- Austrian Audio CC8 Supercardioid (and upcoming release)
- Quadratic, skyline, and Fresnel diffusers
- Tube traps and hybrid panels
- Auralex and GIK Acoustics products
- RPG diffusers
- Blackbird Studios Nashville
- Soundprint App (for measuring restaurant noise levels)
Austrian Audio — Makers of the OC818, OC18, and the brand-new CC8 Supercardioid. Making passion heard. 🌐 LINKS 🎧 www.proaudiosuite.com
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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
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Get started.
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Welcome.
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Hi.
00:00:02
Hi.
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Hi.
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Hello, everyone.
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To the Pro Audio Suite.
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These guys are professional.
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They're motivated.
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With Tech the VO stars.
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George Whitten, founder of Source Elements.
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Robert Marshall, international audio engineer.
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Darren Robbo Robertson, and Global Voice.
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Andrew Peters, thanks to Triboo.
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Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
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Source Elements, George the Tech Whitten, and Robbo
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and AP's international demos.
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To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
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.com.
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Line up, man!
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Here we go.
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Welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
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Thanks to Tribooth.
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Don't forget the code.
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T-R-I-P-A-P to 100.
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That will get you $200 off your Tribooth.
00:00:41
And Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
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Oid?
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Oid.
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Oid.
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Making passion oid.
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Oid.
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Looking forward to their new CC8 coming soon,
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I think.
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The super cardioid version.
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Oh, I'm going to get to play with
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one very soon.
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You will be, because are you going to
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AES, or?
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Yeah.
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Ah, nice.
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I forgot completely, or I was just off
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the radar of the fact that they were
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doing it in Long Beach this year.
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Yeah.
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Which is an hour drive.
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So you'll be there.
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No problem.
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Yeah, yeah.
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No problem.
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And I've already been in contact with them,
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and we might get a little goodie bag,
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so fingers crossed.
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Oh, I do love a goodie bag.
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Nice.
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Fingers crossed.
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Now, you're in a friend of yours' studio
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as we speak, and obviously no one can
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see this because this is audio, but I
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can see behind you with this really cool
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room with a beautiful diffuser in the background.
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So how does that work in that room?
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I mean, obviously diffusers are reliant on the
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size of the space if they're going to
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work properly.
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Yeah, I don't remember if I got to
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hear the room much before the diffuser went
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up.
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So Rick, we're in a shed.
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It's a garden shed, a very highly well
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-insulated garden shed.
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And it's a decent size.
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I'd say it's two and a half, three
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by three and a half, four meters.
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Might be not that big, but decent size.
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And so Rick had an idea of what
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he wanted his studio to sound like from
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recording a fair amount of music and doing
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animation at commercial studios.
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So he didn't want it to be just
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another dead booth.
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So when it was all in, the acoustics
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were up, I guess he was going, yeah,
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it doesn't really have that sound I was
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going for.
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And apparently he hadn't put in the last
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element, which is the diffuser panel.
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And so behind me is a really nicely
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fabricated wood stained.
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I don't know what it is, but it's
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a nice stained wood quality looking panel.
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And it lays over top an acoustic absorber
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layer.
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So there's a diffuser over top of an
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absorber.
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So it's a hybrid.
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And it's interesting because it just livens up
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the room just a tad more than it
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would be otherwise.
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And again, I wish I had an opportunity
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to do some A-B tests, record before
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after and really listen to the room and
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hear what it does.
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But my understanding of diffusion, very non-scientific,
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is it makes a room sound a little
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larger without making it sound too lively or
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too reverberant.
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I don't know, what do you know about
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it?
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It scatters the sound.
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So a quadratic diffuser does it in one
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way.
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But in general, the idea is that sound
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hits it and doesn't bounce back in a
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predictable, like creating a node or a reflection.
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It hits it and scatters.
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And therefore you get some of the life
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of having reflective surface, but you don't get
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the downside, which is a specific frequency that's
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being amplified or being reinforced by a reflection
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that bounces repeatedly back and forth.
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It scatters sound.
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And in front of me is a big
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piece of glass.
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There's a large glass sliding patio door.
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So you're going to get some splash off
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of that glass.
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So wherever that bounces off that, it will
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just hit this diffuser and then scatter.
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And it works really nicely.
