October 13, 2025 • 29 mins
Ever wondered what those strange wooden grids on studio walls actually do? In this week’s episode, the guys dive into diffusers — how they work, when to use them, and why your small booth might not be the best place for one.
We also chat about the brand-new Austrian Audio CC8 Supercardioid — the latest addition to their small-diaphragm condenser range — and how it performs in real-world sessions.
From quadratic and skyline diffusers to the mysterious Fresnel-style designs, we break down what each type does to your sound, and why diffusion is often misunderstood.
George shares insights from a beautifully treated garden-shed studio (yes, really), Robbo recalls diffusers hanging as ceiling “clouds” at Foxtel, and the crew even take a detour into restaurant acoustics — because if you can’t hear your dining partner, maybe they need better room treatment too!
Whether you’re building a home studio or just want your booth to sound a little bigger, this one’s packed with real-world advice (and a few laughs along the way).
🎧 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
-
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)
🔊 SPONSORS
Tri-Booth — Get $200 off your Tri-Booth with the code TRIPAP200 at tribooth.com
Austrian Audio — Makers of the OC818, OC18, and the brand-new CC8 Supercardioid. Making passion heard.
🌐 LINKS
🎧 www.proaudiosuite.com
🎥 YouTube: @proaudiosuitepodcast
💬 Join the discussion: Pro Audio Suite Facebook Group
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
Get started.
Welcome.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello, everyone.
To the Pro Audio Suite.
These guys are professional.
They're motivated.
With Tech the VO stars.
George Whitten, founder of Source Elements.
Robert Marshall, international audio engineer.
Darren Robbo Robertson, and Global Voice.
Andrew Peters, thanks to Triboo.
Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
(00:20):
Source Elements, George the Tech Whitten, and Robbo
and AP's international demos.
To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
.com.
Line up, man!
Here we go.
Welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
Thanks to Tribooth.
Don't forget the code.
T-R-I-P-A-P to 100.
That will get you $200 off your Tribooth.
(00:41):
And Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
Oid?
Oid.
Oid.
Making passion oid.
Oid.
Looking forward to their new CC8 coming soon,
I think.
The super cardioid version.
Oh, I'm going to get to play with
one very soon.
You will be, because are you going to
AES, or?
Yeah.
Ah, nice.
(01:02):
I forgot completely, or I was just off
the radar of the fact that they were
doing it in Long Beach this year.
Yeah.
Which is an hour drive.
So you'll be there.
No problem.
Yeah, yeah.
No problem.
And I've already been in contact with them,
and we might get a little goodie bag,
so fingers crossed.
Oh, I do love a goodie bag.
(01:22):
Nice.
Fingers crossed.
Now, you're in a friend of yours' studio
as we speak, and obviously no one can
see this because this is audio, but I
can see behind you with this really cool
room with a beautiful diffuser in the background.
So how does that work in that room?
I mean, obviously diffusers are reliant on the
(01:45):
size of the space if they're going to
work properly.
Yeah, I don't remember if I got to
hear the room much before the diffuser went
up.
So Rick, we're in a shed.
It's a garden shed, a very highly well
-insulated garden shed.
And it's a decent size.
I'd say it's two and a half, three
(02:07):
by three and a half, four meters.
Might be not that big, but decent size.
And so Rick had an idea of what
he wanted his studio to sound like from
recording a fair amount of music and doing
animation at commercial studios.
So he didn't want it to be just
another dead booth.
So when it was all in, the acoustics
(02:29):
were up, I guess he was going, yeah,
it doesn't really have that sound I was
going for.
And apparently he hadn't put in the last
element, which is the diffuser panel.
And so behind me is a really nicely
fabricated wood stained.
I don't know what it is, but it's
(02:49):
a nice stained wood quality looking panel.
And it lays over top an acoustic absorber
layer.
So there's a diffuser over top of an
absorber.
So it's a hybrid.
And it's interesting because it just livens up
the room just a tad more than it
would be otherwise.
(03:10):
And again, I wish I had an opportunity
to do some A-B tests, record before
after and really listen to the room and
hear what it does.
But my understanding of diffusion, very non-scientific,
is it makes a room sound a little
larger without making it sound too lively or
too reverberant.
(03:30):
I don't know, what do you know about
it?
It scatters the sound.
So a quadratic diffuser does it in one
way.
But in general, the idea is that sound
hits it and doesn't bounce back in a
predictable, like creating a node or a reflection.
It hits it and scatters.
And therefore you get some of the life
(03:52):
of having reflective surface, but you don't get
the downside, which is a specific frequency that's
being amplified or being reinforced by a reflection
that bounces repeatedly back and forth.
It scatters sound.
And in front of me is a big
piece of glass.
There's a large glass sliding patio door.
(04:14):
So you're going to get some splash off
of that glass.
So wherever that bounces off that, it will
just hit this diffuser and then scatter.
And it works really nicely.
I'm speaking into a 416 at the moment.
There's a U87 just to my left.
And this is a room where you can
use nice mics and they will sound nice,
(04:36):
which is awesome.
It doesn't scatter everything though, does it?
Just going back on what you're saying.
Because it's going to absorb the low end
and only diffuse the mids and highs.
Would that be right?
It depends on how big the diffuser is.
Or how deep the diffuser is.
So traditional quadratic diffusers, which I think the
thing that's behind me maybe is akin to
(04:57):
a quadratic diffuser.
I guess not really.
It doesn't look like it so much.
Carl put a similar diffuser at another country.
And those are pretty shallow slats.
What are they, like maybe an inch or
two thick?
A quadratic diffuser, some of them are like
six inches deep.
And they work on a different principle.
(05:17):
The idea of a quadratic diffuser is sound
goes into one of them and bounces out.
And sound goes to the other one and
bounces out.
But they bounce out at a different time.
And then they hit each other on the
bounce and scatter.
There's so many kinds of diffusers.
If you guys are curious, and if you're
listening, you might be.
Definitely look up acoustic diffusers and look at
(05:41):
how they're made and the many different varieties
and ways they're made.
The most creative thing in a studio acoustically
seems to be in diffusion.
For sure.
The simplest one is just a convex reflective
surface.
Right, a curve that points out toward you.
Out.
Yeah, exactly.
You don't want pointing in.
They'll be like the exact opposite.
(06:02):
Concave is bad.
Convex is good.
So here's a question that I've always wondered
about diffusers.
Would you only diffuse behind you?
Would you ever have a reason where you
would diffuse on side walls or front wall?
Would you only diffuse what's coming from behind
you?
You would diffuse wherever sound is going to
hit that you don't want it to reflect
(06:23):
back in a predictable way.
