Speaker 1: Give technology with tech stuff from stuff dot com. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tex Stuff. I am your host Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland joining me today special guest producer, extraordinaire, musician and
Speaker 1: all around groovy dude Noel. Welcome to the show. John Fitts,
Speaker 1: an honor and a privileged to be who repeated in
Speaker 1: it was lovely. We actually recorded together yesterday for Stuff
Speaker 1: They Don't Want You to Know, which you are a
Speaker 1: host of that show co host, a co host along
Speaker 1: with the co hosts with Matt Frederick and Ben Bolan
Speaker 1: and you guys were very generous to have me on,
Speaker 1: and so I'm not as generous, so I only took
Speaker 1: one of you. That's fair. We had a good time though.
Speaker 1: We did a nice little Facebook live thing. We talked
Speaker 1: about targeted ads and got all riled up and then
Speaker 1: recorded a nice little podcast. It was fun. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you guys have been enjoying my series on on
Speaker 1: the problem with advertising online, you can think of the
Speaker 1: Stuff They Don't Want You To Know as sort of
Speaker 1: a sister podcast on that same topic. Some of the
Speaker 1: stuff we cover is similar, but we take a because
Speaker 1: we have three other folks in there, and it's four
Speaker 1: people total. It ends up having a lot of different
Speaker 1: viewpoints and a lot of discussions, and we tend to
Speaker 1: go a little dark at times. Yeah it does. It
Speaker 1: gets a little dark, um, but also fun also light.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not all the dark, suff I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's life, right. So one of the things
Speaker 1: I like to do on this show is at the
Speaker 1: end of every episode, I invite you guys to send
Speaker 1: me requests ideas topics for future episodes. And today's episode
Speaker 1: is due to that. So I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: little bit of listener mail. You know, we used to
Speaker 1: have a whole claxon all right, here he goes, Hey
Speaker 1: you tech stuff. First off, I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for putting out your content as I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of this casual learning movement. Might need a better term
Speaker 1: for that. I was wondering if you'd be able to
Speaker 1: do an episode on acoustics and sound dampening for studios,
Speaker 1: like how they're measured, tuned, made, etcetera. It would be
Speaker 1: awesome and spectacular as I would be able to harness
Speaker 1: the power to put together a kick ass set up.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for what you do. Dub Nosis well dubbed
Speaker 1: we're going to do that for you. And that's really
Speaker 1: the reason why I asked Noel to come in here,
Speaker 1: because Noel, as a producer and sound engineer type person,
Speaker 1: has had real world experience with this, and so we're
Speaker 1: going to rely heavily upon his um perspective some of
Speaker 1: the stories he has to tell about the process of
Speaker 1: trying to make a room more soundproof or tuning a
Speaker 1: room so that you're getting the sound you want while
Speaker 1: you're recording, because, as it turns out, sound is a
Speaker 1: pretty tricky thing when you boil it down. Sound is vibration, right,
Speaker 1: It's just particles banging together. It's a whole thing you
Speaker 1: gotta wrangle. It is a thing you gotta wrangle. We
Speaker 1: often consider sound to just be this thing we perceive
Speaker 1: with our ears, but what's really happening is a little
Speaker 1: more granular than that. Sound is particles that are moving, vibrating. Uh.
Speaker 1: Typically we're hearing things that are coming through over the air,
Speaker 1: like actual air around us. So you listening to this
Speaker 1: right now, you can hear my voice. Well, what's actually
Speaker 1: happening is that some speakers are vibrating some air molecules,
Speaker 1: and that is compressing and decompressing those molecules. It's it's
Speaker 1: changing the pressure, increasing and then decreasing the pressure at
Speaker 1: frequencies and amplitudes that your ears pick up and then
Speaker 1: you perceive a sound. So this is happening through all
Speaker 1: sorts of media, not just air. It can pass through
Speaker 1: solid matter, it can pass through liquid and depending on
Speaker 1: how the particles are packed and the space between them,
Speaker 1: sound may move better through one medium than through another. Now,
Speaker 1: knowing that sound can travel through different media, you also
Speaker 1: need to know that it can transfer from one medium
Speaker 1: to another medium. So for example, if I'm shouting really,
Speaker 1: really loudly in a little room, some of that sound
Speaker 1: when it makes contact with the wall, actually causes the
Speaker 1: wall to move. Now it's not causing the wall to
Speaker 1: move a lot, but it is making the wall vibrate
Speaker 1: a little bit. Those vibrations get transferred through the wall
Speaker 1: to the other side. And that's why if you're in
Speaker 1: a place that has, you know, flimsy walls, you can
Speaker 1: hear someone in another room. The sound is actually transferring through.
Speaker 1: Not to mention in the room itself, that sound is
Speaker 1: actually reflecting back at you, and the quality of the
Speaker 1: sound can depend. You can very greatly depending on the
Speaker 1: material that the room is built out of or treated
Speaker 1: with right, right, So some of the sounds getting transferred
Speaker 1: through the materials, some of the sound is being bounced
Speaker 1: back from the material toward you, um. And a lot
Speaker 1: of that depends upon the the hardness of the material,
Speaker 1: Like a really hard materials and bounce a lot more
Speaker 1: sound back at you, which is why if you are
Speaker 1: in a large room with a lot of hard surfaces
Speaker 1: you get that echoe sound. Um. Or if you're out
Speaker 1: someplace like at a canyon and you do a shout
Speaker 1: and you get that echo back, it's because the sound
Speaker 1: is going out hitting the walls of the canyon, bouncing
Speaker 1: back to you, and that's when you get to experience
Speaker 1: that effect. Well. Obviously, this means that if you want
Speaker 1: to create a place where the sound can't escape or
Speaker 1: leak into and a lot of recording studios, you want
Speaker 1: both of those things right. You don't want the sound
Speaker 1: from the studio to leak outward, but you also definitely
Speaker 1: don't want outside sound to leak into the important Then
Speaker 1: you have to figure out, well, how do we limit
Speaker 1: how do we work within the physical uh uh constraints
Speaker 1: of the way sound works, so that we can limit
Speaker 1: that as much as possible and try to have the
Speaker 1: purest experience as we can. Uh So, one thing you
Speaker 1: can remember is that sound, because it's a physical activity
Speaker 1: and because it relies on on energy, the way it
Speaker 1: works is that you've got a source of the sound.
