back side of the interior wall. It might even be
Speaker 1: something you could use as an adhesive for other sound
Speaker 1: damping materials like acoustic foam or tile. And then the
Speaker 1: last element is really the simplest, is mass. It's just
Speaker 1: that heavier things are harder to move than lighter things, right,
Speaker 1: It's just the basic idea like if if you had
Speaker 1: a cart filled with concrete blocks, it would be a
Speaker 1: little heavy to push, But if you had that same
Speaker 1: cart and it was filled with feathers, it's easy to push.
Speaker 1: So I've got something for you. He uses all of
Speaker 1: those elements in a pretty perfect example, one of the
Speaker 1: more perfect examples of soundproofing that we can see in
Speaker 1: the real world. I'm not sure I think Microsoft has
Speaker 1: maybe outdone them at this point. But there is a
Speaker 1: place in Minneapolis, Minnesota called or Field Laboratories and it
Speaker 1: contains um what was I believe again until recently, the
Speaker 1: world's most silent room. This world record for the most
Speaker 1: silent room. It is nine point nine nine sound absorbent.
Speaker 1: In order to accomplish this, it uses a combination of very,
Speaker 1: very very thick, heavy materials. It's got concrete walls, steel reinforcement,
Speaker 1: and then on the inside of the room. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a picture right now, it has these alternating sort
Speaker 1: of thin looking things, so You've got like three and
Speaker 1: then going from left to right, and then three right
Speaker 1: next to it, going vertically, and they alternate throughout every
Speaker 1: panel in this room, um, and then even on the floor.
Speaker 1: And the what you stand on is a metal grate
Speaker 1: that goes on top of another series of these alternating,
Speaker 1: um little little units. And apparently, um, the longest anyone
Speaker 1: has been able to stand being in this room alone
Speaker 1: with the lights out is forty five minutes, because people
Speaker 1: start to hallucinate this level of silence. I've I've heard
Speaker 1: such things. It's the sort of thing every time I
Speaker 1: hear it, I have the reaction that I think people have,
Speaker 1: which is bet I could go longer, And of course
Speaker 1: I'd probably be in there for like three minutes and
Speaker 1: be convinced I've been in there for three hours. Because
Speaker 1: once you get to a point where something that you
Speaker 1: have taken for granted, you know, just the ambient sounds
Speaker 1: that you can hear once that's gone, that really does
Speaker 1: make a big difference. And uh, it is a psychologically
Speaker 1: powerful experience, but I still kind of want to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great way of of kind of summing up
Speaker 1: all of these elements. Now, if you want to really
Speaker 1: sound proof a room, the best thing to do is
Speaker 1: to incorporate as many of those as you possibly can,
Speaker 1: because they're different. Ones are good for different parts of
Speaker 1: that frequency range we're talking about, So some of them
Speaker 1: are really good for those mid too high range frequencies,
Speaker 1: some of them are a little better at the low frequencies.
Speaker 1: So obviously you want to have a good combination. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you're gonna have certain sounds come through even if you've
Speaker 1: perfectly blocked the room for other ones, and that can
Speaker 1: be really frustrated. Literally a cut off or a threshold
Speaker 1: where if you looked on a graph that can show
Speaker 1: you what frequencies are happening, you could literally track Okay,
Speaker 1: this frequency, now I can hear it. Yeah, it's that specific. Nolan.
Speaker 1: I will be back to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about sound proving, but first let's take this quick break.
Speaker 1: So kind of going back to to decoupling a little bit,
Speaker 1: The size of the air cavity between the two sides
Speaker 1: of the decoupled wall determines something called the resonant frequency
Speaker 1: of that. So here's the here's one of the problems
Speaker 1: with decoupling. That air cavity ends up acting kind of
Speaker 1: like a spring, right, So springs actually have a resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: and if you end up vibrating something at the resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: it causes that thing to vibrate very very easily. The
Speaker 1: big example of this that everyone is familiar with is
Speaker 1: the crystal glass. The opera singer hitting that note, that's
Speaker 1: the resonant frequency for it, and you can actually see
Speaker 1: the glass to form and ultimately break. Now or even
Speaker 1: someone that can play those glasses where they fill it
Speaker 1: up with water and run their finger around the rim.