But if you're spraying it out everywhere, aren't
you spraying it out back into the mic?
It loses energy when it sprays out.
It sprays out and it has its energy
dispersed, and it won't hit the microphone, especially
at a specific frequency at the same point.
Right.
And this room has a very specific purpose,
(06:45):
voiceover.
So you wouldn't mix in this room.
I mean, you could, but you probably wouldn't
want to because it's not symmetrical.
So on the right side of me, the
entire wall is dead.
It's one massive absorber.
And on my left, there's two windows on
the wall and a single panel absorber between
(07:05):
them to add dampen a little bit.
But the room isn't acoustically symmetrical.
How deep is that absorption?
Is it like an inch deep or two
inches deep?
Do you know how deep that stuff is?
All the wall absorbers that I can see
look like to be roughly two inches thick.
Yeah, so they're big.
They're sucking up the bass.
So that diffuser behind you is also sitting
(07:26):
two inches off the wall.
Yep, it's going to have the same.
Yeah, so the panel behind me is about
two inches thick, and then the diffuser, which
is made of wood, which is roughly two
inches deep, or maybe one and three quarter,
is proud of that.
It's over top of the panel.
And then it lets the sound in through
the slats.
(07:47):
The thinner the diffuser is, the less the
lower frequency it can control.
Correct.
Generally.
Yeah, it diffuses higher.
Unless it's a Fresnel-style diffuser, which is
a whole other crazy acoustical...
I don't even know what a Fresnel...
What's a Fresnel-style diffuser?
Do you know what a Fresnel lens looks
like?
No.
It's spelled Fresnel.
Literally, it's Fresnel, but it's pronounced Fresnel.
(08:10):
A Fresnel lens is the kind you can
see on a lighthouse, where there's a bright
light in the middle, and then you'll see
this lens that looks like concentric circles.
That's a Fresnel lens.
Sometimes, you know those flexible book magnifiers you
can get?
It's like a bookmark?
Those are Fresnel lenses.
(08:30):
They're just thin, but they still magnify.
They do that acoustically, as well as with
light.
Somebody came up with a Fresnel-style diffuser
that can control much lower frequencies than its
actual depth would imply.
It's really crazy stuff.
This reminds me of someone who was doing
a studio, and he was saying, oh, I've
(08:54):
got stucco walls, basically, so they're all diffused.
And someone who knew about acoustics was like,
yeah, but no.
You are diffusing...
You know, you think about little stucco bumps,
and he's like, you are diffusing 20,000
hertz.
You are not diffusing...
Yeah, it's only controlling very high frequencies.
Exactly.
It's still better than a completely mirror-finished
(09:16):
flat surface, though.
True, yeah, and the very high frequencies...
It's still scattering.
It's interesting with the studio.
I can see why it's behind him, because
you've probably got computer monitors in front of
you.
Yeah.
So you've got quite a few reflective surfaces
immediately in front.
Just one monitor, but again, that large glass
door is probably two meters behind the mic.
(09:38):
It's also opposite his speaker, which in a
traditional studio, especially in a stereo context, like
surround sound messes this up a bit, but
with stereo, the diffuser was always in the
back of the room.
And so, you know, the speakers would hit.
Now, I think I've heard, anecdotally, I mean,
I would say this happened at some point,
but God knows when it happened and how
(09:59):
long ago and who it was, but somewhere
in the deep, dark cave of my brain,
I remember working with a voice actor with
a traditional smaller booth, maybe four by six
range, somewhere in there, maybe slightly larger.
And he had, if not on one sidewall,
maybe both sidewalls.
Again, can't remember the details here, sorry, but
he was using diffuser panels on each side
(10:21):
or on one side.
And then that really made the U87 sound
much sweeter.
It really sounded nice in that case.
But I wish I had a database of
every booth I've heard and how it's laid
out.
But I do recall that that was pleasing.
(10:42):
It was kind of nice.
Scientifically, it's hard to justify.
I can't really back this up, but essentially
it makes a small booth sound a little
bit bigger.
Are you familiar with the tube traps?
Yeah, I've not really used them much, but
yeah.
One side is a diffuser and the other
side is an absorber.
Like it's a semicircle, like a hemisphere?
(11:04):
It's a full circle.
Okay.
And half of it, one semicircle is absorption
and the other semicircle is diffusion.
So you just sort of turn them around
to get the effect that you want?
You turn it the way you want.
Yeah, and I think the secret weapon in
those things is the diffuser.
When you get the diffuser around a mic,
it really neutralizes things, but doesn't kill it
in that boxy, tubey way.
(11:26):
I've seen portable control rooms where people set
up a control room and it's just tube
traps.
They make this huge array of them around
and it's pretty impressive.
I've never heard one, but I've been in
a handful of studios that have tube traps
or something akin.
They may not be the real thing.
(11:47):
I know I've seen fully carpeted ones that
are carpeted all the way around.
They're carpeted all around, but inside the carpeting,
yeah, inside the carpeting is different surfaces or
things within.
I might be able to get my hands
on a few of those.
I should probably...
They are expensive and they are worth it.
Yeah, because one of the agencies in L
(12:08):
.A. closed up their doors and they had
those.
Yeah, man, grab them.
I'll give you my address.
If they're not in a dumpster or in
somebody else's house by now, I'll see if
I can get my hands on them.
Those things are actually quite expensive, and the
thing about them is that you've got to
have a booth with space because they sit
on a stand and they just take up
(12:28):
a lot of space.
But if you have the space for them,
they can really make a nice neutral sound.
They just have an interesting thing about them.
That's just the irony of studio booths.
The smaller the volume of the room around
you, the more effort you really have to
put in to control the resonances or the
(12:49):
room modes, the frequencies at ping-pong, left,
right, up, down, front, back.
And so then that booth has to be
even smaller because you have to shrink it.
You have to add all this absorption, sometimes
four or even six inches deep.
And so it gets even smaller.
I heard a Chaotica is going to make
the Chaotica iBooth.
(13:10):
Oh, no.
Right.
Looking forward to that one.
I've actually got a couple of Auralex panels
on stands, and one side is Auralex foam,
and on the other side is the diffuser.
Same idea.
Yeah, they give you both treatments, and then
you spin it around to what you want.
Yeah.
It's just one of those rainy day projects.
(13:33):
I would love to have panels that are
double-sided, and I could just flip them
around and put them up and listen to
how they react.
I have some random diffusion things that were
made by Studio Bricks that they shipped as
a demo to me.
I have...
What else do I have?
I feel like I have a couple different
things, but they're all...
(13:53):
I don't know what they do.