Speaker 1: Sound waves travel outward concentrically outward from that source, and
Speaker 1: they get weaker as they travel out that that energy
Speaker 1: starts to dissipate. You can think of it kind of
Speaker 1: like um uh, you know, each each time a particle
Speaker 1: has to bang up against another one to move it,
Speaker 1: some of that energy ends up getting lost. So the
Speaker 1: further way you are from a source of sound, the
Speaker 1: quieter it is. That's why that happens. So one way
Speaker 1: you can limit the way sound comes out of a
Speaker 1: room is you make an enormous room like you have
Speaker 1: a little room in a really big room. Um. But
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily the most practical approach. Actually, there's a
Speaker 1: studio I used to intern at in Athens, Georgia called
Speaker 1: Chase Park Transduction, and they essentially built their studio inside
Speaker 1: of a larger warehouse space. So they're renting a space
Speaker 1: in the strip of big giant, very high ceiling warehouse spaces.
Speaker 1: But when you go into the studio, you're in the warehouse.
Speaker 1: But then there's a smaller basically building inside that warehouse
Speaker 1: that is the one that receives all the acoustic treatments.
Speaker 1: But it's like you said, I mean that is one
Speaker 1: way of dealing with it is air. Yeah, the room
Speaker 1: within a room approach is often how it's referred to,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it is not as obvious as that. Like
Speaker 1: it may be that it looks like the the room
Speaker 1: you're walking into might be like it's it's in a
Speaker 1: little uh alcover hallway, but that hallway is actually showing
Speaker 1: where the the walls are, where there's an air gap
Speaker 1: between the two walls to to mitigate any sound coming
Speaker 1: into the space. Even this glass window that we have
Speaker 1: in the booth that we're recording in right now, it's
Speaker 1: a double paned window, So in between these two relatively
Speaker 1: thick pieces of glass is a little layer of air,
Speaker 1: which in and of itself acts as a bit of
Speaker 1: a sound dampening insulation device, right exactly, So, uh, some
Speaker 1: 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 end and on the side uh the
Speaker 1: antenna on the side you use your hand by moving
Speaker 1: it closer to or farther away, you are changing the
Speaker 1: amplitude and that's perceived as a change in volume. The
Speaker 1: antenna going up as you move your hand closer to
Speaker 1: it or farther away, you are changing the frequency. So
Speaker 1: with those two controls you can basically shape the way
Speaker 1: the sound is perceived. Right, And it's important to remember
Speaker 1: these things because uh, as it turns out, different approaches
Speaker 1: to sound proofing are effective for different frequencies. Definitely, right.
Speaker 1: So there might be one that you're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is this is perfect. I can't hear my neighbors anymore.
Speaker 1: But then it turns out that when your neighbors put
Speaker 1: on a an album that has a lot of base
Speaker 1: in it, it comes right through or start yelling at
Speaker 1: each other for whatever. Yeah, the amplitude is loud enough,
Speaker 1: it maybe that you're soundproofing isn't going to be. Uh.
Speaker 1: When people yell, sometimes they tend to raise the picture
Speaker 1: right right right, the pitch goes up enough that I
Speaker 1: got you. Yeah, So these are things that you have
Speaker 1: taken to consideration if you're trying to sound proof, and
Speaker 1: obviously what you are trying to accomplish, like the reason
Speaker 1: why you're soundproofing, that will play into it as well,
Speaker 1: because if all you're trying to do is just make
Speaker 1: it quieter so that you know, you don't have like
Speaker 1: you're designing a building, maybe it's a hotel and you
Speaker 1: want to make sure that the the people talking in
Speaker 1: one room doesn't bleed over into other rooms. That's one
Speaker 1: type of soundproofing. If you're trying to make a professional
Speaker 1: recording studio, that's another type. From a construction standpoint, Like
Speaker 1: the base level soundproofing is drywall, so you have drywall,
Speaker 1: and that is where if you're in a hotel that
Speaker 1: only uses drywall, people are gonna be able to hear
Speaker 1: every single thing that's going on next door. It's when
Speaker 1: you start basically stuffing that dry wall with other denser
Speaker 1: materials or you know, highly rated soundproofing materials, that's when
Speaker 1: you can really cut down on that transfer between the rooms. Right.
Speaker 1: And also there are other some other techniques you can
Speaker 1: use as well that I'll get into that, And it's
Speaker 1: all about how do you make it harder for the
Speaker 1: sound to travel from one place to another because sound
Speaker 1: is going to travel no matter or what. It's not
Speaker 1: like we have created a material that just sucks up
Speaker 1: sound totally. We've got a lot of materials that resist
Speaker 1: vibration and that means that they don't transfer sound very well.