Speaker 1: In order for it to start making that tone, it
Speaker 1: has to reach that resonant frequency exactly to basically self
Speaker 1: oscillate exactly. So so here's the problem with the decoupled
Speaker 1: walls is that that air gap, because it's acting like
Speaker 1: a spring, uh, and because it can resonate if it's
Speaker 1: not at the proper thickness for the air gap, that
Speaker 1: resonant frequency maybe within the range of sounds that you're
Speaker 1: going to generate either inside or outside the room, within
Speaker 1: the range of human hearing, which means they're going to
Speaker 1: impact that sound proving. And if something actually is played
Speaker 1: at that frequency, it will go not only will it
Speaker 1: go through the wall. It'll go through the wall more
Speaker 1: easily than it would have if you hadn't decoupled the
Speaker 1: wall because that resonance. Uh So that is one of
Speaker 1: the things you actually have to take into account. And
Speaker 1: one of the solutions to that is don't make it
Speaker 1: too thin of an air gap. Um. So another way
Speaker 1: of experimenting this with this yourself, if you want to
Speaker 1: just have some fun, and by fun, I mean, like
Speaker 1: you know, Mr Wizard style fun. You get a bottle
Speaker 1: and you know, if you blow across the the opening
Speaker 1: of the bottle, it produces a tone. Well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how hard you blow, it's always going to play
Speaker 1: that one tone. But if you add water to the bottle,
Speaker 1: you have decreased the volume of air the bottle can
Speaker 1: hold and that changes the tone. Again. Back to the glasses,
Speaker 1: they could have, you know, the same size glasses, but
Speaker 1: they generate different tones from each one by putting a
Speaker 1: different amount of water in each right, Right, it's not
Speaker 1: just the size of the glass, but how much liquid
Speaker 1: is in the glass. So what you would love like
Speaker 1: to do is make sure that your soundproofing UM technique
Speaker 1: was going to take care of those maybe mid two
Speaker 1: high range uh frequencies and then make sure that the
Speaker 1: air gap would push would resonate at one of those
Speaker 1: frequencies so that the other elements of your sound proofing
Speaker 1: take care of it and it doesn't pass through. If
Speaker 1: your resident frequency is too low and you didn't really
Speaker 1: protect against that, it's going to pass right on in. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there's also something called the triple leaf effect. And
Speaker 1: I had to look this up in a couple of
Speaker 1: different locations to find out what the triple leaf effect
Speaker 1: is because I don't know if you know this, Knuel,
Speaker 1: I haven't built any houses recently. So the triple leaf
Speaker 1: effect is all about a construction of a wall, like
Speaker 1: a drywall, and they refer to each sheet of drywall
Speaker 1: as a leaf. So you've got the interior wall that
Speaker 1: is one leaf, You've got the exterior wall. There's a
Speaker 1: second leaf. In a triple leaf approach, you actually have
Speaker 1: a third sheet of drywall that's in between the two.
Speaker 1: It's inside the wall. It's further compartmentalizing it essentially, right
Speaker 1: and uh And you might do this and think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's going to end up protecting against sound even better.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily, um, it actually can cause a problem because
Speaker 1: it can create If the air cavity between the middle
Speaker 1: leaf and one side is too small, it can create
Speaker 1: those resonance problems. So people actually refer to as the
Speaker 1: triple leaf problem. So this is not necessarily a technique
Speaker 1: you want to go for. This is describing a problem. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there are some proof technicians who say, if you
Speaker 1: have a triple leaf wall and you're having these resonant issues,
Speaker 1: the the solution is actually to tear open the wall,
Speaker 1: remove that triple leaf. That third sheet of dry wall,
Speaker 1: the one that's in between the other two, take that out,
Speaker 1: and then it will create a thicker air gap between
Speaker 1: the two sides, and that will end up changing the
Speaker 1: resonance problem. I Gauesse, I could see that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it does introduce more of a variable into the equation,
Speaker 1: and as opposed to just having to having a third
Speaker 1: one there, there is more ways the sound could potentially
Speaker 1: bounce around or catch that resident frequency. Right And you know, um,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about echo and about how
Speaker 1: sound can bounce off of hard services. We talk about
Speaker 1: the BUNNEYMN. No we didn't talk about the Bunny Man.
Speaker 1: You know they're playing in Atlanta soon, Are they really wow,
Speaker 1: that I would much prefer to see them than insane clown. Posse,
Speaker 1: you're already missed insane clown. I know they played earlier
Speaker 1: this week, yesterday, day before yesterday. Yeah, I actually wanted
Speaker 1: to invite them over so we could explain how magnets work.
Speaker 1: But that's that's neither here nor there. No no in
Speaker 1: their heart, I hope so well. You know, they made
Speaker 1: a whole video about it. But the echoes can be
Speaker 1: an issue obviously in recording studios, things like that. You
Speaker 1: don't want there to be if there's gonna be any echo,
Speaker 1: you wanted to be there on purpose, not because of
Speaker 1: just that's the way the room was built. Same here
Speaker 1: for our studio. We don't want too much echo here.
Speaker 1: And we are in a building that's made out of concrete.
Speaker 1: Now that in some ways that's good because it helps
Speaker 1: dampen sound from other areas. Unless something is making direct
Speaker 1: contact with the concrete, then we can all hear it everywhere.
Speaker 1: Like whenever there's construction going on, you can hear it
Speaker 1: move through the concrete columns and floors and ceiling. It
Speaker 1: is disturbing. Their very strange. We play the game what
Speaker 1: construction equipment do you think that is? Sometimes you just
Speaker 1: don't know because the sound can mutate based on what
Speaker 1: it's vibrating to. You know, right, it might be a
Speaker 1: little drill that's vibrating a giant piece of metal, and
Speaker 1: then that's vibrating something else, and by the time we
Speaker 1: gets to us, it sounds like there's a giant playing
Speaker 1: hop scotch up there. Yeah, it could be a little distracting. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: most of the spaces in in the building where in
Speaker 1: now have been built out because when we moved into
Speaker 1: this building, we were one of the first offices here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that just meant that we had construction noises pretty
Speaker 1: much consistently throughout the whole experience. So that is been
Speaker 1: reduced dramatically over time. But one of the other things
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we when since we have all
Speaker 1: this concrete, we have to figure out how to eliminate
Speaker 1: that echo. And the way you do that is typically
Speaker 1: by putting softer material on top of the harder material
Speaker 1: and that that again dampens the echo. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you have a castle, you probably are
Speaker 1: hanging tapestries for a couple of reasons. One, it acts
Speaker 1: like an insulator, so you don't lose as much heat
Speaker 1: in those cold winters and do when you're screaming at
Speaker 1: your servants because your food isn't on the table. When
Speaker 1: the bad guys are attacking your castle. Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: you don't want that to echo throughout the castle, unless
Speaker 1: you're a villain, in which when I'm decorating my castle,
Speaker 1: I tend to go with tapestry. I do. I do too.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm tapestry heavy when I do that. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's it's so sort of stuff you can do inside
Speaker 1: like a home studio too. You can hang uh fabric,
Speaker 1: heavy fabric to help kind of like a theater style
Speaker 1: curtain is excellent not only because of its of what
Speaker 1: it's the denseness of it. It bunches up like so
Speaker 1: you can kind of squeeze it together where it creates
Speaker 1: these natural kind of ripples which not only absorbed the sound,
Speaker 1: they sort of diffuse it a little bit in the
Speaker 1: same way what I was describing with that World's Quietest Room.