Because some of the diffusion panels that you
see are literally nothing more than a sheet
of thin veneer plywood with holes in it.
Well, those are a little bit more like
what you have behind you, where G-Acoustics
does that, an absorber with some holes.
G-Acoustics, right.
Yeah, absorber.
And that's just more like a tunable, not
(14:14):
completely dead thing.
I've got...
Yeah.
I've got RPGs in the back of my
studio, which I lucked into when a studio
got torn down.
Are they the ones that look like blocks
of wood, or that's maybe a skyline?
That's something different, right?
No, the skyline's different from that.
So you have the big squares, which are
in the back of our studio downtown, which
(14:34):
those are really popular and they look good.
They're just like equal squares of different depths.
And that's kind of like a pseudo-quadratic
one.
And then you have...
It might be quadratic, actually.
I shouldn't say pseudo.
And then your classic RPG from the 80s,
which are the big, long slats, that some
of them are like 8 inches deep and
others are 3 inches deep, and they're usually
(14:55):
about...
Are they long, vertical?
They're long and vertical.
They can either go up and down or
sideways, depending on how you want to put
them.
Yeah, yeah.
So I lucked into those.
And then the skylines just look like just
a bunch of like 3-inch sort of
square pieces of wood, and they're just all
different heights.
And it's supposedly not random.
There's a formula to it.
(15:16):
I guess so.
Yeah, the skyline, the one that I have,
is just plastic.
Yeah.
But I think Blackbird Studios is probably the
biggest implementation of skyline type.
Oh, yeah.
Look up a picture of Blackbird Studios.
Isn't it like all black, too?
No, I think it's wood, but it looks
like an Iron Maiden kind of like...
Yeah.
It's crazy looking.
(15:37):
What, Chinese and leather?
Yeah, no, just like...
It's like if an Iron Maiden was a
diffuser and it was going to close in
on you and impale you, it's just like
you walk into this room, you're like, what
happens to me?
Mm-hmm.
Those diffusers you were talking about with the
plywood with the holes drilled in it, George,
over foam, they've moved now, but Foxtel, when
(15:59):
I used to go and freelance there, they
had that, but that was...
It was hanging from the ceiling.
They had used it as cloud.
And I always wondered why, why you would
diffuse up there.
It wasn't particularly a high ceiling or anything
like that.
So I always wondered what it was about
the room that they thought a diffuser as
opposed to sort of just a regular cloud.
(16:22):
That's a good question.
I don't know.
I know the very first studio I did
for SAG Foundation, the Donald Fontaine Lab version
one, it was sort of a grid of
two-by-two absorbers and two-by-two
diffusers.
It was an RLX thing.
They made these plastic molded, injection molded diffusers.
(16:43):
But yeah, I didn't know why, right?
Because at that time, I didn't know that
much about acoustic design.
And so I was just going with what
they did.
It turned out that the room was much
too lively and resonant for voiceover.
It might've been okay for music, but it
was not dead enough.
So we had to do a lot of
additional treatment.
But yeah, I don't know what the ceiling...
(17:04):
It's funny.
Do you guys have Chipotle restaurants in Australia?
They have excellent acoustic treatment.
They have some crazy stuff in Chipotle.
Yeah.
A lot of them you'll walk in.
Chipotle is a chain of fast burritos.
Okay.
I'll take this burrito with these toppings.
I wish we did have it here.
That sounds good.
Really fast.
It's good.
(17:25):
Fast and it's good, decent quality and not
expensive.
And so you walk in and you'll be
waiting in line on one side of the
restaurant.
And the entire wall on your left is
a giant plywood panel or panels, all drilled
with different size holes from really small to
maybe, I don't know, several centimeters.
(17:47):
And it's just this huge grid work of
holes.
And I remember the first time I saw
it, I was like, holy cow, in a
fast food restaurant.
And I did a little research and it
turned out, yeah, when they first started these
restaurants, they partnered with this architectural firm and
somebody was an acoustics enthusiast, something.
I wish I don't have the detail on
that.
That's another Google thing, but that's what they
(18:10):
did.
And not only that, they did this weird
thing where they put Klipsch three-way speakers
in a soffit above the, essentially where you
order, like on the wall above that.
There was two Klipsch speakers, Klipsch horn with
the high horn and the mid horn and
the bass.
And they're soffit mounted.
So they're just like holes in the plywood.
(18:31):
You just see the openings.
And if you're an audio nerd, you know
what that is.
They're like, those are Klipsch speakers.
It's the funniest thing.
And they put them in, I don't think
they're in every restaurant now, but the first
so many restaurants they built, all of them
have those speakers.
And they have a lot of curved surfaces
in there too.
There's a lot of curvy walls and things
that they do.
I don't know what you find in Melbourne,
(18:53):
AP, with the cafe culture down there, but
I'm finding more and more here, cafes, especially
sort of, let's call them the high-end
ones, are more and more investing in acoustic
treatment.
And I'm kind of, I'm no expert, but
I'm kind of wondering, is that to encourage
people to sit longer and stay longer, where
you can actually sit and have a conversation
(19:13):
and not have other conversations drowning you out?
I think it's nice that some of these
places are taking that into consideration.
Yeah, well, I mean, my mate Simon, I
don't think we ever had him on the
show, but he's been a hospitality casino designer,
that kind of stuff.
So he does a lot of restaurants, casinos,
(19:33):
and bits and bobs.
He's actually living in Saudi Arabia as we
speak on this massive project.
But that's one of his things.
It was always about acoustic treatment, because there's
nothing worse than sitting in somewhere, like an
echo chamber, trying to have a meal and
have a discussion with someone.
You can't, like, basically you can't hear what
they're saying.
Sorry, what's that?
It makes me crazy.
(19:54):
What was that?
Sorry.
It's like a trend in LA.
Like, let's see who can make the loudest
restaurant.
I'm like, what the hell's going on here?
But I know it's just a turnover.
I know they just want to turn people
over.
They don't want them comfortable.
They literally want you to be uncomfortable.
Okay, I get it for a quick turnover
(20:14):
place, but some of these places in LA
are so expensive.
And it's not cheap food by any means,
like a $7 croissant, you know?
And you're like, I can't even talk to
the waiter.
It's so loud in here.
I think restaurants overlook acoustics all the time.
And it's the most annoying thing.
Because they can.
(20:35):
They get away with it.
I mean, I wish I knew what was
in on these meetings, but I'm sure the
architect's like, well, we can make this sound
nice, and it'll be an extra X.
And they're like, oh, no.
Like, sound, who cares?
It's just like a film.
The last thing they think about is sound.
Everything, the last thing they think about is
sound.