Speaker 1: But in fact, the studio has some of that around us.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's other stuff you have to take
Speaker 1: into consideration as well. Now, there are four general elements
Speaker 1: to soundproofing, and we've we've kind of touched on a
Speaker 1: few of them, but one of the big ones is
Speaker 1: called decoupling. Now, decoupling is a construction term. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about decoupling, you're talking about the way the walls
Speaker 1: of the soundproofed area are actually constructed. So you were
Speaker 1: just talking about dry wall. The typical way a wall
Speaker 1: is constructed if you've got studs and attached to the
Speaker 1: studs are the anchor points for the drywall. And in
Speaker 1: a typical wall, the studs are connected on either side
Speaker 1: by drywall for one side of the wall and dry
Speaker 1: wall for the other side of the the wall. So the
Speaker 1: uh and if you can think of it like the
Speaker 1: interior wall versus the exterior wall of a room. The
Speaker 1: problem with that is that when sound hits the drywall,
Speaker 1: then sound can travel through the dry wall through the studs,
Speaker 1: which transmit sound. They're a pretty good conductor for sound
Speaker 1: to the other side of the dry wall, and then
Speaker 1: you get sound bleeding out or you have sound bleeding
Speaker 1: in from the outside. So decoupling is a process where
Speaker 1: you would build a wall so that the studs don't
Speaker 1: touch both sides of the wall. You would have a
Speaker 1: series of studs that one side the interior wall are
Speaker 1: attached to, and a different series of studs that the
Speaker 1: exterior wall are attached to. They both extend well into
Speaker 1: the gap between the two walls, but they don't touch
Speaker 1: the other side. So one side could be receiving sound
Speaker 1: waves and potentially transfer those, but since they're not touching,
Speaker 1: it's much more difficult for that to happen, right, because
Speaker 1: air is not as good a conductor of sound as
Speaker 1: a solid object is, which you wouldn't think that, because
Speaker 1: I mean, here we are in a room talking to
Speaker 1: each other, and the air is basically what's connecting us.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing, though, is that the way you
Speaker 1: can tell this, it's very easy way to tell. It's
Speaker 1: the old kid game of a telephone where you get
Speaker 1: two cans in a string. Right, You you punch holes
Speaker 1: in the bottom of the cans, You run the string
Speaker 1: through the holes, you stretch it taut, and then you
Speaker 1: can whisper into one can and hear it on the
Speaker 1: other side. But if you whisper that same volume across
Speaker 1: the room you can't hear it. So again that shows
Speaker 1: that the the physical media is actually more or medium
Speaker 1: I should say, is actually more efficient at transferring the
Speaker 1: sound than than air is. So air pockets are actually
Speaker 1: really important when you're soundproofing, you know, designing a soundproof room. UM.
Speaker 1: Typically you would pair decoupling with some of the other elements,
Speaker 1: and I'll go ahead and mention what those elements are,
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk more about how you would put
Speaker 1: it all together. So you've got absorption another important element.
Speaker 1: This is obviously using a material that slows down sound.
Speaker 1: Uh It absorbs some of the sounds, so that sound
Speaker 1: essentially loses some of its energy and it thus is quieter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't leak out as much because the
Speaker 1: amplitude gets reduced as a result. Uh. So absorption you
Speaker 1: achieve usually through using some sort of insulation material like UM.
Speaker 1: I mean fiberglass is a simple example where you would
Speaker 1: put that in the wall in the in the gap
Speaker 1: between the two sides of the wall, the two pieces
Speaker 1: of drywall. I saw one even saying denim. You can
Speaker 1: use different like fabric type, interial, cotton or something like.
Speaker 1: The important thing is that whatever you use, you cannot
Speaker 1: pack two densely exactly because if it's too dense, that's
Speaker 1: going to transfer sound and you're back to the same
Speaker 1: problem you were it before. And you also want to
Speaker 1: have still have some air gap there too. You don't
Speaker 1: want the material to make contact completely through the gap.
Speaker 1: You would pack kind of half of the gap, a
Speaker 1: little more than half of the gap. Typically with insulating material,
Speaker 1: you leave an air gap, and that really creates a
Speaker 1: great cushion for sound. UM. We'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about how that can go wrong though. Uh. Decoupling
Speaker 1: in particular can make certain things, um a little more difficult.
Speaker 1: There's also damping sound dampening UH, this is where you
Speaker 1: use some sort of material that resists vibration. So like
Speaker 1: the foam we have here, there's some we've got some
Speaker 1: dampening foam in here. But the typically you look at
Speaker 1: a lot of things like adhesives that are used to
Speaker 1: dampen sound. UM. One of the ones I keep hearing
Speaker 1: about over and over is green glue. Green glue is yeah,
Speaker 1: so so it's very popular, particularly apparently in Canada, but
Speaker 1: it's popular along amongst sound proving technicians. It is considered
Speaker 1: to be one of the most effective for the least
Speaker 1: amount of money solutions for sound dampening material But typically
Speaker 1: this would be a layer that would also be part
Speaker 1: of your wall that resists the vibration of sound and
Speaker 1: so it won't transfer sound as well. Um, it's again, uh,
Speaker 1: something that you would apply between two constrained layers. So
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not like you would cope this
Speaker 1: on the interior wall. That would be a bad idea.
Speaker 1: It would be on the the the back side of
Speaker 1: the interior wall. It might even be something you could
Speaker 1: use as an adhesive for other sound dampening materials like
Speaker 1: acoustic phone or tile. And then the last element is
Speaker 1: really the simplest is mass. It's just that heavier things
Speaker 1: are harder to move than lighter things, right, It's just
Speaker 1: the basic idea like if if you had a cart
Speaker 1: filled with concrete blocks, it would be a little heavy
Speaker 1: to push, But if you had that same cart and
Speaker 1: it was filled with feathers, it's easy to push. So
Speaker 1: I've got something for you. He uses all of those
Speaker 1: elements in a pretty perfect example, one of the more
Speaker 1: perfect examples of soundproofing that we can see in the
Speaker 1: real world. Um, 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 ninety nine point nine nine sound absorbent.
Speaker 1: In order to accomplish this, it uses a combination of
Speaker 1: very very very thick, heavy materials. It's got concrete walls,
Speaker 1: steel reinforcement, and then on the inside of the room,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a picture right now, it has these
Speaker 1: alternating sort of thin looking things. So you've got like
Speaker 1: three and then going from left to right, and then
Speaker 1: three right next to it, going vertically, and they alternate
Speaker 1: throughout every UM panel in this room, UM, and then
Speaker 1: even on the floor. And the what you stand on
Speaker 1: is a metal grate that goes on top of another
Speaker 1: series of these alternating UM little little units. And apparently, UM,
Speaker 1: the longest anyone has been able to stand being in
Speaker 1: this room alone with the lights out of forty five
Speaker 1: minutes because people start to hallucinate right this level of silence.