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I'm speaking into a 416 at the moment.
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There's a U87 just to my left.
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And this is a room where you can
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use nice mics and they will sound nice,
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which is awesome.
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It doesn't scatter everything though, does it?
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Just going back on what you're saying.
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Because it's going to absorb the low end
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and only diffuse the mids and highs.
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Would that be right?
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It depends on how big the diffuser is.
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Or how deep the diffuser is.
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So traditional quadratic diffusers, which I think the
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thing that's behind me maybe is akin to
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a quadratic diffuser.
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I guess not really.
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It doesn't look like it so much.
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Carl put a similar diffuser at another country.
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And those are pretty shallow slats.
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What are they, like maybe an inch or
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two thick?
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A quadratic diffuser, some of them are like
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six inches deep.
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And they work on a different principle.
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The idea of a quadratic diffuser is sound
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goes into one of them and bounces out.
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And sound goes to the other one and
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bounces out.
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But they bounce out at a different time.
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And then they hit each other on the
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bounce and scatter.
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There's so many kinds of diffusers.
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If you guys are curious, and if you're
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listening, you might be.
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Definitely look up acoustic diffusers and look at
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how they're made and the many different varieties
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and ways they're made.
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The most creative thing in a studio acoustically
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seems to be in diffusion.
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For sure.
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The simplest one is just a convex reflective
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surface.
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Right, a curve that points out toward you.
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Out.
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Yeah, exactly.
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You don't want pointing in.
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They'll be like the exact opposite.
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Concave is bad.
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Convex is good.
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So here's a question that I've always wondered
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about diffusers.
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Would you only diffuse behind you?
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Would you ever have a reason where you
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would diffuse on side walls or front wall?
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Would you only diffuse what's coming from behind
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you?
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You would diffuse wherever sound is going to
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hit that you don't want it to reflect
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back in a predictable way.
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But if you're spraying it out everywhere, aren't
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you spraying it out back into the mic?
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It loses energy when it sprays out.
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It sprays out and it has its energy
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dispersed, and it won't hit the microphone, especially
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at a specific frequency at the same point.
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Right.
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And this room has a very specific purpose,
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voiceover.
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So you wouldn't mix in this room.
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I mean, you could, but you probably wouldn't
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want to because it's not symmetrical.
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So on the right side of me, the
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entire wall is dead.
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It's one massive absorber.
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And on my left, there's two windows on
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the wall and a single panel absorber between
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them to add dampen a little bit.
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But the room isn't acoustically symmetrical.
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How deep is that absorption?
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Is it like an inch deep or two
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inches deep?
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Do you know how deep that stuff is?
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All the wall absorbers that I can see
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look like to be roughly two inches thick.
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Yeah, so they're big.
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They're sucking up the bass.
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So that diffuser behind you is also sitting
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two inches off the wall.
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Yep, it's going to have the same.
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Yeah, so the panel behind me is about
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two inches thick, and then the diffuser, which
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is made of wood, which is roughly two
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inches deep, or maybe one and three quarter,
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is proud of that.
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It's over top of the panel.
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And then it lets the sound in through
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the slats.
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The thinner the diffuser is, the less the
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lower frequency it can control.
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Correct.
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Generally.
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Yeah, it diffuses higher.
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Unless it's a Fresnel-style diffuser, which is
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a whole other crazy acoustical...
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I don't even know what a Fresnel...
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What's a Fresnel-style diffuser?
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Do you know what a Fresnel lens looks
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like?
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No.
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It's spelled Fresnel.
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Literally, it's Fresnel, but it's pronounced Fresnel.
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A Fresnel lens is the kind you can
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see on a lighthouse, where there's a bright
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light in the middle, and then you'll see
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this lens that looks like concentric circles.
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That's a Fresnel lens.
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Sometimes, you know those flexible book magnifiers you
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can get?
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It's like a bookmark?
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Those are Fresnel lenses.
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They're just thin, but they still magnify.
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They do that acoustically, as well as with
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light.
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Somebody came up with a Fresnel-style diffuser
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that can control much lower frequencies than its
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actual depth would imply.
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It's really crazy stuff.
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This reminds me of someone who was doing
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a studio, and he was saying, oh, I've
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got stucco walls, basically, so they're all diffused.
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And someone who knew about acoustics was like,
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yeah, but no.