Yeah, it is one of my pet peeves.
(20:56):
And it's one of those – I would
love to start a small firm of just
treating small restaurants.
Because the big ones with the budgets will
do what they do, and they've got firms
involved.
But the small to medium-op-op, smaller
businesses, or the ones that are run by
restaurant groups and stuff, if they only knew
better, and if they knew it didn't have
to be 100 grand or 500 grand.
(21:16):
Well, George, it's like that Thai restaurant that
you took me to.
And I was like, I looked up at
the ceiling, and there was a bunch of
floating clouds.
I was like, holy cow.
Somebody probably was in there.
It was probably a musician, as my guess,
eating in this restaurant.
And they were like, dude, you've got to
do something.
Because it had a low, flat ceiling, and
it was probably atrocious.
And they had the tables packed in there.
(21:37):
Like, people were so close to each other.
Yeah, it was so loud.
So loud.
Even with the panels, it was loud.
But yeah, it's – oh, my gosh.
If people realized it didn't have to cost
a fortune, you know, they would probably do
it more.
And it's just something – I just walked
down two blocks in Santa Monica on Wilshire
Boulevard and just popped in and out of
(21:59):
restaurants.
And I was just appalled, you know, at
all these new businesses, just how there was
no attention at all.
Especially these days where more and more it's
about cement floors, and they put in even
more hard surfaces everywhere.
Yeah.
I was in a lapin quatidien.
Is that how they say it?
I don't know.
It's a French chain of bakeries.
(22:20):
And again, fancy.
You know, that's the brand.
It's kind of upper-crusty.
It's not Starbucks.
And, you know, as soon as they run
the espresso machine or run the frothing of
the milk, the other corner of the place,
and you're just like, wait, what did you
say?
It was, like, insane.
(22:40):
I literally left a review on Yelp.
And I was like, that might be the
only way you can get these restaurants to
do anything, is just leave a lot of
negative reviews saying, I can't come in here
and have a conversation with my partner over
anything in this place.
I just want to leave.
It's interesting, because a lot of the European
restaurants are so busy, as in, I'm talking
(23:03):
about people coming in and out, but I'm
talking about the actual furniture and things on
walls and bars and bottles and all sorts
of stuff.
But it actually does work, once again, the
diffuser concept, that you can sit there quietly
in a really busy restaurant and have a
conversation.
We had one down the road from here,
actually, some French dude's restaurant.
(23:26):
And you walk in there, it actually does
feel like you're in a back street in
Paris or something.
But there's so much stuff around that it's
perfect for sitting there and having a meal.
I always tell people, the more cluttered your
room, the better.
Clutter is your friend.
Yeah, clutter.
The clutter diffuser.
I patent the clutter diffuser.
(23:47):
Yeah, exactly.
I wish there was more of that care
in restaurant design, for sure.
It's just, I know restaurant business is extremely
difficult.
And I'm sure everywhere it is, but especially
here.
So I know that's a part of it,
but I wish it was cared for more.
There actually is an app, though.
There actually, believe it or not, is an
app you can install called, and I will
(24:08):
find it, Soundprint, I believe it is.
Let me see if it's in my audio
folder.
And it is literally all about reviewing restaurant
volume levels.
Oh, wow.
God, is that popular?
That's pretty niche.
Yeah, no, it's called Soundprint.
Here it is.
See if it still works.
You know, these businesses just vaporize.
(24:30):
You go into a restaurant, you open the
app on your phone, and you just hit
start, and it will monitor the room for
15 seconds.
And then you can immediately report the restaurant
as a noise violator, or just leave a
review, and just say, you know, this was
moderate, this was okay, or this was like
(24:52):
severe noise levels.
And then there's a huge database in here
of restaurants, and some of them are like
repeat offenders.
You know, they're just very loud category, you
know.
And, you know, it just depends on the
stature of the restaurant.
There's a place called Porto's, which is a
super popular Cuban restaurant bakery, and it is
just louder than sin in there.
(25:13):
But there's also a line like 40 people
long trying to get their stuff, because it's
just so popular.
And they just want you to leave, clearly.
Please take your phone and get out of
here.
Yeah, we want the table turned over.
Yeah, exactly.
They should just put everything on a rotating
thing, and then like an LED room, like
live end, dead end.
And if you stay there too long, then
(25:35):
you end up in the live end where
you can't have a conversation.
Yeah, that's true.
It's like, no, that's horrible.
But another idea of a diffuser, if you
think about it, an angled wall in a
strange sense is a diffuser.
Right, because it's no longer allowing a sound
wave to propagate back and forth in an
(25:55):
axial way or longitudinal way, just like it
meets.
It has many frequencies that it bounces, and
each one at a different point.
And yeah, it's kind of a diffuser.
This is why a lot of people, when
they're talking about building a booth, you'll hear
there's always somebody in the forum, always somebody
who's like, make sure there's no parallel walls.
And that's not wrong, but the reason why
(26:17):
I don't design rooms that way, generally, is
mathematically, they're extremely unpredictable.
So then it ends up just a lot
of experimenting, trying to get it to sound
good and just get rid of weird frequencies.
Whereas if it's just a square, not a
square, squares aren't really good, actually.
Rectangles, though, like a shoebox size, is a
(26:38):
lot easier to deal with.
It's very predictable, and we understand how to
treat them.
It's very easy to work with.
So the more times you add more angles,
the weirder it gets.
If you add another wall and make it
a pentagon, far more difficult and hard to
model.
That's funny, because I was always taught some
angles, if they're too small, then they're insignificant.
(27:00):
But I think it was at least an
11-degree angle.
In my studio, I don't know how scientific
it was, but I even angled the vaulted
ceiling.
So I just flayed the walls out by
10 degrees or 11 degrees, whatever that minimum
was, and then the ceiling was angled.
(27:20):
I got one single parallel surface between the
door and a smaller area opposite it, because
I couldn't avoid that.
And I just piled on absorption on that
opposite wall.
How did it work?
It worked out great.
It works really well for drums, and it's
bright and live, but not boinky and bouncy.
(27:43):
It doesn't go...
Is that a technical word?
Boinky?
Yes.
You know how you go to a stairwell
and you clap your hands and you hear...
So it doesn't do that.
I don't know that it's...
Sometimes it's just like, just mess it up
to be interesting.
Just mess it up to make it not
(28:04):
predictable.
Well, that's the thing.
That's why some studios in the world are
so renowned.
It doesn't mean that they had some guy
plug in everything into formulas and exhaustively compute
out the room.
Sometimes it's just luck.
It's just the way the room was designed,
the dimensions of the room.
What is it?
Sun Records in Memphis?