Speaker 1: I've I've heard such things and it's the sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Every time I hear it, I have the reaction that
Speaker 1: I think people have, which is bet I could go longer,
Speaker 1: and of course I'd probably be in there for like
Speaker 1: three minutes and be convinced I've been in there for
Speaker 1: three hours. Because once you get to a point where
Speaker 1: something that you have taken for granted, you know just
Speaker 1: the ambient sounds that you can hear once that's gone,
Speaker 1: that really does make a big difference. And uh, it
Speaker 1: is a psychologically powerful experience, but I still kind of
Speaker 1: want to do it. Yeah, that's a great way of
Speaker 1: of kind of summing up all of these elements. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to really sound proof a room, the
Speaker 1: best thing to do is to incorporate as many of
Speaker 1: those as you possibly can, because they're different. Ones are
Speaker 1: good for different parts of that frequency we're talking about,
Speaker 1: So some of them are really good for those mid
Speaker 1: too high range frequencies. Some of them are a little
Speaker 1: better at the low frequencies. So obviously you want to
Speaker 1: have a good combination. Otherwise you're gonna have certain sounds
Speaker 1: come through even if you've perfectly blocked the room for
Speaker 1: other ones, and that can be really frustrated. Literally, a
Speaker 1: cut off or a threshold where if you looked on
Speaker 1: a graph that can show you what frequencies are happening,
Speaker 1: you could literally track Okay, at this frequency, now I
Speaker 1: can hear it. It's that specific usually, so kind of
Speaker 1: going back to to decoupling a little bit, the size
Speaker 1: of the air cavity between the two sides of the
Speaker 1: the coupled wall determines something called the resonant frequency of that.
Speaker 1: So here's the here's one of the problems with decoupling.
Speaker 1: That air cavity ends up acting kind of like a spring, right,
Speaker 1: So springs actually have a resonant frequency, and if you
Speaker 1: end up vibrating something at the resonant frequency, it causes
Speaker 1: that thing to vibrate very, very easily. The big example
Speaker 1: of this that everyone is familiar with is the crystal
Speaker 1: glass the opera singer hitting that note, that's the resonant
Speaker 1: frequency for it. You can actually see the glass to
Speaker 1: form and ultimately break. Now, or even someone that can
Speaker 1: play those glasses where they fill it up with water
Speaker 1: and run their finger around the rim. In order for
Speaker 1: it to start making that tone, it has to reach
Speaker 1: that resonant frequency exactly. Basically self oscillate exactly. So, So
Speaker 1: here's the problem with the decoupled walls is that that
Speaker 1: air gap, because it's acting like a spring, uh and
Speaker 1: because it can resonate if it's not at the proper
Speaker 1: thickness for the air gap, that resonant frequency maybe within
Speaker 1: the range of sounds that you're going to generate either
Speaker 1: inside or outside the room, within the range of human hearing,
Speaker 1: which means they're going to impact that sound proving it
Speaker 1: if something actually is played at that frequency, it'll go
Speaker 1: not only will it go through the wall, it'll go
Speaker 1: through the wall more easily than it would have if
Speaker 1: you hadn't decoupled the wall because that resonance. Uh So,
Speaker 1: that is one of the things you actually have to
Speaker 1: take into account. And one of the solutions to that
Speaker 1: is don't make it too thin of an air gap.
Speaker 1: Um So, another way of experimenting this with this yourself,
Speaker 1: if you want to just have some fun, and by fun,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you know, Mr Wizard style fun. You
Speaker 1: get a bottle and you know if you blow across
Speaker 1: the the opening of the bottle, it produces a tone. Well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how hard you blow, it's always going
Speaker 1: to play that one tone. But if you add water
Speaker 1: to the bottle, you have decreased the volume of air
Speaker 1: the bottle can hold, and that changes the tone. Again.
Speaker 1: Back to the glasses, they could have, you know, the
Speaker 1: same size glasses, but they generate different tones from each
Speaker 1: one by putting a different amount of water in each. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not just the size of the glass, but how
Speaker 1: much liquid is in the glass. So what you would
Speaker 1: love like to do is make sure that your soundproofing
Speaker 1: UM technique was going to take care of those maybe
Speaker 1: mid too high range uh frequencies and then make sure
Speaker 1: that the air gap would push, would resonate at one
Speaker 1: of those frequencies, so that the other elements of your
Speaker 1: soundproofing take care of it and it doesn't pass through.
Speaker 1: If your resonant frequency is too low and you didn't
Speaker 1: really protect against that, it's going to pass right on
Speaker 1: in UH. So. There's also something called the triple leaf effect.
Speaker 1: And I had to look this up in a couple
Speaker 1: of different locations to find out what the triple leaf
Speaker 1: effect 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 dry wall 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 referred 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 drywall, the
Speaker 1: 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 because I could see that, I mean,
Speaker 1: does introduce more of a variable into the equation and
Speaker 1: as opposed to just having to having a third one,
Speaker 1: there there is more ways the sound could potentially bounce
Speaker 1: 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 that we talk
Speaker 1: about the bunny Men. No, we didn't talk about the
Speaker 1: bunny Man. You know they're playing in Atlanta soon? Are
Speaker 1: they really? Wow that? I would much prefer to see
Speaker 1: them than insane clown posse you're already missed insane clown
Speaker 1: Know they played earlier this week, yesterday before day before yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to invite them over so we could
Speaker 1: explain how magnets work. But that's that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 1: No no in their heart, I hope so well, you
Speaker 1: know they made a whole video about it. But the
Speaker 1: echoes can be an issue obviously in recording studios, things
Speaker 1: like that. You don't want there to be if there's
Speaker 1: gonna be any echo, you wanted to be there on purpose,
Speaker 1: not because of just that's the way the room was
Speaker 1: built same here for our studio. We don't want too
Speaker 1: much echo here, and we are in a building that's
Speaker 1: made out of concrete. Now that in some ways that's
Speaker 1: good because it helps dampen sound from other areas. Unless
Speaker 1: something is making direct contact with the concrete, then we
Speaker 1: can all hear it everywhere. Like whenever there's construction going on,
Speaker 1: you can hear it move through the concrete columns and
Speaker 1: floors and ceiling. It is disturbing their we play the
Speaker 1: game what construction equipment? Do you think that is? Sometimes
Speaker 1: you just don't know because the sound can mutate based
Speaker 1: on what it's vibrating to, you know, right, it might
Speaker 1: be a little drill that's vibrating a giant piece of metal,
Speaker 1: and then that's vibrating something else, and by the time
Speaker 1: it gets to us, it sounds like there's a giant
Speaker 1: playing hop scotch ups there. Yeah, it could be a
Speaker 1: little distracting. Fortunately, most of the spaces in in the
Speaker 1: building where in now have been built out because when
Speaker 1: we moved into this building, we were one of the
Speaker 1: first offices here. Yeah, and that just meant that we
Speaker 1: had construction noises pretty much consistently throughout the whole experience,
Speaker 1: so that is been reduced dramatically over time. But one
Speaker 1: of the other things is that you know, we when
Speaker 1: since we have all this concrete, we have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to eliminate that echo. And the way you
Speaker 1: do that is typically by putting softer material on top
Speaker 1: of the harder material and that that again dampens the echo.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, if you if you have a castle,
Speaker 1: you probably are hanging tapestries for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 1: it acts like an insulator so you don't lose as
Speaker 1: much heat in those cold winters. And do when you're
Speaker 1: screaming at your servants because your food isn't on the
Speaker 1: table when the bad guys are attacking your castle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want you don't want that to echo throughout the
Speaker 1: castle unless you're a villain. And when when I'm decorating
Speaker 1: my castle, I tend to go with tapestry. I do.