Speaker 1: These alternating patterns of material that have little spaces in
Speaker 1: between them, they act as a diffuser for the sounds. Right.
Speaker 1: And there's there's one other thing that we can talk
Speaker 1: about or I'll briefly mention which is sound cancelation. That's
Speaker 1: a little different from soundproofing. Actually, in a way, it's
Speaker 1: the opposite because you actually have to create sound with
Speaker 1: sound cancelation. The way sound cancelation works is if you
Speaker 1: were to look at that that graphic representation of a
Speaker 1: sound wave, Let's say it's a steady tone, because that's
Speaker 1: the easiest way to imagine it. So it's a stay
Speaker 1: tone it I don't know, three hurts, and you're looking
Speaker 1: at a three hundred hurts sign wave, and you see
Speaker 1: where the peaks and troughs are. If you were to
Speaker 1: create a a complementary side wave where it is out
Speaker 1: of phase, so the peaks and troughs match up with
Speaker 1: the troughs and peaks, then they cancel each other out.
Speaker 1: That's the crazy thing about sound because you typically think
Speaker 1: if you add more sound to sound, it just gets louder.
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever been in a restaurant that has
Speaker 1: lots of hard surfaces, it becomes really difficult to have
Speaker 1: a versation if it's a busy night because everyone everyone
Speaker 1: starts to talk over everyone else and it just kind
Speaker 1: of echoes. Well, it turns out that if you do
Speaker 1: add sound to sound, but you make sure it's out
Speaker 1: of phase, it cancels it and then it's as if
Speaker 1: there's no sound at all. That's what noise canceling headphones do.
Speaker 1: They create a sound, they detect the incoming sound waves,
Speaker 1: they create complementary sound waves that phase that out, and
Speaker 1: then you get silence as a result. So an example
Speaker 1: of that phenomenon that you don't want that actually has
Speaker 1: to be corrected. If you're in a recording studio. Let's
Speaker 1: say you're recording an acoustic guitar and you want to
Speaker 1: mike it in two places. So you might put a
Speaker 1: mic on the soundhole of the acoustic guitar. Then you
Speaker 1: might want to put a mike a little further up
Speaker 1: on the next somewhere. If those mike, since they're recording
Speaker 1: the same signal essentially, but they're spaced apart, there is
Speaker 1: the potential for phase issues between those two mics. So
Speaker 1: while it's not going to get straight up cancel out
Speaker 1: the sound, it's going to change the quality of the
Speaker 1: sound in a way that you might not like. It
Speaker 1: might make it tinier, or it might give it almost
Speaker 1: like one of those phaser kind of a jet engine
Speaker 1: psychedelic guitar type sound. You know, you know where it's
Speaker 1: filtered through that sound. Um, So what you have to
Speaker 1: do is you can you can correct this after the fact.
Speaker 1: But there are devices that you actually can test the
Speaker 1: phase at the point you're recording and then space the
Speaker 1: mics apart accordingly, and there's even ways to adjust the
Speaker 1: phase using these devices. So it's interesting how you're describing
Speaker 1: as sort of a practical use of this phenomenon. And
Speaker 1: then there are also versions of that happened in a
Speaker 1: recording situation that you actually have to be careful, right,
Speaker 1: you have to correct for Yeah. So for for soundproofing,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of different UH measuring systems to
Speaker 1: determine how soundproofed a room is, and they may or
Speaker 1: may not be useful to you if you are trying
Speaker 1: to do something like create a recording studio. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in the United States, the we typically use something called
Speaker 1: the sound transmission class to explain how soundproofed a room is,
Speaker 1: and that's really a measurement of how well sound within
Speaker 1: the ranges of human voices travels through walls, so sounds
Speaker 1: outside of those frequencies it sound transmission class isn't concerned
Speaker 1: with them, because it's really more about building walls so
Speaker 1: that sound doesn't pass or walls and floors and ceilings,
Speaker 1: not just walls, but all the all the surfaces so
Speaker 1: that sound does not pass easily through one uh and
Speaker 1: into another. This would be like what hotels would be
Speaker 1: really concerned with, or people who are building homes. UM.