(28:26):
Right, where they have the X where Elvis
would stand and they have the spots where
they would all stand.
Oh, yeah.
And it's just like, what mattered was it
sounded really good when he stood here and
the mic was here and that's all they
know.
Right, exactly.
Nobody's measuring it out.
They're just like, they got lucky.
Or they stumbled on it or they experimented,
but that's how a lot of rooms were
(28:48):
back then.
Now, I mean, now there's a lot more
acoustician science that goes into these rooms than
then.
Yeah, there's a lot of fun luck that
goes into it.
If you have the time and the budget
to experiment and the flexibility, it's really, really
cool.
Or just go for the clutter diffuser, which
we've just patented.
(29:08):
I'm down with that.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
And tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
Get started.
Welcome.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello, everyone.
To the Pro Audio Suite.
These guys are professional.
They're motivated.
With Tech the VO stars.
George Whitten, founder of Source Elements.
Robert Marshall, international audio engineer.
Darren Robbo Robertson, and Global Voice.
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Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
(00:20):
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and AP's international demos.
To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
.com.
Line up, man!
Here we go.
Welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
Thanks to Tribooth.
Don't forget the code.
T-R-I-P-A-P to 100.
That will get you $200 off your Tribooth.
(00:41):
And Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
Oid?
Oid.
Oid.
Making passion oid.
Oid.
Looking forward to their new CC8 coming soon,
I think.
The super cardioid version.
Oh, I'm going to get to play with
one very soon.
You will be, because are you going to
AES, or?
Yeah.
Ah, nice.
(01:02):
I forgot completely, or I was just off
the radar of the fact that they were
doing it in Long Beach this year.
Yeah.
Which is an hour drive.
So you'll be there.
No problem.
Yeah, yeah.
No problem.
And I've already been in contact with them,
and we might get a little goodie bag,
so fingers crossed.
Oh, I do love a goodie bag.
(01:22):
Nice.
Fingers crossed.
Now, you're in a friend of yours' studio
as we speak, and obviously no one can
see this because this is audio, but I
can see behind you with this really cool
room with a beautiful diffuser in the background.
So how does that work in that room?
I mean, obviously diffusers are reliant on the
(01:45):
size of the space if they're going to
work properly.
Yeah, I don't remember if I got to
hear the room much before the diffuser went
up.
So Rick, we're in a shed.
It's a garden shed, a very highly well
-insulated garden shed.
And it's a decent size.
I'd say it's two and a half, three
(02:07):
by three and a half, four meters.
Might be not that big, but decent size.
And so Rick had an idea of what
he wanted his studio to sound like from
recording a fair amount of music and doing
animation at commercial studios.
So he didn't want it to be just
another dead booth.
So when it was all in, the acoustics
(02:29):
were up, I guess he was going, yeah,
it doesn't really have that sound I was
going for.
And apparently he hadn't put in the last
element, which is the diffuser panel.
And so behind me is a really nicely
fabricated wood stained.
I don't know what it is, but it's
(02:49):
a nice stained wood quality looking panel.
And it lays over top an acoustic absorber
layer.
So there's a diffuser over top of an
absorber.
So it's a hybrid.
And it's interesting because it just livens up
the room just a tad more than it
would be otherwise.
(03:10):
And again, I wish I had an opportunity
to do some A-B tests, record before
after and really listen to the room and
hear what it does.
But my understanding of diffusion, very non-scientific,
is it makes a room sound a little
larger without making it sound too lively or
too reverberant.
(03:30):
I don't know, what do you know about
it?
It scatters the sound.
So a quadratic diffuser does it in one
way.
But in general, the idea is that sound
hits it and doesn't bounce back in a
predictable, like creating a node or a reflection.
It hits it and scatters.
And therefore you get some of the life
(03:52):
of having reflective surface, but you don't get
the downside, which is a specific frequency that's
being amplified or being reinforced by a reflection
that bounces repeatedly back and forth.
It scatters sound.
And in front of me is a big
piece of glass.
There's a large glass sliding patio door.
(04:14):
So you're going to get some splash off
of that glass.
So wherever that bounces off that, it will
just hit this diffuser and then scatter.
And it works really nicely.
I'm speaking into a 416 at the moment.
There's a U87 just to my left.
And this is a room where you can
use nice mics and they will sound nice,
(04:36):
which is awesome.
It doesn't scatter everything though, does it?
Just going back on what you're saying.
Because it's going to absorb the low end
and only diffuse the mids and highs.
Would that be right?
It depends on how big the diffuser is.
Or how deep the diffuser is.
So traditional quadratic diffusers, which I think the
thing that's behind me maybe is akin to
(04:57):
a quadratic diffuser.
I guess not really.
It doesn't look like it so much.
Carl put a similar diffuser at another country.
And those are pretty shallow slats.
What are they, like maybe an inch or
two thick?
A quadratic diffuser, some of them are like
six inches deep.
And they work on a different principle.
(05:17):
The idea of a quadratic diffuser is sound
goes into one of them and bounces out.
And sound goes to the other one and
bounces out.
But they bounce out at a different time.
And then they hit each other on the
bounce and scatter.
There's so many kinds of diffusers.
If you guys are curious, and if you're
listening, you might be.
Definitely look up acoustic diffusers and look at
(05:41):
how they're made and the many different varieties
and ways they're made.
The most creative thing in a studio acoustically
seems to be in diffusion.
For sure.
The simplest one is just a convex reflective
surface.
Right, a curve that points out toward you.
Out.
Yeah, exactly.
You don't want pointing in.
They'll be like the exact opposite.
(06:02):
Concave is bad.
Convex is good.
So here's a question that I've always wondered
about diffusers.
Would you only diffuse behind you?
Would you ever have a reason where you
would diffuse on side walls or front wall?
Would you only diffuse what's coming from behind
you?
You would diffuse wherever sound is going to
hit that you don't want it to reflect
(06:23):
back in a predictable way.
But if you're spraying it out everywhere, aren't
you spraying it out back into the mic?
It loses energy when it sprays out.
It sprays out and it has its energy
dispersed, and it won't hit the microphone, especially
at a specific frequency at the same point.
Right.
And this room has a very specific purpose,
(06:45):
voiceover.
So you wouldn't mix in this room.
I mean, you could, but you probably wouldn't
want to because it's not symmetrical.
So on the right side of me, the
entire wall is dead.
It's one massive absorber.
And on my left, there's two windows on
the wall and a single panel absorber between
(07:05):
them to add dampen a little bit.
But the room isn't acoustically symmetrical.
How deep is that absorption?
Is it like an inch deep or two
inches deep?