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You are diffusing...
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You know, you think about little stucco bumps,
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and he's like, you are diffusing 20
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hertz.
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You are not diffusing...
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Yeah, it's only controlling very high frequencies.
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Exactly.
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It's still better than a completely mirror-finished
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flat surface, though.
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True, yeah, and the very high frequencies...
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It's still scattering.
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It's interesting with the studio.
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I can see why it's behind him, because
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you've probably got computer monitors in front of
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you.
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Yeah.
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So you've got quite a few reflective surfaces
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immediately in front.
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Just one monitor, but again, that large glass
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door is probably two meters behind the mic.
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It's also opposite his speaker, which in a
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traditional studio, especially in a stereo context, like
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surround sound messes this up a bit, but
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with stereo, the diffuser was always in the
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back of the room.
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And so, you know, the speakers would hit.
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Now, I think I've heard, anecdotally, I mean,
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I would say this happened at some point,
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but God knows when it happened and how
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long ago and who it was, but somewhere
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in the deep, dark cave of my brain,
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I remember working with a voice actor with
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a traditional smaller booth, maybe four by six
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range, somewhere in there, maybe slightly larger.
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And he had, if not on one sidewall,
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maybe both sidewalls.
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Again, can't remember the details here, sorry, but
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he was using diffuser panels on each side
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or on one side.
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And then that really made the U87 sound
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much sweeter.
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It really sounded nice in that case.
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But I wish I had a database of
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every booth I've heard and how it's laid
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out.
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But I do recall that that was pleasing.
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It was kind of nice.
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Scientifically, it's hard to justify.
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I can't really back this up, but essentially
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it makes a small booth sound a little
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bit bigger.
00:10:55
Are you familiar with the tube traps?
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Yeah, I've not really used them much, but
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yeah.
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One side is a diffuser and the other
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side is an absorber.
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Like it's a semicircle, like a hemisphere?
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It's a full circle.
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Okay.
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And half of it, one semicircle is absorption
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and the other semicircle is diffusion.
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So you just sort of turn them around
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to get the effect that you want?
00:11:12
You turn it the way you want.
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Yeah, and I think the secret weapon in
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those things is the diffuser.
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When you get the diffuser around a mic,
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it really neutralizes things, but doesn't kill it
00:11:24
in that boxy, tubey way.
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I've seen portable control rooms where people set
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up a control room and it's just tube
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traps.
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They make this huge array of them around
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and it's pretty impressive.
00:11:38
I've never heard one, but I've been in
00:11:41
a handful of studios that have tube traps
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or something akin.
00:11:45
They may not be the real thing.
00:11:47
I know I've seen fully carpeted ones that
00:11:50
are carpeted all the way around.
00:11:52
They're carpeted all around, but inside the carpeting,
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yeah, inside the carpeting is different surfaces or
00:11:58
things within.
00:11:59
I might be able to get my hands
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on a few of those.
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I should probably...
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They are expensive and they are worth it.
00:12:04
Yeah, because one of the agencies in L
00:12:08
.A. closed up their doors and they had
00:12:10
those.
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Yeah, man, grab them.
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I'll give you my address.
00:12:15
If they're not in a dumpster or in
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somebody else's house by now, I'll see if
00:12:19
I can get my hands on them.
00:12:20
Those things are actually quite expensive, and the
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thing about them is that you've got to
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have a booth with space because they sit
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on a stand and they just take up
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a lot of space.
00:12:30
But if you have the space for them,
00:12:31
they can really make a nice neutral sound.
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They just have an interesting thing about them.
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That's just the irony of studio booths.
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The smaller the volume of the room around
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you, the more effort you really have to
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put in to control the resonances or the
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room modes, the frequencies at ping-pong, left,
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right, up, down, front, back.
00:12:55
And so then that booth has to be
00:12:56
even smaller because you have to shrink it.
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You have to add all this absorption, sometimes
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four or even six inches deep.
00:13:04
And so it gets even smaller.
00:13:07
I heard a Chaotica is going to make
00:13:08
the Chaotica iBooth.
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Oh, no.
00:13:13
Right.
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Looking forward to that one.
00:13:15
I've actually got a couple of Auralex panels
00:13:18
on stands, and one side is Auralex foam,
00:13:21
and on the other side is the diffuser.