Speaker 1: That range, by the way, is about hurts to four
Speaker 1: thousand hurts or four killer hurts. That's the that's the
Speaker 1: typical range of frequencies of the human voice. So that's
Speaker 1: really what sound transmission class is concerned with. And it's
Speaker 1: designated by a number, and in general, the higher the number,
Speaker 1: the better the quality of soundproofing is. So if you
Speaker 1: were in a room that has it's like a really
Speaker 1: kind of lousy dry wall partition, it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: whole lot of you know, like it doesn't have that
Speaker 1: that absorption insulation or anything like that. Uh, the number
Speaker 1: might be somewhere around twenty. But let's say you're in
Speaker 1: a high end hotel that has taken great pains to
Speaker 1: create decoupled walls with good absorption insulation, some maybe some
Speaker 1: dampening material in there too. That might be closer to sixty,
Speaker 1: and so the higher number designates that it's more sound
Speaker 1: proofed than the other one. But again for that given
Speaker 1: range of frequencies. The stuff outside of that maybe not
Speaker 1: so much. Outside the United States, people tend to use
Speaker 1: was called the sound reduction index. Uh it's it's the
Speaker 1: s r I. So that rating tells you how many
Speaker 1: decibels in reduction the material will provide. So if a
Speaker 1: sound is a certain amplitude, a certain amount of decibels,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is not a not a it's
Speaker 1: a logarithmic scale, so it's pretty complicated, but it'll tell
Speaker 1: you how many decibels it will reduce a sound that
Speaker 1: is generated from one space and into an adjoining space. UM.
Speaker 1: It's depending also upon frequencies, because some are designed to
Speaker 1: it's it's something that's specifically designed to cut out those
Speaker 1: mid to high range frequencies. But it won't necessarily uh
Speaker 1: like that material won't necessarily cut out low frequencies. So
Speaker 1: if you get this s r I number, you have
Speaker 1: to also ask, well, what what range of frequencies is
Speaker 1: that for, Because it's not a blanket statement. It's not
Speaker 1: saying that any sound at any decibel will be reduced
Speaker 1: this amount, then you finally have noise reduction coefficient. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this tells you how much sound of material can
Speaker 1: absorb versus reflect Um. It's it's expressed as a percentage.
Speaker 1: So really the percentage that you're looking at is the
Speaker 1: percentage of sound absorbed by that material. A carpet with
Speaker 1: a rubber underlay might have a point for rating. For example,
Speaker 1: that means it would absorb of the sound that hits
Speaker 1: it reflecting back. Um. Like a hard concrete wall might
Speaker 1: be a point oh five, meaning it absorbs only five
Speaker 1: of the sound that hits it and gets reflected back. So, uh,
Speaker 1: those are those are how you would you know, that's
Speaker 1: like the metrics you would use. You would use actual
Speaker 1: instrumentation to detect how the sound is reverberating in the room,
Speaker 1: and you would, you know, obviously use things like microphones
Speaker 1: and stuff outside of a room to detect if there's
Speaker 1: any sound leaking out. There are also some things you
Speaker 1: gotta take into account, um, some natural weak spots. If
Speaker 1: the room has a vent in it, which you kind
Speaker 1: of hope it will because otherwise things get real stuffy,
Speaker 1: real fast. Uh. The vent also may need to be treated. Ideally,
Speaker 1: the vent will be treated with some of this material
Speaker 1: to dampen some of the sound. Otherwise it's just a
Speaker 1: conduit for sound to travel through. Yes, So the room
Speaker 1: we're recording in right now, it was built out for
Speaker 1: us with some of these specs in mind. Um. We
Speaker 1: we chose the material based on the rating and we
Speaker 1: went with oviously a higher number UM. And then this
Speaker 1: glass window that I was telling about earlier that's specifically
Speaker 1: designed for a studiotype environment. And what we have on
Speaker 1: the walls in here are similar to the layout of
Speaker 1: that World's Quiet room most talking about, except these are
Speaker 1: acoustic tiles that are made up of their squares and
Speaker 1: they're made up of strips in a single direction, but
Speaker 1: the panels are alternating. So we have one where they're
Speaker 1: facing up and down, the one next to it they're
Speaker 1: going left to right, etcetera. And they altered it and
Speaker 1: that helps break up the sound and um, you know,
Speaker 1: make it a more uh dampened sound within the room
Speaker 1: and keep the sound from escaping as well. But we
Speaker 1: actually do have event in this room and it's not
Speaker 1: particularly well treated. So what I actually end up having
Speaker 1: to do is use a very nifty bundle of software
Speaker 1: to take a print of the room tone, so you
Speaker 1: can there's a base level where if Jonathan and I
Speaker 1: were quiet right now, you probably and we sent this
Speaker 1: out without running this process, you would hear that base
Speaker 1: level room tone, air conditioning ound, whatever. So what I
Speaker 1: can do with the software is analyze thirty seconds a minute,
Speaker 1: the longer the better of that baseline sound than the
Speaker 1: computer analyzes that, and then I apply it to the
Speaker 1: whole audio file and it gets rid of it and
Speaker 1: no artifacting at all. When I want to say artifacting,
Speaker 1: I mean there's no digital debris leftover where you can hear.
