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Welcome.
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Hi.
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Hello everyone.
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Line up, man.
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Here we go.
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And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
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Thanks to Austrian Audio.
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Making passion heard.
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And Tribooth.
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Tribooth.
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Good.
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Reflection filters?
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Hmm.
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Let's discuss.
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Not so.
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I think the word the kids use nowadays
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is meh.
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Meh.
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Meh.
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Meh.
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Meh.
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Meh.
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Meh.
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Yeah.
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I can say this to begin with.
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They are not all the same.
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And a lot has to do with the
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materials that they're made out of.
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Some of them just put stuff that looks
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like good Oralex.
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And they are thin.
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And they might as well not be there
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at all.
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And they just are something to make your
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mic stand heavy and fall over.
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Right.
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Right.
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And cumbersome.
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And then, in my opinion, at best, they
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kind of blunt a few of the early
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reflections off the walls.
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They don't do anything about the overall room
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sound.
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Because they're pretty open from the top and
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bottom.
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But they can blunt some early reflections.
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But I think they work better for singing
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-type things and not really for voiceover.
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Because they're not going to make a live
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room sound dead.
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And they're not going to do anything close
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to what a Tribooth or a Portabooth do.
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In terms of getting the mic in an
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actual alcove that is fairly well protected on
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all, technically, four or five sides from other
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reflections.
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So, yeah, kind of cool.
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Sort of okay.
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I think often more marketing than use.
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And definitely more useful in a music context
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than a post-production voiceover context.
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Because the odd one out of all of
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those reflection filters that comes to mind is
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the Aston.
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Which is more like a bowl.
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Yeah, that one's pretty interesting.
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It looks like they did a lot more
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than just farting around when they came up
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with that design.
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It's very cool looking.
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It's very unique looking.
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It has a more or less bowl shape
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rather than the convex curve thing.
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Or is that concave?
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Concave, actually.
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Sorry, concave.
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Which also can be a problem.
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Like that concave shape can focus things.
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Yeah, it still has a tendency.
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It's either going to not focus anything and
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not do anything.
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Like, I'm looking on, what's the website, Sugarfluid.
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I'm not going to say the name of
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the company.
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Oh, yes.
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If you search for acoustic absorption and then
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sort by most popular, it kind of gives
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you an idea what people are buying, right?
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And the top two is the SE Electronics
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RF-X Portable Vocal Booth, $92.
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And then the next one is the Onstage
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Isolation Shield.
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Now, I've heard these both because my clients
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end up buying them because somebody at the
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company, some sales rep or a recommendation on
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the website says, buy this with your $1
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Neumann TL1.
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That's pretty great.
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Fuck it up.
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Yeah.
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Completely.
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And it usually makes it sound slightly worse.
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I mean, at best, it does absolutely nothing
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at all.
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Yes, that's what I'm saying.
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And in most cases, it sounds not quite
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as good as if you had just left
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it out.
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In the context of like a walk-in
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closet, I can't tell you more times than
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not, someone's set up in a walk-in
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closet, they've got clothes all around, blah, blah,
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blah, and then they have one of these
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behind the mic.
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And I'm like, what's that there for?
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And they're like, oh, well, I thought it
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wouldn't sound good without it.
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And I always make someone remove it and
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just do an A-B test.
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It opens the mic up.
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Let me hear it without.
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It opens it up.
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And in many cases, there was no change
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or it sounds better.
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I can't ever think of a situation where
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I was like, yeah, you know, it sounds
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a little bit better with it.
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Leave it up.
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It almost never does.
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And the really cheap ones that you get
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on Amazon and stuff, they're acoustically translucent.
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They don't do anything.
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They don't do crap.
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Exactly.
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It's like using a pop screen as an
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absorber.
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Well, at least your reflections don't pop.
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Yeah.
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It'd be a better pop filter than it
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would be an acoustic absorber.
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So, yeah, that's been my experience.
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I mean, SE kind of created this category,
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right?
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Didn't they invent the reflection filter with the
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X?
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I feel like they were one of the
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first ones to do it, yes.
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I think so.
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And it does seem like theirs is a
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little bit more dense on the back.
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There's more engineering in the design.
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Tell you that.
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Yeah.
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It's like multi-layered.
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It's like a multi-layered absorption, not just
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like we took some foam, like some packing
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foam, and stuck it behind the mic and
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called it.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, there's some YouTube channel videos
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you can watch, what makes SE reflection filters
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so unique, and you get to see a
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teardown of how they're built and the different
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materials, and some real thought, engineering, and time
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goes into the design.
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And for the context of what it was
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designed for, yeah, it probably works rather well.
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Like you're trying to put up a vocal
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mic or maybe a horn mic and control
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the pickup dispersion of that instrument a little
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bit more.
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I feel like that's really what it was
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designed for.
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It's really more about controlling splash than it
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is much else.
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Well, it reminds me a little bit of,
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do you remember in the 70s people used
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to take clear discs and put them around
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the mics on horn players in live situations?
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Yeah, but that's for a different reason.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, that's to prevent feedback, I think.
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No, no.