00:13:24
Same idea.
00:13:25
Yeah, they give you both treatments, and then
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you spin it around to what you want.
00:13:29
Yeah.
00:13:30
It's just one of those rainy day projects.
00:13:33
I would love to have panels that are
00:13:34
double-sided, and I could just flip them
00:13:36
around and put them up and listen to
00:13:38
how they react.
00:13:39
I have some random diffusion things that were
00:13:41
made by Studio Bricks that they shipped as
00:13:45
a demo to me.
00:13:47
I have...
00:13:48
What else do I have?
00:13:50
I feel like I have a couple different
00:13:51
things, but they're all...
00:13:53
I don't know what they do.
00:13:55
Because some of the diffusion panels that you
00:13:56
see are literally nothing more than a sheet
00:13:59
of thin veneer plywood with holes in it.
00:14:03
Well, those are a little bit more like
00:14:05
what you have behind you, where G-Acoustics
00:14:08
does that, an absorber with some holes.
00:14:10
G-Acoustics, right.
00:14:11
Yeah, absorber.
00:14:12
And that's just more like a tunable, not
00:14:14
completely dead thing.
00:14:15
I've got...
00:14:16
Yeah.
00:14:16
I've got RPGs in the back of my
00:14:19
studio, which I lucked into when a studio
00:14:21
got torn down.
00:14:22
Are they the ones that look like blocks
00:14:25
of wood, or that's maybe a skyline?
00:14:27
That's something different, right?
00:14:28
No, the skyline's different from that.
00:14:29
So you have the big squares, which are
00:14:31
in the back of our studio downtown, which
00:14:34
those are really popular and they look good.
00:14:36
They're just like equal squares of different depths.
00:14:38
And that's kind of like a pseudo-quadratic
00:14:40
one.
00:14:41
And then you have...
00:14:42
It might be quadratic, actually.
00:14:44
I shouldn't say pseudo.
00:14:45
And then your classic RPG from the 80s,
00:14:48
which are the big, long slats, that some
00:14:50
of them are like 8 inches deep and
00:14:52
others are 3 inches deep, and they're usually
00:14:55
about...
00:14:56
Are they long, vertical?
00:14:56
They're long and vertical.
00:14:57
They can either go up and down or
00:14:59
sideways, depending on how you want to put
00:15:00
them.
00:15:00
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:01
So I lucked into those.
00:15:02
And then the skylines just look like just
00:15:05
a bunch of like 3-inch sort of
00:15:09
square pieces of wood, and they're just all
00:15:12
different heights.
00:15:13
And it's supposedly not random.
00:15:15
There's a formula to it.
00:15:16
I guess so.
00:15:16
Yeah, the skyline, the one that I have,
00:15:18
is just plastic.
00:15:21
Yeah.
00:15:21
But I think Blackbird Studios is probably the
00:15:23
biggest implementation of skyline type.
00:15:25
Oh, yeah.
00:15:26
Look up a picture of Blackbird Studios.
00:15:29
Isn't it like all black, too?
00:15:30
No, I think it's wood, but it looks
00:15:32
like an Iron Maiden kind of like...
00:15:34
Yeah.
00:15:35
It's crazy looking.
00:15:37
What, Chinese and leather?
00:15:38
Yeah, no, just like...
00:15:39
It's like if an Iron Maiden was a
00:15:41
diffuser and it was going to close in
00:15:43
on you and impale you, it's just like
00:15:44
you walk into this room, you're like, what
00:15:46
happens to me?
00:15:48
Mm-hmm.
00:15:48
Those diffusers you were talking about with the
00:15:50
plywood with the holes drilled in it, George,
00:15:54
over foam, they've moved now, but Foxtel, when
00:15:59
I used to go and freelance there, they
00:16:00
had that, but that was...
00:16:02
It was hanging from the ceiling.
00:16:03
They had used it as cloud.
00:16:05
And I always wondered why, why you would
00:16:07
diffuse up there.
00:16:10
It wasn't particularly a high ceiling or anything
00:16:13
like that.
00:16:14
So I always wondered what it was about
00:16:16
the room that they thought a diffuser as
00:16:18
opposed to sort of just a regular cloud.
00:16:22
That's a good question.
00:16:23
I don't know.