Speaker 1: I do too. I'm I'm tapestry heavy when I do that. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's it's so sore of stuff You can do
Speaker 1: inside 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 it's,
Speaker 1: the denseness of it. It bunches up like so you
Speaker 1: can kind of squeeze it together where it creates these
Speaker 1: 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 about,
Speaker 1: or i'll briefly mention, which is sound cancelation. That's a
Speaker 1: little different from soundproofing. Actually in a way, it's the
Speaker 1: opposite because you actually have to create sound with sound cancelation.
Speaker 1: The way sound cancelation works is if you were to
Speaker 1: look at that that graphic representation of a sound wave,
Speaker 1: Let's say it's a steady tone, because that's the easiest
Speaker 1: way to imagine it. So it's a stay tone it
Speaker 1: I don't know, three hurts, and you're looking at a
Speaker 1: three hundred hurts sign wave, and you see where the
Speaker 1: peaks and troughs are. If you were to create a
Speaker 1: a complementary sign wave where it is out of phase,
Speaker 1: so the peaks and troughs match up with the troughs
Speaker 1: and peaks, then they cancel each other out. That's the
Speaker 1: crazy thing about sound, because you typically think if you
Speaker 1: add more sound to sound, it just gets louder. Like
Speaker 1: if you've ever been in a restaurant that has lots
Speaker 1: of hard surfaces, it becomes really difficult to have a
Speaker 1: conversation if it's a busy night because everyone everyone starts
Speaker 1: to talk over everyone else and it just kind of echoes. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that if you do add sound to sound,
Speaker 1: but you make sure it's out of phase, it cancels
Speaker 1: it and then it's as if there's no sound at all.
Speaker 1: That's what noise canceling headphones do. They create a sound,
Speaker 1: they detect the incoming sound waves, they create complimentary sound
Speaker 1: waves that phase that out, and then you get silence
Speaker 1: as a result. So an example of that phenomenon that
Speaker 1: you don't want that actually has to be corrected. If
Speaker 1: you're in a recording studio. Let's say you're recording an
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar and you want to mike it in two places,
Speaker 1: so you might put a mic on the soundhole of
Speaker 1: the acoustic guitar that you might want to put a
Speaker 1: mike a little further up on the next somewhere. If
Speaker 1: those mike, since they're recording the same signal essentially, but
Speaker 1: they're spaced apart, there is the potential for phase issues
Speaker 1: between those two mics. So while it's not going to
Speaker 1: get straight up cancel out the sound, it's going to
Speaker 1: change the quality of the sound in a way that
Speaker 1: you might not like. It might make it tinier, or
Speaker 1: it might give it almost like one of those phaser
Speaker 1: kind of a jet engine psychedelic guitar type sound. You know,
Speaker 1: you know where it's filtered through that sound. Um, So
Speaker 1: what you have to do is you can you can
Speaker 1: correct this after the fact, but there are devices that
Speaker 1: you actually can test the phase at the point you're
Speaker 1: recording and then space the mics apart accordingly, And there's
Speaker 1: even ways to adjust the phase using these devices. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting how you're describing as sort of a practical
Speaker 1: use of this phenomenon. And then there are also versions
Speaker 1: of that happened in a recording situation that you actually
Speaker 1: have to be careful you have to correct for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So for for soundproofing, there are a couple of different
Speaker 1: UH measuring systems to determine how soundproofed a room is,
Speaker 1: and they may or may not be useful to you
Speaker 1: if you are trying to do something like create a
Speaker 1: recording studio. So, for example, in the United States, we
Speaker 1: typically use something called the sound transmission class to explain
Speaker 1: how soundproofed a room is, and that's really a measurement
Speaker 1: of how well sound within the ranges of human voices
Speaker 1: travels through walls. So sounds outside of those frequencies, it
Speaker 1: sound transmission class isn't concerned with them, because it's really
Speaker 1: more about building walls so that sound doesn't pass or
Speaker 1: walls and floors and ceilings, not just walls, but all
Speaker 1: the all the surfaces so that sound does not pass
Speaker 1: easily through one UH and into another. This would be
Speaker 1: like what hotels would be really concerned with, or people
Speaker 1: who are building homes. UM that range, by the way,
Speaker 1: is about hurts to four thousand hurts or four killer hurts.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the typical range of frequencies of the
Speaker 1: human voice. So that's really what sound transmission class is
Speaker 1: concerned with. And it's designated by a number, and in general,
Speaker 1: the higher the number, the better the quality of soundproofing is.
Speaker 1: So if you were in a room that has like
Speaker 1: a really kind of lousy dry wall partition, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of you know, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: have that that absorption installation or anything like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: the number might be somewhere around twenty. But let's say
Speaker 1: you're in a high end hotel that has taken great
Speaker 1: pains to create decoupled walls with good absorption insulation some
Speaker 1: maybe some dampening material in there too, that might be
Speaker 1: closer to sixty. And so the higher number designates it's
Speaker 1: more sound proofed than the other one. But again for
Speaker 1: that given range of frequencies. The stuff outside of that
Speaker 1: maybe not so much. Outside the United States, people tend
Speaker 1: to use was called the sound reduction index. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's the s r I. So that rating tells you
Speaker 1: how many decibels in reduction the material will provide. So
Speaker 1: if a sound is a certain amplitude, a certain amount
Speaker 1: of decibels, which by the way, is not a not
Speaker 1: a it's a logarithmic scale, so it's pretty complicated, but
Speaker 1: it will tell you how many decibels it will reduce.