Speaker 1: Oh there, here's the sound of the effect working. It's
Speaker 1: completely transparent. And this sweet software is about two thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: so right, they're a really good job. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of suftware packages out there that that attempt to
Speaker 1: do something similar to that, like a Audacity has the
Speaker 1: noise removal tool, which is a very similar thing. It's
Speaker 1: looking at specific frequencies and then it looks through the
Speaker 1: entire track for those frequencies to remove those. Problem is,
Speaker 1: of course that if you have other stuff laid on
Speaker 1: top of it. Audacity doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily able
Speaker 1: to go in and remove just the stuff that you
Speaker 1: want removed and leave everything else untouched. So, uh well,
Speaker 1: my experience with things like this has has always been,
Speaker 1: Now it doesn't work, you can always tell. You can
Speaker 1: always hear it kicking in or whatever. But just in
Speaker 1: case anyone's interested in, this software i'm talking about is
Speaker 1: by a company called Isotope, and it's a package called
Speaker 1: r X Advance, and it's a suite that has multiple
Speaker 1: um little modules that can do different things like let's
Speaker 1: say you're picking up a hum or some kind of
Speaker 1: radio interference. It can isolate things like that. But the
Speaker 1: one I always used to give it to that air
Speaker 1: conditioning noise is it's called de nois Er and it's
Speaker 1: it's fantastic cool. And the other thing that you have
Speaker 1: to worry about besides the vents are obviously doors. You
Speaker 1: want to have. Make sure that your doors have proper
Speaker 1: ceiling all around it. Ceiling s S E A L
Speaker 1: that kind of seal. Yeah, Like in a recording studio
Speaker 1: control room, you might see a door that has a
Speaker 1: heavy rubber um strip on the bottom of it that
Speaker 1: when you close it, it literally makes a seal between
Speaker 1: the door jam and the bottom of the door, so
Speaker 1: it's air tight. Yeah, because otherwise sound will just travel
Speaker 1: underneath right underneath it the gap. You've done all this
Speaker 1: other work and then you have a gap in the
Speaker 1: bottom of your door. Yeah, you might as well have
Speaker 1: done nothing right. It's it's not gonna it's not gonna
Speaker 1: give you the results you want. So no, you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking before we start recording that, you know,
Speaker 1: the concept of making sure the sound within a room
Speaker 1: sounds right, and this goes beyond soundproofing, but it was
Speaker 1: also part of of the question sent into us. Noel
Speaker 1: and I have a bit more to say, but before
Speaker 1: we get to that, we're going to take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. So walk us through kind
Speaker 1: of the process. If you were setting up, say a
Speaker 1: recording studio for music, that would be obviously you would
Speaker 1: want to make sure that everything is just right to
Speaker 1: capture the music as the artist intended. You know, you
Speaker 1: might do some alteration on it on the back end,
Speaker 1: but you want it captured as pure as possible at
Speaker 1: the recording session. Yeah. This this goes into kind of
Speaker 1: philosophy in some ways. Some people might want more of
Speaker 1: a live room that has some character, some nice acoustics
Speaker 1: or something like that. And for certain things, like say
Speaker 1: recording a vocal, you might want a room with as
Speaker 1: little character as possible. So you're just getting the quality
Speaker 1: of that voice through that really nice microphone and microphone preamplifier,
Speaker 1: which is what you plug a microphone in that kind
Speaker 1: of boost that signal and makes it audible and makes
Speaker 1: it at a level that can then be recorded into
Speaker 1: the computer or tape machine or what have you. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's one way of looking at it. Like for
Speaker 1: a quiet room, like a completely dead sound booth, let's say, UM,
Speaker 1: then you might have different little tricks you can do.
Speaker 1: Like so at a drum room, for example, there are
Speaker 1: ways you can use panels of wood on the floor.
Speaker 1: You might take a strip of wood and place it
Speaker 1: right underneath the kick drum the bass drum, and have
Speaker 1: a microphone kind of at the end of that, so
Speaker 1: you're the sound of the drums are sort of reflecting
Speaker 1: off of that wood and creating kind of a cool
Speaker 1: diffew room sounds. So you when you mike drums, you're
Speaker 1: making them up close. You're putting a microphone right up
Speaker 1: on the tom tom or the snare of the kick,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of times people will mix in
Speaker 1: the sound of the room, which is the whole kit,
Speaker 1: and then kind of blend those signals together so you
Speaker 1: get that direct sound, which you also get this nice
Speaker 1: roomy tone. So in that situation, you might want a
Speaker 1: little character in your room, and you might use things
Speaker 1: like I'm talking about these strips or what have you
Speaker 1: to achieve some sort of character. Now, let's say we're
Speaker 1: talking about a control room, which is where you're going
Speaker 1: to be mixing your your music. So you have really
Speaker 1: high end, very nice, high fidelities studio monitors which gives
Speaker 1: you your playback. And you know, the best studio monitors
Speaker 1: are considered to be very um flat. That's that's the
Speaker 1: word that's used, where the frequency response isn't particularly um
Speaker 1: it's not it's not messed with on the speaker side.