00:16:24
I know the very first studio I did
00:16:26
for SAG Foundation, the Donald Fontaine Lab version
00:16:30
one, it was sort of a grid of
00:16:32
two-by-two absorbers and two-by-two
00:16:35
diffusers.
00:16:36
It was an RLX thing.
00:16:37
They made these plastic molded, injection molded diffusers.
00:16:43
But yeah, I didn't know why, right?
00:16:46
Because at that time, I didn't know that
00:16:48
much about acoustic design.
00:16:49
And so I was just going with what
00:16:50
they did.
00:16:51
It turned out that the room was much
00:16:52
too lively and resonant for voiceover.
00:16:55
It might've been okay for music, but it
00:16:56
was not dead enough.
00:16:58
So we had to do a lot of
00:16:59
additional treatment.
00:17:02
But yeah, I don't know what the ceiling...
00:17:04
It's funny.
00:17:05
Do you guys have Chipotle restaurants in Australia?
00:17:10
They have excellent acoustic treatment.
00:17:12
They have some crazy stuff in Chipotle.
00:17:14
Yeah.
00:17:15
A lot of them you'll walk in.
00:17:16
Chipotle is a chain of fast burritos.
00:17:19
Okay.
00:17:20
I'll take this burrito with these toppings.
00:17:22
I wish we did have it here.
00:17:23
That sounds good.
00:17:23
Really fast.
00:17:24
It's good.
00:17:25
Fast and it's good, decent quality and not
00:17:27
expensive.
00:17:29
And so you walk in and you'll be
00:17:30
waiting in line on one side of the
00:17:32
restaurant.
00:17:33
And the entire wall on your left is
00:17:35
a giant plywood panel or panels, all drilled
00:17:38
with different size holes from really small to
00:17:42
maybe, I don't know, several centimeters.
00:17:47
And it's just this huge grid work of
00:17:49
holes.
00:17:50
And I remember the first time I saw
00:17:51
it, I was like, holy cow, in a
00:17:53
fast food restaurant.
00:17:54
And I did a little research and it
00:17:56
turned out, yeah, when they first started these
00:17:57
restaurants, they partnered with this architectural firm and
00:18:00
somebody was an acoustics enthusiast, something.
00:18:05
I wish I don't have the detail on
00:18:06
that.
00:18:07
That's another Google thing, but that's what they
00:18:10
did.
00:18:10
And not only that, they did this weird
00:18:12
thing where they put Klipsch three-way speakers
00:18:15
in a soffit above the, essentially where you
00:18:19
order, like on the wall above that.
00:18:21
There was two Klipsch speakers, Klipsch horn with
00:18:25
the high horn and the mid horn and
00:18:26
the bass.
00:18:27
And they're soffit mounted.
00:18:29
So they're just like holes in the plywood.
00:18:31
You just see the openings.
00:18:33
And if you're an audio nerd, you know
00:18:35
what that is.
00:18:36
They're like, those are Klipsch speakers.
00:18:38
It's the funniest thing.
00:18:39
And they put them in, I don't think
00:18:40
they're in every restaurant now, but the first
00:18:42
so many restaurants they built, all of them
00:18:44
have those speakers.
00:18:45
And they have a lot of curved surfaces
00:18:47
in there too.
00:18:48
There's a lot of curvy walls and things
00:18:50
that they do.
00:18:51
I don't know what you find in Melbourne,
00:18:53
AP, with the cafe culture down there, but
00:18:54
I'm finding more and more here, cafes, especially
00:18:58
sort of, let's call them the high-end
00:19:00
ones, are more and more investing in acoustic
00:19:04
treatment.
00:19:04
And I'm kind of, I'm no expert, but
00:19:06
I'm kind of wondering, is that to encourage
00:19:09
people to sit longer and stay longer, where
00:19:11
you can actually sit and have a conversation
00:19:13
and not have other conversations drowning you out?
00:19:16
I think it's nice that some of these
00:19:18
places are taking that into consideration.
00:19:20
Yeah, well, I mean, my mate Simon, I
00:19:24
don't think we ever had him on the
00:19:26
show, but he's been a hospitality casino designer,
00:19:30
that kind of stuff.
00:19:31
So he does a lot of restaurants, casinos,
00:19:33
and bits and bobs.