Speaker 1: A sound that is generated from one space and into
Speaker 1: an adjoining space. UM. It's depending also upon frequencies because
Speaker 1: some are designed to it's it's something that's specifically designed
Speaker 1: to cut out those mid to high range frequencies, but
Speaker 1: it won't necessarily uh like that material won't necessarily cut
Speaker 1: out low frequencies. So if you get this s r
Speaker 1: I number, you have to also ask, well, what what
Speaker 1: range of frequencies is that for? Because it's not a
Speaker 1: blanket statement. It's not saying that any sound at any
Speaker 1: decibel will be reduced this amount. Then you finally have
Speaker 1: noise reduction coefficient. Uh. So this tells you how much
Speaker 1: sound of material can absorb versus reflect UM. It's it's
Speaker 1: expressed as a percentage, So really the percentage that you're
Speaker 1: looking at is the percentage of sound absorbed by that material.
Speaker 1: A carpet with a rubber underlay might have a point
Speaker 1: for rating. For example, that means it would absorb of
Speaker 1: the sound that hits it reflecting back. UM Like a
Speaker 1: hard concrete wall might be a point oh five, meaning
Speaker 1: it absorbs only five percent of the sound that hits
Speaker 1: it and gets reflected back. So uh those are those
Speaker 1: are how you would you know that's like the metrics
Speaker 1: you would use. You would use actual instrumentation to detect
Speaker 1: how the sound is reverberating in the room. And you
Speaker 1: would you know, obviously use things like microphones and stuff
Speaker 1: outside of a room to detect if there's any sound
Speaker 1: leaking out. There are also some things you gotta take
Speaker 1: into account, um, some natural weak spots. If the room
Speaker 1: has a vent in it, which you kind of hope
Speaker 1: it will because otherwise things get real stuffy, real fast. Uh,
Speaker 1: the vent also may need to be treated. Ideally the
Speaker 1: vent will be treated with some of this material to
Speaker 1: dampen some of the sound. Otherwise it's just a conduit
Speaker 1: for sound to travel through. Yeah. So the room we're
Speaker 1: recording in right now, it was built out for us
Speaker 1: with some of these specs in mind. Um. We chose
Speaker 1: the material based on the rating and we went with
Speaker 1: obviously a higher number UM. And then this glass window
Speaker 1: that I was telling about earlier that's specifically designed for
Speaker 1: a studiotype environment, and what we have on the walls
Speaker 1: in here are similar to the layout of that World's
Speaker 1: Quiet room most talking about, except these are acoustic tiles
Speaker 1: that are made up of their squares and they're made
Speaker 1: up of strips in a single direction, but the panels
Speaker 1: are alternating, so we have one where they're facing up
Speaker 1: and down, the one next to it they're going left
Speaker 1: to right, etcetera. And they altered it and that helps
Speaker 1: break up the sound and um, you know, make it
Speaker 1: a more uh dampened sound within the room and keep
Speaker 1: the sound from escaping as well. But we actually do
Speaker 1: have event in this room and it's not particularly well treated.
Speaker 1: So what I actually end up having to do is
Speaker 1: use a very nifty bundle of software to take a
Speaker 1: print of the room tone, so you can there's a
Speaker 1: base level where Jonathan and I were quiet right now,
Speaker 1: you probably and we sent this out. Without running this process,
Speaker 1: you would hear that base level room tone, air conditioning sound, whatever.
Speaker 1: So what I can do with the software is analyze
Speaker 1: thirty seconds a minute, the longer the better of that
Speaker 1: baseline sound than the computer analyzes that, and then I
Speaker 1: apply it to the whole audio file and it gets
Speaker 1: rid of it and no artifacting at all. Like when
Speaker 1: I want to say artifacting, I mean there's no digital
Speaker 1: debris leftover where you can hear, Oh, there here's the
Speaker 1: sound of the effect working. It's completely transparent and this
Speaker 1: sweet software is about two thousand dollars, so right, they're
Speaker 1: a really good job. There are a lot of software
Speaker 1: packages out there that that attempt to do something similar
Speaker 1: to that, like a Audacity has the noise Removal tool,
Speaker 1: which is a very similar thing. It's looking at specific
Speaker 1: frequencies and then it looks through the entire track or
Speaker 1: those frequencies to remove those. Problem is, of course, that
Speaker 1: if you have other stuff laid on top of it,
Speaker 1: Audacity doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily able to go in
Speaker 1: and remove just the stuff that you want removed and
Speaker 1: leave everything else untouched. So uh well, my experience with
Speaker 1: things like this as has always been now it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: You can always tell, you can always hear it kicking
Speaker 1: in or whatever. But just in case anyone's interested in,
Speaker 1: the software I'm talking about is by a company called Isotope,
Speaker 1: and it's a package called r X Advance, and it's
Speaker 1: a suite that has multiple um little modules that can
Speaker 1: do different things like let's say you're picking up a
Speaker 1: hum or some kind of radio interference. It can is
Speaker 1: isolate things like that. But the one I always used
Speaker 1: to give to that air conditioning noise is it's called
Speaker 1: de nois er and it's it's it's fantastic cool. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that you have to worry about besides
Speaker 1: the vents are obviously doors. You want to have. Make
Speaker 1: sure that your doors have proper ceiling all around it.
Speaker 1: Ceiling S, S, E A L. That kind of seal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like in a recording studio control room, you might see
Speaker 1: a door that has a heavy rubber um strip on
Speaker 1: the bottom of it that when you close it, it
Speaker 1: literally makes a seal between the door jam and the
Speaker 1: bottom of the door, so it's air tight, yeah, because
Speaker 1: otherwise sound will just travel underneath right underneath it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the gap. You've done all this other work and then
Speaker 1: you have a gap in the bottom of your door,
Speaker 1: you might as well have done nothing right. It's it's
Speaker 1: not gonna it's not gonna give you the results you want.