Do you know how deep that stuff is?
All the wall absorbers that I can see
look like to be roughly two inches thick.
Yeah, so they're big.
They're sucking up the bass.
So that diffuser behind you is also sitting
(07:26):
two inches off the wall.
Yep, it's going to have the same.
Yeah, so the panel behind me is about
two inches thick, and then the diffuser, which
is made of wood, which is roughly two
inches deep, or maybe one and three quarter,
is proud of that.
It's over top of the panel.
And then it lets the sound in through
the slats.
(07:47):
The thinner the diffuser is, the less the
lower frequency it can control.
Correct.
Generally.
Yeah, it diffuses higher.
Unless it's a Fresnel-style diffuser, which is
a whole other crazy acoustical...
I don't even know what a Fresnel...
What's a Fresnel-style diffuser?
Do you know what a Fresnel lens looks
like?
No.
It's spelled Fresnel.
Literally, it's Fresnel, but it's pronounced Fresnel.
(08:10):
A Fresnel lens is the kind you can
see on a lighthouse, where there's a bright
light in the middle, and then you'll see
this lens that looks like concentric circles.
That's a Fresnel lens.
Sometimes, you know those flexible book magnifiers you
can get?
It's like a bookmark?
Those are Fresnel lenses.
(08:30):
They're just thin, but they still magnify.
They do that acoustically, as well as with
light.
Somebody came up with a Fresnel-style diffuser
that can control much lower frequencies than its
actual depth would imply.
It's really crazy stuff.
This reminds me of someone who was doing
a studio, and he was saying, oh, I've
(08:54):
got stucco walls, basically, so they're all diffused.
And someone who knew about acoustics was like,
yeah, but no.
You are diffusing...
You know, you think about little stucco bumps,
and he's like, you are diffusing 20,000
hertz.
You are not diffusing...
Yeah, it's only controlling very high frequencies.
Exactly.
It's still better than a completely mirror-finished
(09:16):
flat surface, though.
True, yeah, and the very high frequencies...
It's still scattering.
It's interesting with the studio.
I can see why it's behind him, because
you've probably got computer monitors in front of
you.
Yeah.
So you've got quite a few reflective surfaces
immediately in front.
Just one monitor, but again, that large glass
door is probably two meters behind the mic.
(09:38):
It's also opposite his speaker, which in a
traditional studio, especially in a stereo context, like
surround sound messes this up a bit, but
with stereo, the diffuser was always in the
back of the room.
And so, you know, the speakers would hit.
Now, I think I've heard, anecdotally, I mean,
I would say this happened at some point,
but God knows when it happened and how
(09:59):
long ago and who it was, but somewhere
in the deep, dark cave of my brain,
I remember working with a voice actor with
a traditional smaller booth, maybe four by six
range, somewhere in there, maybe slightly larger.
And he had, if not on one sidewall,
maybe both sidewalls.
Again, can't remember the details here, sorry, but
he was using diffuser panels on each side
(10:21):
or on one side.
And then that really made the U87 sound
much sweeter.
It really sounded nice in that case.
But I wish I had a database of
every booth I've heard and how it's laid
out.
But I do recall that that was pleasing.
(10:42):
It was kind of nice.
Scientifically, it's hard to justify.
I can't really back this up, but essentially
it makes a small booth sound a little
bit bigger.
Are you familiar with the tube traps?
Yeah, I've not really used them much, but
yeah.
One side is a diffuser and the other
side is an absorber.
Like it's a semicircle, like a hemisphere?
(11:04):
It's a full circle.
Okay.
And half of it, one semicircle is absorption
and the other semicircle is diffusion.
So you just sort of turn them around
to get the effect that you want?
You turn it the way you want.
Yeah, and I think the secret weapon in
those things is the diffuser.
When you get the diffuser around a mic,
it really neutralizes things, but doesn't kill it
in that boxy, tubey way.
(11:26):
I've seen portable control rooms where people set
up a control room and it's just tube
traps.
They make this huge array of them around
and it's pretty impressive.
I've never heard one, but I've been in
a handful of studios that have tube traps
or something akin.
They may not be the real thing.
(11:47):
I know I've seen fully carpeted ones that
are carpeted all the way around.
They're carpeted all around, but inside the carpeting,
yeah, inside the carpeting is different surfaces or
things within.
I might be able to get my hands
on a few of those.
I should probably...
They are expensive and they are worth it.
Yeah, because one of the agencies in L
(12:08):
.A. closed up their doors and they had
those.
Yeah, man, grab them.
I'll give you my address.
If they're not in a dumpster or in
somebody else's house by now, I'll see if
I can get my hands on them.
Those things are actually quite expensive, and the
thing about them is that you've got to
have a booth with space because they sit
on a stand and they just take up
(12:28):
a lot of space.
But if you have the space for them,
they can really make a nice neutral sound.
They just have an interesting thing about them.
That's just the irony of studio booths.
The smaller the volume of the room around
you, the more effort you really have to
put in to control the resonances or the
(12:49):
room modes, the frequencies at ping-pong, left,
right, up, down, front, back.
And so then that booth has to be
even smaller because you have to shrink it.
You have to add all this absorption, sometimes
four or even six inches deep.
And so it gets even smaller.
I heard a Chaotica is going to make
the Chaotica iBooth.
(13:10):
Oh, no.
Right.
Looking forward to that one.
I've actually got a couple of Auralex panels
on stands, and one side is Auralex foam,
and on the other side is the diffuser.
Same idea.
Yeah, they give you both treatments, and then
you spin it around to what you want.
Yeah.
It's just one of those rainy day projects.
(13:33):
I would love to have panels that are
double-sided, and I could just flip them
around and put them up and listen to
how they react.
I have some random diffusion things that were
made by Studio Bricks that they shipped as
a demo to me.
I have...
What else do I have?
I feel like I have a couple different
things, but they're all...
(13:53):
I don't know what they do.
Because some of the diffusion panels that you
see are literally nothing more than a sheet
of thin veneer plywood with holes in it.
Well, those are a little bit more like
what you have behind you, where G-Acoustics
does that, an absorber with some holes.
G-Acoustics, right.
Yeah, absorber.
And that's just more like a tunable, not
(14:14):
completely dead thing.
I've got...
Yeah.
I've got RPGs in the back of my
studio, which I lucked into when a studio
got torn down.
Are they the ones that look like blocks
of wood, or that's maybe a skyline?
That's something different, right?
No, the skyline's different from that.
So you have the big squares, which are
in the back of our studio downtown, which
(14:34):
those are really popular and they look good.
They're just like equal squares of different depths.
And that's kind of like a pseudo-quadratic
one.