00:19:34
He's actually living in Saudi Arabia as we
00:19:36
speak on this massive project.
00:19:38
But that's one of his things.
00:19:41
It was always about acoustic treatment, because there's
00:19:44
nothing worse than sitting in somewhere, like an
00:19:46
echo chamber, trying to have a meal and
00:19:49
have a discussion with someone.
00:19:50
You can't, like, basically you can't hear what
00:19:52
they're saying.
00:19:52
Sorry, what's that?
00:19:53
It makes me crazy.
00:19:54
What was that?
00:19:54
Sorry.
00:19:56
It's like a trend in LA.
00:19:58
Like, let's see who can make the loudest
00:19:59
restaurant.
00:20:00
I'm like, what the hell's going on here?
00:20:02
But I know it's just a turnover.
00:20:04
I know they just want to turn people
00:20:06
over.
00:20:06
They don't want them comfortable.
00:20:08
They literally want you to be uncomfortable.
00:20:12
Okay, I get it for a quick turnover
00:20:14
place, but some of these places in LA
00:20:16
are so expensive.
00:20:18
And it's not cheap food by any means,
00:20:21
like a $7 croissant, you know?
00:20:22
And you're like, I can't even talk to
00:20:25
the waiter.
00:20:25
It's so loud in here.
00:20:27
I think restaurants overlook acoustics all the time.
00:20:32
And it's the most annoying thing.
00:20:34
Because they can.
00:20:35
They get away with it.
00:20:36
I mean, I wish I knew what was
00:20:36
in on these meetings, but I'm sure the
00:20:38
architect's like, well, we can make this sound
00:20:40
nice, and it'll be an extra X.
00:20:42
And they're like, oh, no.
00:20:43
Like, sound, who cares?
00:20:44
It's just like a film.
00:20:46
The last thing they think about is sound.
00:20:48
Everything, the last thing they think about is
00:20:49
sound.
00:20:50
Yeah, it is one of my pet peeves.
00:20:56
And it's one of those – I would
00:20:58
love to start a small firm of just
00:21:00
treating small restaurants.
00:21:02
Because the big ones with the budgets will
00:21:04
do what they do, and they've got firms
00:21:06
involved.
00:21:06
But the small to medium-op-op, smaller
00:21:09
businesses, or the ones that are run by
00:21:10
restaurant groups and stuff, if they only knew
00:21:13
better, and if they knew it didn't have
00:21:14
to be 100 grand or 500 grand.
00:21:16
Well, George, it's like that Thai restaurant that
00:21:18
you took me to.
00:21:19
And I was like, I looked up at
00:21:20
the ceiling, and there was a bunch of
00:21:21
floating clouds.
00:21:21
I was like, holy cow.
00:21:24
Somebody probably was in there.
00:21:25
It was probably a musician, as my guess,
00:21:28
eating in this restaurant.
00:21:29
And they were like, dude, you've got to
00:21:30
do something.
00:21:31
Because it had a low, flat ceiling, and
00:21:34
it was probably atrocious.
00:21:35
And they had the tables packed in there.
00:21:37
Like, people were so close to each other.
00:21:39
Yeah, it was so loud.
00:21:40
So loud.
00:21:41
Even with the panels, it was loud.
00:21:44
But yeah, it's – oh, my gosh.
00:21:47
If people realized it didn't have to cost
00:21:49
a fortune, you know, they would probably do
00:21:51
it more.
00:21:52
And it's just something – I just walked
00:21:54
down two blocks in Santa Monica on Wilshire
00:21:57
Boulevard and just popped in and out of
00:21:59
restaurants.
00:22:00
And I was just appalled, you know, at
00:22:02
all these new businesses, just how there was
00:22:04
no attention at all.
00:22:05
Especially these days where more and more it's
00:22:06
about cement floors, and they put in even
00:22:09
more hard surfaces everywhere.
00:22:12
Yeah.
00:22:13
I was in a lapin quatidien.
00:22:16
Is that how they say it?
00:22:16
I don't know.
00:22:17
It's a French chain of bakeries.
00:22:20
And again, fancy.
00:22:21
You know, that's the brand.
00:22:22
It's kind of upper-crusty.
00:22:24
It's not Starbucks.