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My understanding is that's so that the horn
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player can literally hear themselves.
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Hear themselves.
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Oh.
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Yeah.
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It is literally a reflection, not filter.
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It's literally a reflector.
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It's a reflector, yeah.
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I mean, you guys can back me up
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on that.
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Guys listening on the show can defute that
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or put it in the comments.
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But I'm 99% sure that's what the
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intention of those little Plexiglas discs was.
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I always thought it was to prevent the
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mic from getting into the— From bleed?
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Yeah.
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No, the wedge.
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No, from the wedge monitors directly below it,
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I thought.
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It was trying to shield it from that,
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I thought.
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Could be.
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I have to find some pictures online of
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some old setups with those things and see
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how they're arranged.
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Like if the disc is, yeah, if the
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mic is at an angle and the disc
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is directly in front of the— Yeah, parallel
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to the wedge monitor.
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Yeah, to the face of the driver, then
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you're knocking out whatever that— That could be—
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Hmm, interesting.
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Yeah, that could be a two.
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I don't know.
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Something to look into.
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Have you guys seen those?
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I remember seeing it.
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But yeah, it is like the 70s, right?
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And I think part of the reason for
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that, too, is that also when you put
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a horn in front of a mic, you
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are just as much bouncing sound right out
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of that horn and right into the mic
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itself.
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You know what I mean?
00:07:41
Like you have a bell of a horn
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reflecting sound into the mic as much as
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the horn is blasting sound into the mic.
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But I never used one.
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No, I never did either.
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I think I did live sound once for
00:07:54
a band that had them.
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But all I did—like that band was organized
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enough that they had their own guy, so
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I just kind of set up and I
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was the in-house guy.
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Yeah.
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But I mean, just thinking logically, that's exactly
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what would actually happen is it would splash
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back your own sound to you so you
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could tell if you were in tune.
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I mean, now everybody's got in-ear monitors,
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and this monitoring on stages now is insane.
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But in the 60s and 70s and stuff,
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not so great.
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Pretty bad.
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And it could be hard to play in
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tune, especially with brass.
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Brass instruments are hard to keep in tune
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because it's all done by ear with your
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lips, whereas a reed instrument is different.
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You can affect the tuning of the reed
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instrument too, but brass instruments, the tuning is
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100% done by ear.
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All you.
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Yeah, it's all you vibrating your lips.
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It's all you.
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Yeah.
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You can literally pitch up and down just
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by squeezing your lips.
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It's harder.
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The reed instrument, you can pinch on the
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reed and get it to go up in
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pitch.
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Yeah, you can kind of force it out
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of tune.
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Yeah.
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But naturally, it blows in tune once it's
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tuned.
00:09:05
But brass is so much tougher.
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It's funny hearing you talking about wedges.
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How often do you go to a gig
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these days and see wedges?
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Very fucking rarely.
00:09:14
It's all in-ears.
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They're usually older people on stage.
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True.
00:09:18
Yeah, yeah.
00:09:18
I mean, guys like Billy Joel and Elton
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John.
00:09:20
Yeah, absolutely.
00:09:22
But yeah, so often it's just in-ears
00:09:23
now, isn't it?
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Or a DJ.
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DJs seem to like to have their ginormous
00:09:27
speakers on each side of their podium, but
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that's a difference.
00:09:30
Just being a wanker.
00:09:32
Yeah, exactly.
00:09:33
Mine's bigger than yours.
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You said it, not me, man.
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Yeah.
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Apologies to any DJs out there.
00:09:40
I bet the truth hurts.
00:09:41
But when you look at the old footage
00:09:43
of the 60s, like the Beatles playing or
00:09:45
any band playing live, they had a stack
00:09:48
of Vox amps behind them.
00:09:51
And that was it, though.
00:09:52
That was actually the amplifier for the concert
00:09:55
and them listening.
00:09:56
They would maybe have a side fill.
00:09:59
They'd maybe have a side fill for the
00:10:00
drummer.
00:10:01
Right.
00:10:01
Like a little bit every now and then
00:10:03
they'd have that.
00:10:05
But yeah, wedge monitors don't show up until
00:10:06
the later 60s and 70s.
00:10:09
Yeah.
00:10:09
I think.
00:10:10
The last time I did live sound, nobody
00:10:12
had IEMs. Everything was wedges.
00:10:15
So I mean, I've been out of it
00:10:17
for a long time.
00:10:19
I've never had to mix in-ears for
00:10:21
a...
00:10:21
My brother, though.
00:10:22
My brother does a theater gig.
00:10:25
He's full-time at this theater.
00:10:27
And it could be 20 people doing a
00:10:30
musical review with Labs or a tribute band
00:10:34
doing Rush.
00:10:36
It's all over the map, man.
00:10:38
It's all over the map what they do.
00:10:40
It's pretty amazing.
00:10:42
It's a lot.
00:10:43
There's a lot to manage.
00:10:44
And they'll have their apps to control their
00:10:45
monitor.
00:10:46
Well, it's like opera where they just hang
00:10:48
the mics from the ceiling.
00:10:49
Yes.
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I've done those on live stages, hung mics.
