I love music, but I hate noise. When I was younger, my Dad would say that I couldn’t tell the difference, but I chalk that up to a generational perspective issue. All kinds of noise bugs me, from loud mufflers on cars to those annoying power leaf blowers. Our condo has an “open floor plan,” which looks nice, but doesn’t insulate the loud clangs and bangs of pots and dishes in the kitchen from anyone in our living space. It drives me nuts.
When I am in a restaurant — almost any restaurant, these days — I have significant difficulty in following a conversation. I just can’t separate what people are saying from all the noise around us. I’ve gone to an audiologist, and they tell me that I’m not bad enough yet to benefit from hearing aids. I can’t wait to find out what my hearing is like when I do need them.
Noise effects us in many detrimental ways. It can harm our hearing, of course, but it can also create anxiety and fatigue. Studies have shown that it can even lead to higher levels of inflammation in our bodies, gastrointestinal distress, sleep disorders, and cardiovascular disease. Noise may even effect our DNA over time. Health impacts have been noted in a variety of urban environments.
I have fooled around with making voiceover recordings for a few years, and treating the room where recordings are made is not a minor endeavor. Hard flat surfaces reflect sound waves which can then be heard on recordings. Soft materials or irregularly shaped items can help to absorb sound or deflect it from getting back to the microphone, but good acoustic panels can be expensive. There are portable sound booths that can be purchased, but they’re not cheap either. A booth of good quality can cost $5,000 or more. Treating a large space like a restaurant for sound reduction would cost tens of thousands of dollars, which is why most places don’t do it.
Sound is measured in decibels (dB), which is a way of describing how loud a particular sound is. It is a logarithmic measure, so every time dB increases by a factor of 10, the sound is about twice as loud. To give you some examples, a freight train passing close by is around 120 dB, while a quiet room is around 30 dB. A hair dryer is around 90 dB. Restaurants can measure as much as the hair dryer, although the average sit-down restaurant is probably around 77 dB — still loud enough to make you raise your voice to be heard.
I just read a great article in The Washington Post about restaurant noise. You can access it here. I learned a number of interesting things from the article, including a definition of the Lombard effect, which we have all likely witnessed. In a loud environment, people raise their voices in order to be heard. This raises the noise level even further, and people talk even louder. It creates a perfect feedback loop (more on feedback loops here.)
There are some things we can do to reduce our exposure. Going out to dinner earlier or later, outside of the most popular times, can help. You can also search for quieter restaurants. There is a phone app called SoundPrint which measures sound levels, but also identifies quiet restaurants near you. You can even use the app to upload sound profiles for places you visit. Wearing earplugs or other protective gear when you know you will be in a loud environment won’t help you to hear, but may protect your hearing.