00:22:26
And, you know, as soon as they run
00:22:28
the espresso machine or run the frothing of
00:22:32
the milk, the other corner of the place,
00:22:35
and you're just like, wait, what did you
00:22:37
say?
00:22:38
It was, like, insane.
00:22:40
I literally left a review on Yelp.
00:22:42
And I was like, that might be the
00:22:45
only way you can get these restaurants to
00:22:48
do anything, is just leave a lot of
00:22:49
negative reviews saying, I can't come in here
00:22:53
and have a conversation with my partner over
00:22:56
anything in this place.
00:22:57
I just want to leave.
00:22:58
It's interesting, because a lot of the European
00:23:00
restaurants are so busy, as in, I'm talking
00:23:03
about people coming in and out, but I'm
00:23:05
talking about the actual furniture and things on
00:23:08
walls and bars and bottles and all sorts
00:23:12
of stuff.
00:23:13
But it actually does work, once again, the
00:23:15
diffuser concept, that you can sit there quietly
00:23:18
in a really busy restaurant and have a
00:23:20
conversation.
00:23:21
We had one down the road from here,
00:23:22
actually, some French dude's restaurant.
00:23:26
And you walk in there, it actually does
00:23:27
feel like you're in a back street in
00:23:29
Paris or something.
00:23:31
But there's so much stuff around that it's
00:23:33
perfect for sitting there and having a meal.
00:23:35
I always tell people, the more cluttered your
00:23:37
room, the better.
00:23:38
Clutter is your friend.
00:23:39
Yeah, clutter.
00:23:39
The clutter diffuser.
00:23:43
I patent the clutter diffuser.
00:23:47
Yeah, exactly.
00:23:48
I wish there was more of that care
00:23:50
in restaurant design, for sure.
00:23:52
It's just, I know restaurant business is extremely
00:23:54
difficult.
00:23:55
And I'm sure everywhere it is, but especially
00:23:57
here.
00:23:58
So I know that's a part of it,
00:24:00
but I wish it was cared for more.
00:24:02
There actually is an app, though.
00:24:04
There actually, believe it or not, is an
00:24:05
app you can install called, and I will
00:24:08
find it, Soundprint, I believe it is.
00:24:11
Let me see if it's in my audio
00:24:13
folder.
00:24:15
And it is literally all about reviewing restaurant
00:24:19
volume levels.
00:24:21
Oh, wow.
00:24:22
God, is that popular?
00:24:23
That's pretty niche.
00:24:24
Yeah, no, it's called Soundprint.
00:24:26
Here it is.
00:24:27
See if it still works.
00:24:28
You know, these businesses just vaporize.
00:24:30
You go into a restaurant, you open the
00:24:33
app on your phone, and you just hit
00:24:35
start, and it will monitor the room for
00:24:39
15 seconds.
00:24:40
And then you can immediately report the restaurant
00:24:43
as a noise violator, or just leave a
00:24:47
review, and just say, you know, this was
00:24:49
moderate, this was okay, or this was like
00:24:52
severe noise levels.
00:24:54
And then there's a huge database in here
00:24:55
of restaurants, and some of them are like
00:24:57
repeat offenders.
00:24:59
You know, they're just very loud category, you
00:25:02
know.
00:25:03
And, you know, it just depends on the
00:25:05
stature of the restaurant.
00:25:05
There's a place called Porto's, which is a
00:25:07
super popular Cuban restaurant bakery, and it is
00:25:11
just louder than sin in there.
00:25:13
But there's also a line like 40 people
00:25:15
long trying to get their stuff, because it's
00:25:17
just so popular.
00:25:19
And they just want you to leave, clearly.
00:25:22
Please take your phone and get out of
00:25:24
here.
00:25:24
Yeah, we want the table turned over.
00:25:26
Yeah, exactly.
00:25:27
They should just put everything on a rotating
00:25:28
thing, and then like an LED room, like
00:25:31
live end, dead end.
00:25:32
And if you stay there too long, then
00:25:35
you end up in the live end where
00:25:36
you can't have a conversation.
00:25:39
Yeah, that's true.
00:25:40
It's like, no, that's horrible.
00:25:42
But another idea of a diffuser, if you
00:25:44
think about it, an angled wall in a
00:25:48
strange sense is a diffuser.