Speaker 1: So everything that's coming out of there, you know, is
Speaker 1: going to be accurate based on what you're doing, what
Speaker 1: you're putting into it, the frequencies you're adjusting on your
Speaker 1: mixing console or in your computer. The monitors themselves aren't
Speaker 1: imparting any tone or quality beyond what you're doing to
Speaker 1: it right there. They're just they're just neutral and only
Speaker 1: presenting the stuff that you've told it to mean a
Speaker 1: lot of times they're referred to as reference monitors because
Speaker 1: you the idea is, and it's not always the case,
Speaker 1: um that the way it sounds on those monitors, it's
Speaker 1: going to sound like that anywhere you play it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there are things that happen after you finish a record
Speaker 1: called mastering, where you you kind of adjust to account
Speaker 1: for different types of systems that might be played on
Speaker 1: to make sure it sounds as good as possible on
Speaker 1: any system. But in a control room when you're playing
Speaker 1: back your music, you don't want bad reflections. You don't
Speaker 1: want that sound coming out of the speakers to bounce
Speaker 1: back at you in a way that changes the quality
Speaker 1: of that sound. You want it to be as flat
Speaker 1: and clean as possible. So there are little extra touches
Speaker 1: you could put in a control room that absorb certain frequencies.
Speaker 1: Like you said, certain materials will absorb certain frequencies better.
Speaker 1: There are things you might put in the back corners
Speaker 1: of the room that fill up a corner where two
Speaker 1: walls meet, called base traps, and they are these kind
Speaker 1: of tall. They can be round or squared off UM
Speaker 1: and they're made of kind of dense fibroglass material covered
Speaker 1: in a particular type of fabric, and those absorb some
Speaker 1: of those base frequencies so that it's not bouncing back
Speaker 1: at you and muddying up your mix. Then you might
Speaker 1: have a lot of times you'll see in a recording
Speaker 1: studio in the control room where you have your big
Speaker 1: mixing console, and then directly behind it against the wall,
Speaker 1: a lot of times there's a couch, and then above
Speaker 1: that couch there might be a weird looking wooden panel
Speaker 1: that has smaller arrays of these alternating little UM tiles
Speaker 1: sort of like what I described we have in our
Speaker 1: room here, but smaller and and a little more dense,
Speaker 1: and those are designed to do different things to other
Speaker 1: frequencies like the mid range or the high um. Another
Speaker 1: thing that's really important in UH these control room settings
Speaker 1: is where the monitors speakers are placed. So what you
Speaker 1: might do is have an engineer UM that specializes in
Speaker 1: you know, do building out recording studios and tuning room
Speaker 1: that's what they call it. Go in there and use
Speaker 1: a device that that measures the way frequencies bounce around
Speaker 1: the room and you would generate what's called a test
Speaker 1: tone or some white noise even um which is just
Speaker 1: like you know, static kind of sound. And then you
Speaker 1: can use this device, this handheld device, it might be
Speaker 1: cooked up to a computer. There's lots of different ones
Speaker 1: UM that will then take a print and analyze, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what the sound's doing. This is where this
Speaker 1: room needs some work, where we need to move the
Speaker 1: monitors a little further away or a little closer to
Speaker 1: the wall, et cetera. So that's just a few of
Speaker 1: the ways that you can um affect how the sound
Speaker 1: is actually heard within a room for different situations, whether
Speaker 1: you're recording, whether you're mixing and listening, it's all about that.
Speaker 1: There are different scenarios that require different treatments. Sure, and
Speaker 1: and anyone who's listened to you know, live albums versus
Speaker 1: studio albums, or for me, even just with classical music,
Speaker 1: Like if you ever listened to classical piece that was
Speaker 1: recorded in a big sound studio where you know they
Speaker 1: got the whole orchestra in there, it can sound really amazing.
Speaker 1: But then if you hear the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: but it's played in a concert hall, even without an audience,
Speaker 1: the effect is measurably different. You get that character you
Speaker 1: were talking about of the space, and different spaces have
Speaker 1: very different characters. Just as musicians may have a favorite
Speaker 1: type of amplifier that they like to use because of
Speaker 1: the tone that it helps, uh, the tones that accentuates
Speaker 1: versus the ones that it doesn't accentuate as much. Uh.
Speaker 1: You have the same sort of stuff with these these rooms. Now, no,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. Let's say that some of
Speaker 1: our listeners out there are wanting to set up like
Speaker 1: a little home recording area. Maybe they want to do podcasting,
Speaker 1: maybe they want to record some acoustic music, nothing to complicated.
Speaker 1: What would be some general guidelines you would give somebody
Speaker 1: who wants to set up a space in their house
Speaker 1: meant for recording, Like, what were what would just be
Speaker 1: some general tips, not like the super like you're gonna
Speaker 1: go and remodel your home kind of approach, but but
Speaker 1: more simple ways that you can at least limit problems
Speaker 1: with sound from exterior sources or uh interference with the
Speaker 1: sound that you're creating in the room. What are some
Speaker 1: of your tips you would give. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways that you can um make spaces
Speaker 1: in your home work, and all depends on what kind
Speaker 1: of music you're trying to record. UM, So the choice
Speaker 1: of microphone would make a big difference. For example, so
Speaker 1: the microphones that we use in the podcast studio or
Speaker 1: what are called dynamic microphones, and we've talked about this
Speaker 1: in the past episode. I believe um they tend to
Speaker 1: record best things that are very close to them and
Speaker 1: don't necessarily pick up as much ambient room sound as
Speaker 1: what's called a condenser microphone would. Now, some might say
Speaker 1: the condenser microphone gives a richer, bigger sound, but it
Speaker 1: also depends on how you use it. UM, So I
Speaker 1: might recommend for recording vocals trying to go with like
Speaker 1: get a really nice dynamic microphone, like one of these
Speaker 1: a sure SM seven B microphones will use and there
Speaker 1: you know, they're about three hundred bucks. They're not cheap,
Speaker 1: but um they allow you to record uh much closer proximity.