And then you have...
It might be quadratic, actually.
I shouldn't say pseudo.
And then your classic RPG from the 80s,
which are the big, long slats, that some
of them are like 8 inches deep and
others are 3 inches deep, and they're usually
(14:55):
about...
Are they long, vertical?
They're long and vertical.
They can either go up and down or
sideways, depending on how you want to put
them.
Yeah, yeah.
So I lucked into those.
And then the skylines just look like just
a bunch of like 3-inch sort of
square pieces of wood, and they're just all
different heights.
And it's supposedly not random.
There's a formula to it.
(15:16):
I guess so.
Yeah, the skyline, the one that I have,
is just plastic.
Yeah.
But I think Blackbird Studios is probably the
biggest implementation of skyline type.
Oh, yeah.
Look up a picture of Blackbird Studios.
Isn't it like all black, too?
No, I think it's wood, but it looks
like an Iron Maiden kind of like...
Yeah.
It's crazy looking.
(15:37):
What, Chinese and leather?
Yeah, no, just like...
It's like if an Iron Maiden was a
diffuser and it was going to close in
on you and impale you, it's just like
you walk into this room, you're like, what
happens to me?
Mm-hmm.
Those diffusers you were talking about with the
plywood with the holes drilled in it, George,
over foam, they've moved now, but Foxtel, when
(15:59):
I used to go and freelance there, they
had that, but that was...
It was hanging from the ceiling.
They had used it as cloud.
And I always wondered why, why you would
diffuse up there.
It wasn't particularly a high ceiling or anything
like that.
So I always wondered what it was about
the room that they thought a diffuser as
opposed to sort of just a regular cloud.
(16:22):
That's a good question.
I don't know.
I know the very first studio I did
for SAG Foundation, the Donald Fontaine Lab version
one, it was sort of a grid of
two-by-two absorbers and two-by-two
diffusers.
It was an RLX thing.
They made these plastic molded, injection molded diffusers.
(16:43):
But yeah, I didn't know why, right?
Because at that time, I didn't know that
much about acoustic design.
And so I was just going with what
they did.
It turned out that the room was much
too lively and resonant for voiceover.
It might've been okay for music, but it
was not dead enough.
So we had to do a lot of
additional treatment.
But yeah, I don't know what the ceiling...
(17:04):
It's funny.
Do you guys have Chipotle restaurants in Australia?
They have excellent acoustic treatment.
They have some crazy stuff in Chipotle.
Yeah.
A lot of them you'll walk in.
Chipotle is a chain of fast burritos.
Okay.
I'll take this burrito with these toppings.
I wish we did have it here.
That sounds good.
Really fast.
It's good.
(17:25):
Fast and it's good, decent quality and not
expensive.
And so you walk in and you'll be
waiting in line on one side of the
restaurant.
And the entire wall on your left is
a giant plywood panel or panels, all drilled
with different size holes from really small to
maybe, I don't know, several centimeters.
(17:47):
And it's just this huge grid work of
holes.
And I remember the first time I saw
it, I was like, holy cow, in a
fast food restaurant.
And I did a little research and it
turned out, yeah, when they first started these
restaurants, they partnered with this architectural firm and
somebody was an acoustics enthusiast, something.
I wish I don't have the detail on
that.
That's another Google thing, but that's what they
(18:10):
did.
And not only that, they did this weird
thing where they put Klipsch three-way speakers
in a soffit above the, essentially where you
order, like on the wall above that.
There was two Klipsch speakers, Klipsch horn with
the high horn and the mid horn and
the bass.
And they're soffit mounted.
So they're just like holes in the plywood.
(18:31):
You just see the openings.
And if you're an audio nerd, you know
what that is.
They're like, those are Klipsch speakers.
It's the funniest thing.
And they put them in, I don't think
they're in every restaurant now, but the first
so many restaurants they built, all of them
have those speakers.
And they have a lot of curved surfaces
in there too.
There's a lot of curvy walls and things
that they do.
I don't know what you find in Melbourne,
(18:53):
AP, with the cafe culture down there, but
I'm finding more and more here, cafes, especially
sort of, let's call them the high-end
ones, are more and more investing in acoustic
treatment.
And I'm kind of, I'm no expert, but
I'm kind of wondering, is that to encourage
people to sit longer and stay longer, where
you can actually sit and have a conversation
(19:13):
and not have other conversations drowning you out?
I think it's nice that some of these
places are taking that into consideration.
Yeah, well, I mean, my mate Simon, I
don't think we ever had him on the
show, but he's been a hospitality casino designer,
that kind of stuff.
So he does a lot of restaurants, casinos,
(19:33):
and bits and bobs.
He's actually living in Saudi Arabia as we
speak on this massive project.
But that's one of his things.
It was always about acoustic treatment, because there's
nothing worse than sitting in somewhere, like an
echo chamber, trying to have a meal and
have a discussion with someone.
You can't, like, basically you can't hear what
they're saying.
Sorry, what's that?
It makes me crazy.
(19:54):
What was that?
Sorry.
It's like a trend in LA.
Like, let's see who can make the loudest
restaurant.
I'm like, what the hell's going on here?
But I know it's just a turnover.
I know they just want to turn people
over.
They don't want them comfortable.
They literally want you to be uncomfortable.
Okay, I get it for a quick turnover
(20:14):
place, but some of these places in LA
are so expensive.
And it's not cheap food by any means,
like a $7 croissant, you know?
And you're like, I can't even talk to
the waiter.
It's so loud in here.
I think restaurants overlook acoustics all the time.
And it's the most annoying thing.
Because they can.
(20:35):
They get away with it.
I mean, I wish I knew what was
in on these meetings, but I'm sure the
architect's like, well, we can make this sound
nice, and it'll be an extra X.
And they're like, oh, no.
Like, sound, who cares?
It's just like a film.
The last thing they think about is sound.
Everything, the last thing they think about is
sound.
Yeah, it is one of my pet peeves.
(20:56):
And it's one of those – I would
love to start a small firm of just
treating small restaurants.
Because the big ones with the budgets will
do what they do, and they've got firms
involved.
But the small to medium-op-op, smaller
businesses, or the ones that are run by
restaurant groups and stuff, if they only knew
better, and if they knew it didn't have
to be 100 grand or 500 grand.
(21:16):
Well, George, it's like that Thai restaurant that
you took me to.
And I was like, I looked up at
the ceiling, and there was a bunch of
floating clouds.
I was like, holy cow.
Somebody probably was in there.
It was probably a musician, as my guess,
eating in this restaurant.
And they were like, dude, you've got to
do something.
Because it had a low, flat ceiling, and
it was probably atrocious.