00:25:49
Right, because it's no longer allowing a sound
00:25:52
wave to propagate back and forth in an
00:25:55
axial way or longitudinal way, just like it
00:25:58
meets.
00:25:58
It has many frequencies that it bounces, and
00:26:01
each one at a different point.
00:26:03
And yeah, it's kind of a diffuser.
00:26:04
This is why a lot of people, when
00:26:06
they're talking about building a booth, you'll hear
00:26:08
there's always somebody in the forum, always somebody
00:26:12
who's like, make sure there's no parallel walls.
00:26:14
And that's not wrong, but the reason why
00:26:17
I don't design rooms that way, generally, is
00:26:20
mathematically, they're extremely unpredictable.
00:26:24
So then it ends up just a lot
00:26:26
of experimenting, trying to get it to sound
00:26:28
good and just get rid of weird frequencies.
00:26:31
Whereas if it's just a square, not a
00:26:33
square, squares aren't really good, actually.
00:26:35
Rectangles, though, like a shoebox size, is a
00:26:38
lot easier to deal with.
00:26:39
It's very predictable, and we understand how to
00:26:42
treat them.
00:26:42
It's very easy to work with.
00:26:44
So the more times you add more angles,
00:26:47
the weirder it gets.
00:26:48
If you add another wall and make it
00:26:50
a pentagon, far more difficult and hard to
00:26:52
model.
00:26:53
That's funny, because I was always taught some
00:26:57
angles, if they're too small, then they're insignificant.
00:27:00
But I think it was at least an
00:27:01
11-degree angle.
00:27:04
In my studio, I don't know how scientific
00:27:07
it was, but I even angled the vaulted
00:27:10
ceiling.
00:27:12
So I just flayed the walls out by
00:27:15
10 degrees or 11 degrees, whatever that minimum
00:27:18
was, and then the ceiling was angled.
00:27:20
I got one single parallel surface between the
00:27:24
door and a smaller area opposite it, because
00:27:26
I couldn't avoid that.
00:27:28
And I just piled on absorption on that
00:27:30
opposite wall.
00:27:30
How did it work?
00:27:32
It worked out great.
00:27:34
It works really well for drums, and it's
00:27:37
bright and live, but not boinky and bouncy.
00:27:43
It doesn't go...
00:27:44
Is that a technical word?
00:27:46
Boinky?
00:27:46
Yes.
00:27:47
You know how you go to a stairwell
00:27:49
and you clap your hands and you hear...
00:27:52
So it doesn't do that.
00:27:55
I don't know that it's...
00:27:58
Sometimes it's just like, just mess it up
00:28:01
to be interesting.
00:28:01
Just mess it up to make it not
00:28:04
predictable.
00:28:05
Well, that's the thing.
00:28:05
That's why some studios in the world are
00:28:08
so renowned.
00:28:09
It doesn't mean that they had some guy
00:28:11
plug in everything into formulas and exhaustively compute
00:28:15
out the room.
00:28:16
Sometimes it's just luck.
00:28:18
It's just the way the room was designed,
00:28:20
the dimensions of the room.
00:28:23
What is it?
00:28:23
Sun Records in Memphis?
00:28:26
Right, where they have the X where Elvis
00:28:28
would stand and they have the spots where
00:28:30
they would all stand.
00:28:31
Oh, yeah.
00:28:32
And it's just like, what mattered was it
00:28:35
sounded really good when he stood here and
00:28:37
the mic was here and that's all they
00:28:39
know.
00:28:39
Right, exactly.
00:28:40
Nobody's measuring it out.
00:28:41
They're just like, they got lucky.
00:28:43
Or they stumbled on it or they experimented,
00:28:45
but that's how a lot of rooms were
00:28:48
back then.
00:28:49
Now, I mean, now there's a lot more
00:28:50
acoustician science that goes into these rooms than
00:28:53
then.
00:28:54
Yeah, there's a lot of fun luck that
00:28:57
goes into it.
00:28:58
If you have the time and the budget
00:29:00
to experiment and the flexibility, it's really, really
00:29:03
cool.
00:29:03
Or just go for the clutter diffuser, which
00:29:05
we've just patented.
00:29:08
I'm down with that.
00:29:10
Well, that was fun.
00:29:11
Is it over?
00:29:24
And tech support from George the Tech Whittam.