Speaker 1: So no, you know, we were talking before we start
Speaker 1: recording that, you know, the the concept of making sure
Speaker 1: the sound within a room sounds right, and this goes
Speaker 1: beyond soundproofing, but it was also part of of the
Speaker 1: question sent into us. So walk us through kind of
Speaker 1: the process. If you were setting up, say a recording
Speaker 1: studio for music that would be obviously you would want
Speaker 1: to make sure that everything is just right to capture
Speaker 1: the music as the artist intended. You know, you might
Speaker 1: do some alteration on it on the back end, but
Speaker 1: you want it captured as pure as possible at the
Speaker 1: recording session. Yeah. This this goes into kind of recording philosophy.
Speaker 1: In some ways. Some people might want more of a
Speaker 1: live room that has some character, some nice acoustics or
Speaker 1: something like that. And for certain things, like say recording
Speaker 1: a vocal, you might want a room with as little
Speaker 1: character as possible. So you're just getting the quality of
Speaker 1: 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 reflect
Speaker 1: day off of that wood and creating kind of a
Speaker 1: cool diffuse room sound. So you when you mike drums,
Speaker 1: you're making them up close. You're putting a microphone right
Speaker 1: up 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 a lot
Speaker 1: of times they're referred to as reference monitors because you
Speaker 1: the idea is, and it's not always the case, um
Speaker 1: that the way it sounds on those monitors, it's going
Speaker 1: to sound like that anywhere you play it. Obviously, there
Speaker 1: are things that happen after you finish a record called mastering,
Speaker 1: where you you kind of adjust to account for different
Speaker 1: types of systems that might be played on to make
Speaker 1: sure it sounds as good as possible on any system.
Speaker 1: But in a control room when you're playing back your music,
Speaker 1: you don't want bad reflections. You don't want that sound
Speaker 1: coming out of the speakers to bounce back at you
Speaker 1: in a way that changes the quality of that sound.
Speaker 1: You want it to be as flat and clean as possible.
Speaker 1: So there are little extra touches you could put in
Speaker 1: a control room that absorb certain frequencies. Like you said,
Speaker 1: certain materials will absorb certain frequencies better. There are things
Speaker 1: you might put in the back corners of the room
Speaker 1: that fill up a corner where two walls meet, called
Speaker 1: base traps, and they are these kind of tall they
Speaker 1: can be round or squared off um and they're made
Speaker 1: of kind of dense fibroglass material covered in a particular
Speaker 1: type of fabric, and those absorb some of those base
Speaker 1: frequencies so that it's not bouncing back at you and
Speaker 1: muddying up your mix. Then you might have a lot
Speaker 1: of times you'll see in a recording studio in the
Speaker 1: control room where you have your big mixing console, and
Speaker 1: then directly behind it can still wall. A lot of
Speaker 1: times there's a couch, and then above that couch there
Speaker 1: might be a weird looking wooden panel that has smaller
Speaker 1: arrays of these alternating little um tiles sort of like
Speaker 1: what I described we have in our room here, but
Speaker 1: smaller and and a little more dense, And those are
Speaker 1: designed to do different things to other frequencies, like the
Speaker 1: mid range or the high UM. Another thing that's really
Speaker 1: important in uh these control room settings is where the
Speaker 1: monitors speakers are placed. So what you might do is
Speaker 1: have an engineer UM that specializes in you know, do
Speaker 1: building out recording studios and tuning room as what they
Speaker 1: call it. Go in there and use a device that
Speaker 1: that measures the way frequencies bounce around the room, and
Speaker 1: you would generate what's called a test tone or uh
Speaker 1: some white noise even UM which is just like you know,
Speaker 1: static kind of sound. And then you can use this device,
Speaker 1: this handheld device, it might be cooked up to a computer.
Speaker 1: There's lots of different ones UM that will then take
Speaker 1: a print and analyze, Okay, this is what the sound's doing.
Speaker 1: This is where this room needs some work, where we
Speaker 1: need to move the monitors a little further away or
Speaker 1: a little closer to the wall, et cetera. So that's
Speaker 1: just a few of the ways that you can UM
Speaker 1: affect how the sound is actually heard within a room
Speaker 1: for different situations, whether you're recording, whether you're mixing and listening,
Speaker 1: it's all about that. There are different scenarios that require
Speaker 1: different treatments. Sure, and and anyone who's listened to you know,
Speaker 1: live albums versus studio albums, or for me, even just
Speaker 1: with classical music, Like if you ever listened to classical
Speaker 1: piece that was recorded in a big sound studio where
Speaker 1: you know, they got the whole orchestra in there, it
Speaker 1: can sound really amazing. But then if you hear the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing but it's played in a concert
Speaker 1: hall even without an audience, the effect is measurably different.
Speaker 1: You get that character you were talking about of the space,
Speaker 1: and different spaces have very different characters. Just as musicians
Speaker 1: may have a favorite type of amplifier that they like
Speaker 1: to use because of the tone that it helps, uh,
Speaker 1: the tones that accentuates versus the ones that it doesn't
Speaker 1: accentuate as much. Uh, you have the same sort of
Speaker 1: stuff with these these rooms. Now, no, let me ask
Speaker 1: you this. Let's say that some of our listeners out
Speaker 1: there are wanting to set up like a little home
Speaker 1: recording area. Maybe they want to do podcasting, maybe they
Speaker 1: want to record some acoustic music, nothing too complicated. What
Speaker 1: would be some general guidelines you would give somebody who
Speaker 1: wants to set up a space in their house meant
Speaker 1: for recording, Like, what were what would just be some
Speaker 1: general tips, not like the super like you're gonna go
Speaker 1: and remodel your home kind of approach, but but more
Speaker 1: simple ways that you can at least limit problems with
Speaker 1: sound from exterior sources or uh interference with the sound
Speaker 1: that you're creating in the room. What are some of
Speaker 1: your tips you would give. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways that you can um make spaces in
Speaker 1: your home work, and all depends on what kind of
Speaker 1: music you're trying to record. Um So, the choice of
Speaker 1: microphone would make a big difference. For example, so the
Speaker 1: microphones that we use in the podcast studio or what
Speaker 1: are called dynamic microphones, and then 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: that a condenser microphone gives a richer, bigger sound, but
Speaker 1: it also depends on how you use it. Um So,
Speaker 1: I might recommend for recording vocals trying to go with
Speaker 1: like get a really nice dynamic microphone, like one of
Speaker 1: these a Sure SM seven B microphones will use and
Speaker 1: there 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 Alex you know, and it's not either,
Speaker 1: but then just make some little clusters, you know, make
Speaker 1: 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 sounds. 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 Yetti 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 of
Speaker 1: marrying 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 clickick. But that
Speaker 1: condenser mike picked up everything. And it all comes back
Speaker 1: to what we talked about sound being sort of this
Speaker 1: organic ing that moves. I mean, you're never going to
Speaker 1: completely get rid of every bit of room noise unless
Speaker 1: you are going above and beyond. You're going to that
Speaker 1: crazy world's most silent room approach. But you can mitigate
Speaker 1: how much of the sounds you don't want are recorded
Speaker 1: based on where you set up the mic. You want
Speaker 1: to be as far away from any noisy sources as possible.