Speaker 1: So if you're recording a guitar, for example, through an amplifier,
Speaker 1: you put it right up next to that amplifier and
Speaker 1: crank it so that it's not recording. The signal to
Speaker 1: noise ratio is what's called is in favor of the signal,
Speaker 1: So the sound of the amplifier is uh the main concern.
Speaker 1: There's really no worry about recording any room tone. And
Speaker 1: you don't even have to crank the amp up that
Speaker 1: high because the mic is so close. But in terms
Speaker 1: of little things you can do for dampening, I mean,
Speaker 1: get get a pack of egg crate or like some
Speaker 1: acoustic tiles from or lex, you know, and it's not
Speaker 1: cheap either. But then just make some little clusters, you know,
Speaker 1: make a few little squares on your wall if you can,
Speaker 1: like if you have a closet door, maybe put three
Speaker 1: or four panels and then record facing that, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: there are also these shields you can get you can
Speaker 1: attach to your mic stand and basically is like a
Speaker 1: um almost like a half moon shaped shield that goes
Speaker 1: behind the microphone so you're facing it and that cuts
Speaker 1: down on reflections. Um. There are lots of little tricks
Speaker 1: like that that you can do. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, UM, it's just about how you use
Speaker 1: the stuff that you have for podcasting. Definitely go with
Speaker 1: a dynamic microphone, talk very close to it so that
Speaker 1: it's only getting your voice and it's not recording your
Speaker 1: cats or the sound of your conditioning things like that. Um,
Speaker 1: the lower you can turn up the mic and still
Speaker 1: get a really good signal, the better off you are,
Speaker 1: because if you have to crank it up really high,
Speaker 1: you're really far away from the mic, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: picking up a whole lot of that room sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I can tell you from experience. I record a
Speaker 1: couple of shows from home just for fun that that
Speaker 1: aren't work related, and I used to use a condenser
Speaker 1: mike because they were they were easy. I had a
Speaker 1: USB condenser mic um and and there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: the MIC's. I'll even tell you I had a blue
Speaker 1: Snowball for a while, and we have one here we
Speaker 1: we've used it occasionally, mostly to connect through Skype or whatever.
Speaker 1: We don't record through it, but we use it to
Speaker 1: to pick up our voices so people on the other
Speaker 1: end can hear us. UM. And I also had a
Speaker 1: blue Yetie microphone. Both of them are great. I love them,
Speaker 1: but for podcasting, like you were saying, they pick up
Speaker 1: pretty much everything. And in fact, if you were to
Speaker 1: go back and listen to some of those podcasts I did,
Speaker 1: you would hear, like, what's that weird clicking noise and
Speaker 1: hearing in the background, And that clicking noise would have
Speaker 1: been my dog's toe nails clicking against the hardwood floor
Speaker 1: as as he just ran across the floor and he
Speaker 1: wasn't making any other noise. It's just click click click clicklick.
Speaker 1: But that condenser mike picked up everything. And it all
Speaker 1: comes back to what we talked about sound being sort
Speaker 1: of this organic thing that moves. I mean, you're never
Speaker 1: going to completely get rid of every bit of room
Speaker 1: noise unless you are going above and beyond. You're going
Speaker 1: to that crazy world's most silent room approach. But you
Speaker 1: can mitigate how much of the sounds you don't want
Speaker 1: are recorded based on where you set up the mic.
Speaker 1: You want to be as far away from any noisy
Speaker 1: sources as possible. You certainly wouldn't want to record a
Speaker 1: podcast right next to your fridge. If you have an option, uh,
Speaker 1: if you have an internal room where it doesn't share
Speaker 1: an external wall, that would be a good choice. Um
Speaker 1: like like the place where my microphone is set up.
Speaker 1: I don't have a room that's into All of my
Speaker 1: rooms face outward one way or the other. So I
Speaker 1: don't have a room that I can that is that
Speaker 1: is isolated where I could record from. UH. So my
Speaker 1: mine is not ideal because I also live across the
Speaker 1: street from UM railroad tracks and Marta tracks UH and
Speaker 1: a busy road. So I'm just fortunate that when my
Speaker 1: house was being built, they built it with that in mind.
Speaker 1: They were building the external walls so that they would
Speaker 1: dampen that sound as much as possible, because the home
Speaker 1: builders new while we're right next to some train tracks,
Speaker 1: so we have to take that into account when we're
Speaker 1: designing this. Unfortunately, it doesn't often impact my recording. Once
Speaker 1: in a blue moon, if there's a freight train going
Speaker 1: by blasting its horn, you're gonna hear it. But otherwise
Speaker 1: it doesn't come through. So just to wrap up on
Speaker 1: this whole you know home podcast set up, I can
Speaker 1: give you a really good practical example of our show
Speaker 1: stuff you miss in History class Um. The host live
Speaker 1: in different cities. Holly Fry lives here in Atlanta and
Speaker 1: records in our studios, and Tracy Wilson lives in Boston
Speaker 1: and records from her home. And so when she was
Speaker 1: getting ready to move, we had to figure out how
Speaker 1: we were going to set this up. So I kind
Speaker 1: of looked into it and did some research and recommended
Speaker 1: what to get, and what we ultimately went with is
Speaker 1: she has this It's called the sound shield, I guess
Speaker 1: it is the best way of referring to it. A
Speaker 1: company is called sc Electronics. The product is a reflection
Speaker 1: fill to ex portable vocal booth and the idea is
Speaker 1: that the way it's pitched on on Sweetwater, which is
Speaker 1: the music equipment site that I'm looking at. Um, it
Speaker 1: is a portable acoustic treatment to reduce room ambience in
Speaker 1: untreated recording spaces. So it works pretty well as advertised.