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Yeah.
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It's just a way.
00:10:56
It's a Band-Aid fix for bad acoustics.
00:10:59
Yeah.
00:11:01
Yeah, exactly.
00:11:02
And talk about bad acoustics.
00:11:03
Reflection filters, yes or no?
00:11:05
Probably for this voiceover, probably a no.
00:11:08
I say no.
00:11:09
Yeah.
00:11:10
I say get your room treated and...
00:11:12
Fix your room instead.
00:11:13
Yeah.
00:11:13
Yeah.
00:11:14
My thought is that the cost of one
00:11:16
that actually works, which is generally more than
00:11:19
$200 to $300, that money could be spent
00:11:23
on sound blankets, moving blankets.
00:11:27
And they don't travel well.
00:11:30
No.
00:11:30
These reflection filters are bulky and heavy.
00:11:33
And they don't travel well, so they're not
00:11:35
really...
00:11:36
I don't travel well either.
00:11:38
I don't know.
00:11:38
There is one portable acoustic treatment thing that
00:11:42
you can squish down like the Chaotica Eyeball.
00:11:45
But they have their own set of issues.
00:11:47
And I haven't been...
00:11:48
I have not yet been convinced that they
00:11:51
don't cause more problems than they fix acoustically.
00:11:55
But it blows me away sometimes.
00:11:57
I watch videos of musicians on YouTube and
00:11:59
they have one on their U87.
00:12:01
I'm like...
00:12:01
Oh, no.
00:12:03
Is that helping?
00:12:04
I bought one years ago because I was
00:12:06
curious as to whether they were any good
00:12:09
or not.
00:12:09
And I think it was more not.
00:12:12
I saw it when it was launched at
00:12:14
AES in New York.
00:12:15
I think Robert was at the same show.
00:12:18
I interviewed him and everything.
00:12:20
The reflection filter or which...
00:12:23
No, the eyeball.
00:12:24
Oh, the eyeball is...
00:12:26
I mean, you know, I think that thing
00:12:28
is 99% marketing.
00:12:30
And it's just too close to the mic.
00:12:32
It changes the sound way too much.
00:12:36
I think we did an episode with yours
00:12:39
very early on.
00:12:41
I think we did, actually, yeah.
00:12:42
I took it once on the road with
00:12:44
me.
00:12:44
And another thing about the eyeball is that
00:12:46
if you think about it, part of the
00:12:48
reflection filter is also if you're speaking into
00:12:50
the room, you don't want your voice to
00:12:53
get to the wall to bounce back.
00:12:55
And the chaotica is too small to stop
00:12:57
your voice from getting to the walls and
00:12:59
bouncing back.
00:13:00
From propagating, traveling, yeah.
00:13:02
Right, but the things like the port-a
00:13:04
-booth and the tri-booth, they're big enough
00:13:06
to do both, contain your voice and also
00:13:09
try to keep the wall reflections from coming
00:13:11
back in as well.
00:13:12
Yeah, exactly.
00:13:13
You're getting the full use of both sides
00:13:16
of the material with a blanket booth, tri
00:13:18
-booth, those kinds of things.
00:13:20
But these reflection filters, well, again, it depends
00:13:22
on the model, how it's designed, the layers
00:13:25
of materials, et cetera.
00:13:26
But mostly, they're not doing you a whole
00:13:29
lot of good on the reverse, you know,
00:13:32
the sound coming back at you from the
00:13:35
room.
00:13:35
I think actually still one of the best
00:13:37
things I used was I used to have
00:13:39
a tall absorber that was about five feet
00:13:43
tall on a hinge, so it was like
00:13:45
a gobo.
00:13:46
And I would just stand that up behind
00:13:48
the person in my room, which was pretty
00:13:51
live, and that would help so much.
00:13:53
Because a lot of it, it's the direction
00:13:55
of the mic that it's sensitive to.
00:13:57
And stuff would bounce off the wall, and
00:13:59
then you'd stop it from getting into the
00:14:02
front side of the mic.
00:14:03
The back side of the mic is generally
00:14:04
pretty, you know, cardioid instead a little bit.
00:14:07
So, yeah.
00:14:10
Maybe you can take the reflection filters that
00:14:12
are acoustically transparent and put them in front
00:14:14
of the mic, and...
00:14:16
A giant pop filter.
00:14:18
Let's not go there.
00:14:20
Giant pop filter, right.
00:14:22
Well, that was fun.
00:14:23
Is it over?
00:14:25
The Pro Audio Suite.
00:14:27
With thanks to Tri-booth.
00:14:28
And Austrian Audio.
00:14:30
Recorded using Source Connect.
00:14:31
Edited by Andrew Peters.
00:14:33
And mixed by Robbo.
00:14:34
Got your own audio issues?
00:14:36
Just ask Robbo dot com.
00:14:38
With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
00:14:40
Don't forget to subscribe to the show, and
00:14:42
join in the conversation on our Facebook group.
00:14:44
So leave a comment, suggest a topic, or
00:14:46
just say g'day.
00:14:47
Drop us a note at our website.
00:14:49
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