And they had the tables packed in there.
(21:37):
Like, people were so close to each other.
Yeah, it was so loud.
So loud.
Even with the panels, it was loud.
But yeah, it's – oh, my gosh.
If people realized it didn't have to cost
a fortune, you know, they would probably do
it more.
And it's just something – I just walked
down two blocks in Santa Monica on Wilshire
Boulevard and just popped in and out of
(21:59):
restaurants.
And I was just appalled, you know, at
all these new businesses, just how there was
no attention at all.
Especially these days where more and more it's
about cement floors, and they put in even
more hard surfaces everywhere.
Yeah.
I was in a lapin quatidien.
Is that how they say it?
I don't know.
It's a French chain of bakeries.
(22:20):
And again, fancy.
You know, that's the brand.
It's kind of upper-crusty.
It's not Starbucks.
And, you know, as soon as they run
the espresso machine or run the frothing of
the milk, the other corner of the place,
and you're just like, wait, what did you
say?
It was, like, insane.
(22:40):
I literally left a review on Yelp.
And I was like, that might be the
only way you can get these restaurants to
do anything, is just leave a lot of
negative reviews saying, I can't come in here
and have a conversation with my partner over
anything in this place.
I just want to leave.
It's interesting, because a lot of the European
restaurants are so busy, as in, I'm talking
(23:03):
about people coming in and out, but I'm
talking about the actual furniture and things on
walls and bars and bottles and all sorts
of stuff.
But it actually does work, once again, the
diffuser concept, that you can sit there quietly
in a really busy restaurant and have a
conversation.
We had one down the road from here,
actually, some French dude's restaurant.
(23:26):
And you walk in there, it actually does
feel like you're in a back street in
Paris or something.
But there's so much stuff around that it's
perfect for sitting there and having a meal.
I always tell people, the more cluttered your
room, the better.
Clutter is your friend.
Yeah, clutter.
The clutter diffuser.
I patent the clutter diffuser.
(23:47):
Yeah, exactly.
I wish there was more of that care
in restaurant design, for sure.
It's just, I know restaurant business is extremely
difficult.
And I'm sure everywhere it is, but especially
here.
So I know that's a part of it,
but I wish it was cared for more.
There actually is an app, though.
There actually, believe it or not, is an
app you can install called, and I will
(24:08):
find it, Soundprint, I believe it is.
Let me see if it's in my audio
folder.
And it is literally all about reviewing restaurant
volume levels.
Oh, wow.
God, is that popular?
That's pretty niche.
Yeah, no, it's called Soundprint.
Here it is.
See if it still works.
You know, these businesses just vaporize.
(24:30):
You go into a restaurant, you open the
app on your phone, and you just hit
start, and it will monitor the room for
15 seconds.
And then you can immediately report the restaurant
as a noise violator, or just leave a
review, and just say, you know, this was
moderate, this was okay, or this was like
(24:52):
severe noise levels.
And then there's a huge database in here
of restaurants, and some of them are like
repeat offenders.
You know, they're just very loud category, you
know.
And, you know, it just depends on the
stature of the restaurant.
There's a place called Porto's, which is a
super popular Cuban restaurant bakery, and it is
just louder than sin in there.
(25:13):
But there's also a line like 40 people
long trying to get their stuff, because it's
just so popular.
And they just want you to leave, clearly.
Please take your phone and get out of
here.
Yeah, we want the table turned over.
Yeah, exactly.
They should just put everything on a rotating
thing, and then like an LED room, like
live end, dead end.
And if you stay there too long, then
(25:35):
you end up in the live end where
you can't have a conversation.
Yeah, that's true.
It's like, no, that's horrible.
But another idea of a diffuser, if you
think about it, an angled wall in a
strange sense is a diffuser.
Right, because it's no longer allowing a sound
wave to propagate back and forth in an
(25:55):
axial way or longitudinal way, just like it
meets.
It has many frequencies that it bounces, and
each one at a different point.
And yeah, it's kind of a diffuser.
This is why a lot of people, when
they're talking about building a booth, you'll hear
there's always somebody in the forum, always somebody
who's like, make sure there's no parallel walls.
And that's not wrong, but the reason why
(26:17):
I don't design rooms that way, generally, is
mathematically, they're extremely unpredictable.
So then it ends up just a lot
of experimenting, trying to get it to sound
good and just get rid of weird frequencies.
Whereas if it's just a square, not a
square, squares aren't really good, actually.
Rectangles, though, like a shoebox size, is a
(26:38):
lot easier to deal with.
It's very predictable, and we understand how to
treat them.
It's very easy to work with.
So the more times you add more angles,
the weirder it gets.
If you add another wall and make it
a pentagon, far more difficult and hard to
model.
That's funny, because I was always taught some
angles, if they're too small, then they're insignificant.
(27:00):
But I think it was at least an
11-degree angle.
In my studio, I don't know how scientific
it was, but I even angled the vaulted
ceiling.
So I just flayed the walls out by
10 degrees or 11 degrees, whatever that minimum
was, and then the ceiling was angled.
(27:20):
I got one single parallel surface between the
door and a smaller area opposite it, because
I couldn't avoid that.
And I just piled on absorption on that
opposite wall.
How did it work?
It worked out great.
It works really well for drums, and it's
bright and live, but not boinky and bouncy.
(27:43):
It doesn't go...
Is that a technical word?
Boinky?
Yes.
You know how you go to a stairwell
and you clap your hands and you hear...
So it doesn't do that.
I don't know that it's...
Sometimes it's just like, just mess it up
to be interesting.
Just mess it up to make it not
(28:04):
predictable.
Well, that's the thing.
That's why some studios in the world are
so renowned.
It doesn't mean that they had some guy
plug in everything into formulas and exhaustively compute
out the room.
Sometimes it's just luck.
It's just the way the room was designed,
the dimensions of the room.
What is it?
Sun Records in Memphis?
(28:26):
Right, where they have the X where Elvis
would stand and they have the spots where
they would all stand.
Oh, yeah.
And it's just like, what mattered was it
sounded really good when he stood here and
the mic was here and that's all they
know.
Right, exactly.
Nobody's measuring it out.
They're just like, they got lucky.
Or they stumbled on it or they experimented,
but that's how a lot of rooms were
(28:48):
back then.
Now, I mean, now there's a lot more
acoustician science that goes into these rooms than
then.
Yeah, there's a lot of fun luck that
goes into it.
If you have the time and the budget
to experiment and the flexibility, it's really, really
cool.
Or just go for the clutter diffuser, which
we've just patented.
(29:08):
I'm down with that.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
And tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
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