Speaker 1: So it's this thing that kind of wraps around the
Speaker 1: back of the microphone connects to the mic stand. Um.
Speaker 1: So she has one of those behind her against the wall.
Speaker 1: She has a heavy curtain like we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: as well, and so that helps dampen the sound that way. Uh,
Speaker 1: And she's using this sm seven b um dynamic sure
Speaker 1: vocal mic or microphones on doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: vocal mic. But she is next to a window. So
Speaker 1: whenever the trash pick up comes or if there's a
Speaker 1: motorcyclist something like that you know, we've got to stop,
Speaker 1: so you deal with what you have. And I think
Speaker 1: she's a pretty good example of a successful home set
Speaker 1: up as well as as as is yours. Jonathan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you listen back to um some of
Speaker 1: the episodes that we recorded before we move to pot
Speaker 1: City Market, there was a brief period where we were
Speaker 1: set up in an office, uh like an actual It
Speaker 1: wasn't designed to be an audio recording studio, but was
Speaker 1: an office at the old office space and Buckhead that
Speaker 1: shared a a window facing Peach Tree or near Peach Tree.
Speaker 1: And if you listen carefully to some of those old podcasts,
Speaker 1: not just Tech Stuff, but all the other ones we
Speaker 1: record at How Stuff Works, you might occasionally hear a
Speaker 1: little high pitched noise and wonder what that was, And
Speaker 1: that was Baton Bob. There was also sirens. Those were
Speaker 1: the bane of our existence. YEA, sirens we would stop for,
Speaker 1: like we if we heard the siren the whistle. Baton Bob. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Beaton Bob is a a kind of a fixture here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. He is quite the character and often can
Speaker 1: be seen marching up and down the various streets of
Speaker 1: Atlanta in a tutu and twirling a baton and blowing
Speaker 1: a whistle and he's a smile all ambassador. I love
Speaker 1: baton Bob, Absolutely love him. Great guy. Uh, not fantastic
Speaker 1: to have to record a podcast. Was you're hearing is
Speaker 1: in whistling up and down the street and talk about
Speaker 1: d I y setup. We had those windows covered over
Speaker 1: with I made these panels out of that pink panther
Speaker 1: foam installation for construction, and I nailed them and stapled
Speaker 1: them to pieces of luan and then had them attached
Speaker 1: to the window to cover them over. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that we had this bright red um acoustic
Speaker 1: foam in sheets that would be you know, staple on
Speaker 1: top of that, and it still didn't block out and encies.
Speaker 1: We couldn't do anything permanent because that that wasn't something
Speaker 1: we were allowed to do in that space. It wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to be a recording studio. So we were just
Speaker 1: doing the best with what we had um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was difficult, so it can
Speaker 1: be a challenge, but the stuff is out there. It's
Speaker 1: not like like Noel is saying, it's not necessarily cheap.
Speaker 1: You can do some relatively inexpensive things to limit U
Speaker 1: sound issues. But obviously you get what you pay for
Speaker 1: the more that you are able to spend on that.
Speaker 1: But do your research. But the more you're able to
Speaker 1: spend on that, the better result you are going to get.
Speaker 1: In general, just make sure that whatever outlet you're going
Speaker 1: with is highly rated. You know, don't just hire a
Speaker 1: general contractor and and go with that, because that's probably
Speaker 1: not gonna give you the results you want. But obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, these are things that people in all sorts
Speaker 1: of of jobs and and positions, uh, worry about. Whether
Speaker 1: it's professional recording artists, whether it's podcasters like us home
Speaker 1: podcasters you just want to record a demo. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are the sort of things you got to think about.
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for writing in and requesting
Speaker 1: this episode, and Noel, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Usually you're on the other side of that window we
Speaker 1: were talking talking about. It's true, it's nice, too nice
Speaker 1: to pass through. Yeah, it's it's great to be on
Speaker 1: this side once in a while and not stay so
Speaker 1: long that the room gets super stuffy. Uh. This that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that this room in particular, it
Speaker 1: does get a little warm. Now we we fixed the
Speaker 1: stuff you should know podcast room because it used to
Speaker 1: get blistering lee hot, and now it gets very cool there,
Speaker 1: and now the opposite seems to happen here. But I'm
Speaker 1: afraid to ask for anything because I don't want to
Speaker 1: end up getting Gail Force winds into the podcast studio.
Speaker 1: That wraps up another classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope
Speaker 1: you guys enjoyed it. If you have any questions, comments, requests,
Speaker 1: you can send me an email the addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or pop on over
Speaker 1: to Facebook or Twitter. They use the handle tech stuff
Speaker 1: HSW that message will get to me. Don't forget. You
Speaker 1: can visit our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com
Speaker 1: that has a link to every single episode we've ever published,
Speaker 1: and it also has a link to our online store
Speaker 1: where every purchase he make goes to help the show
Speaker 1: and we greatly appreciate it. I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio's House Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.