Speaker 1: You certainly wouldn't want to record a podcast right next
Speaker 1: to your fridge if you have an option, uh, if
Speaker 1: you have an internal room where it doesn't share an
Speaker 1: external wall, that would be a good choice. UM, Like
Speaker 1: like the place where my microphone is set up. I
Speaker 1: don't have a room that's enter. All of my rooms
Speaker 1: face outward one way or the other, so I don't
Speaker 1: have a room that I can that is that is
Speaker 1: isolated where I could record from. UH. So my mine
Speaker 1: is not ideal because I also live across the street
Speaker 1: from um railroad tracks and Marta tracks uh and a
Speaker 1: busy road. So I'm just fortunate that when my house
Speaker 1: 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: is the best way of referring to it. H A
Speaker 1: company is called SCLA Tronics. The product is a reflection
Speaker 1: filter ex portable vocal booth, and the idea is that
Speaker 1: the way it's pitched on on Sweetwater, which is the
Speaker 1: music equipment site that I'm looking at. UM, it is
Speaker 1: a portable acoustic treatment to reduce room ambience in untreated
Speaker 1: recording spaces. So it works pretty well as advertised. So
Speaker 1: it's this thing that kind of wraps around the back
Speaker 1: of the microphone connects to the mic stand. UM. So
Speaker 1: 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 doesn't have to be a vocal mic.
Speaker 1: But she is next to a window. So whenever the
Speaker 1: trash pick up comes, or if there's a motorcycle or
Speaker 1: something like that, you know, we've got to stop. So
Speaker 1: you deal with what you have. And I think she's
Speaker 1: a pretty good example of a successful home set up
Speaker 1: as well as as as is yours. Jonathan. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you if you listen back to um some of the
Speaker 1: episods that we recorded before we moved to Pont City Market,
Speaker 1: there was a brief period where we were set up
Speaker 1: in an office, uh like an actual It wasn't designed
Speaker 1: to be an audio recording studio, but was an office
Speaker 1: at the old office space and Buckhead that shared a
Speaker 1: a window facing Peach Tree or near Peach Tree. And
Speaker 1: 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. Yes, sirens we would stop
Speaker 1: for like we if we heard the siren 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 ambassador. I love Baton Bob,
Speaker 1: Absolutely love him. Great guy. Uh not fantastic to have
Speaker 1: to record a podcast. What you're hearing is in whistling
Speaker 1: up and down the street and talk about d I
Speaker 1: y setup. We had those windows covered over with I
Speaker 1: made these panels out of that pink panther foam insulation
Speaker 1: for construction, and I nailed them and stapled them to
Speaker 1: pieces of luan and then had them attached to the
Speaker 1: window to cover them over. And then on top of
Speaker 1: that we had this bright red um acoustic foam in
Speaker 1: sheets that we you know, staple on top of that
Speaker 1: and it still didn't block out. And we couldn't do
Speaker 1: anything permanent because that that wasn't something we were allowed
Speaker 1: to do in that space. It wasn't meant to be
Speaker 1: a recording studio, so we were just doing the best
Speaker 1: with what we had. Um but yeah, it was it was.
Speaker 1: It was difficult, so it can be a chance lenge.
Speaker 1: But the stuff is out there. It's not like like
Speaker 1: Noel is saying, it's not necessarily cheap. You can do
Speaker 1: some relatively inexpensive things to limit U sound issues, but
Speaker 1: obviously you get what you pay for the more that
Speaker 1: you are able to spend on that. But do your research.
Speaker 1: But the more you're able to spend on that, the
Speaker 1: better result you are going to get. In general, just
Speaker 1: make sure that whatever outlet you're going with is highly rated,
Speaker 1: you know, don't just hire a general contractor and and
Speaker 1: go with that, because that's probably not gonna give you
Speaker 1: the results you want. But obviously, you know, these are
Speaker 1: things that people in all sorts of of jobs and
Speaker 1: and positions, UH worry about. Whether it's professional recording artists,
Speaker 1: whether it's podcasters like us home podcasters you just want
Speaker 1: to record a demo. I mean, these are the sort
Speaker 1: of things you gotta think about. So thank you very
Speaker 1: much for writing in and requesting this episode, and Noel,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining me today. Usually you're on the
Speaker 1: other side of that window we were talking about. It's true,
Speaker 1: it's nice, too nice to pass through. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: great to be on this side once in a while
Speaker 1: and not stay so long that the room gets super stuffy. Uh. This,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that this room in particular,
Speaker 1: it does get a little warm. Now we we fixed
Speaker 1: the stuff you should know podcast room because it was
Speaker 1: used to get blistering lee hot, and now it gets
Speaker 1: very cool there, and now the opposite seems to happen here.
Speaker 1: But I'm afraid to ask for anything because I don't
Speaker 1: want to end up getting Gaye force winds into the
Speaker 1: podcast studio. But guys, if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes, you have anything you want to comment on
Speaker 1: for this episode, send me a message. The email address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle at both of those is text stuff H
Speaker 1: s W. And I will talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com