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October 20, 2025 14 mins

This week, the crew takes a hard look at reflection filters — those curved bits of foam and metal you often see sitting behind microphones.

Do they really make your recordings sound better, or are they just clever marketing?

George “The Tech” Whittam, Robbo, Robert Marshall, and Andrew Peters break down what reflection filters actually do (and don’t do), why they often make voiceovers sound worse, and what to invest in instead if you want to improve your room sound.

From the SE Electronics RF-X to the Aston Halo, the team compares designs, materials, and real-world results — and offers smarter, more effective alternatives for both travelling and home setups.

🎧 Recorded using Source Connect
🎚️ Edited by Andrew Peters. Mixed by Robbo.


🔊 Thanks to Our Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by:
🎙️ Tri-Booth — the portable vocal booth used by the pros.
💰 Use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off your Tri-Booth at tribooth.com.

🎧 Austrian AudioMaking Passion Heard.
Check out their full range of professional mics and headphones at austrian.audio.


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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 Witten.
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 Witten.
And Robbo and AP's international demos.
To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
.com.
Line up, man.
Here we go.
And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
Thanks to Austrian Audio.
Making passion heard.
And Tribooth.
Don't forget the code.
T-R-I-P-A-P-200.

(00:42):
To get $200 off your Tribooth.
Tribooth.
Good.
Reflection filters?
Hmm.
Let's discuss.
Not so.
I think the word the kids use nowadays
is meh.
Meh.
Meh.
Meh.
Meh.
Meh.
Meh.
Yeah.
I can say this to begin with.
They are not all the same.
And a lot has to do with the

(01:03):
materials that they're made out of.
Some of them just put stuff that looks
like good Oralex.
And they are thin.
And they might as well not be there
at all.
And they just are something to make your
mic stand heavy and fall over.
Right.
Right.
And cumbersome.
And then, in my opinion, at best, they
kind of blunt a few of the early

(01:24):
reflections off the walls.
They don't do anything about the overall room
sound.
Because they're pretty open from the top and
bottom.
But they can blunt some early reflections.
But I think they work better for singing
-type things and not really for voiceover.
Because they're not going to make a live
room sound dead.
And they're not going to do anything close

(01:44):
to what a Tribooth or a Portabooth do.
In terms of getting the mic in an
actual alcove that is fairly well protected on
all, technically, four or five sides from other
reflections.
So, yeah, kind of cool.
Sort of okay.
I think often more marketing than use.

(02:05):
And definitely more useful in a music context
than a post-production voiceover context.
Because the odd one out of all of
those reflection filters that comes to mind is
the Aston.
Which is more like a bowl.
Yeah, that one's pretty interesting.
It looks like they did a lot more
than just farting around when they came up
with that design.
It's very cool looking.
It's very unique looking.

(02:27):
It has a more or less bowl shape
rather than the convex curve thing.
Or is that concave?
Concave, actually.
Sorry, concave.
Which also can be a problem.
Like that concave shape can focus things.
Yeah, it still has a tendency.

(02:49):
It's either going to not focus anything and
not do anything.
Like, I'm looking on, what's the website, Sugarfluid.
I'm not going to say the name of
the company.
Oh, yes.
If you search for acoustic absorption and then
sort by most popular, it kind of gives

(03:10):
you an idea what people are buying, right?
And the top two is the SE Electronics
RF-X Portable Vocal Booth, $92.
And then the next one is the Onstage
Isolation Shield.
Now, I've heard these both because my clients
end up buying them because somebody at the
company, some sales rep or a recommendation on

(03:32):
the website says, buy this with your $1
,200 Neumann TL1.
That's pretty great.
Fuck it up.
Yeah.
Completely.
And it usually makes it sound slightly worse.
I mean, at best, it does absolutely nothing
at all.
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
And in most cases, it sounds not quite

(03:53):
as good as if you had just left
it out.
In the context of like a walk-in
closet, I can't tell you more times than
not, someone's set up in a walk-in
closet, they've got clothes all around, blah, blah,
blah, and then they have one of these
behind the mic.
And I'm like, what's that there for?
And they're like, oh, well, I thought it
wouldn't sound good without it.
And I always make someone remove it and

(04:14):
just do an A-B test.
It opens the mic up.
Let me hear it without.
It opens it up.
And in many cases, there was no change
or it sounds better.
I can't ever think of a situation where
I was like, yeah, you know, it sounds
a little bit better with it.
Leave it up.
It almost never does.
And the really cheap ones that you get
on Amazon and stuff, they're acoustically translucent.

(04:37):
They don't do anything.
They don't do crap.
Exactly.
It's like using a pop screen as an
absorber.
Well, at least your reflections don't pop.
Yeah.
It'd be a better pop filter than it
would be an acoustic absorber.
So, yeah, that's been my experience.
I mean, SE kind of created this category,

(04:59):
right?
Didn't they invent the reflection filter with the
X?
I feel like they were one of the
first ones to do it, yes.
I think so.
And it does seem like theirs is a
little bit more dense on the back.
There's more engineering in the design.
Tell you that.
Yeah.
It's like multi-layered.
It's like a multi-layered absorption, not just
like we took some foam, like some packing

(05:19):
foam, and stuck it behind the mic and
called it.
Yeah.
And, you know, there's some YouTube channel videos
you can watch, what makes SE reflection filters
so unique, and you get to see a
teardown of how they're built and the different
materials, and some real thought, engineering, and time
goes into the design.
And for the context of what it was
designed for, yeah, it probably works rather well.

(05:41):
Like you're trying to put up a vocal
mic or maybe a horn mic and control
the pickup dispersion of that instrument a little
bit more.
I feel like that's really what it was
designed for.
It's really more about controlling splash than it
is much else.
Well, it reminds me a little bit of,

(06:03):
do you remember in the 70s people used
to take clear discs and put them around
the mics on horn players in live situations?
Yeah, but that's for a different reason.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's to prevent feedback, I think.
No, no.
My understanding is that's so that the horn
player can literally hear themselves.
Hear themselves.
Oh.
Yeah.
It is literally a reflection, not filter.

(06:24):
It's literally a reflector.
It's a reflector, yeah.
I mean, you guys can back me up
on that.
Guys listening on the show can defute that
or put it in the comments.
But I'm 99% sure that's what the
intention of those little Plexiglas discs was.
I always thought it was to prevent the
mic from getting into the— From bleed?

(06:49):
Yeah.
No, the wedge.
No, from the wedge monitors directly below it,
I thought.
It was trying to shield it from that,
I thought.
Could be.
I have to find some pictures online of
some old setups with those things and see
how they're arranged.
Like if the disc is, yeah, if the
mic is at an angle and the disc

(07:10):
is directly in front of the— Yeah, parallel
to the wedge monitor.
Yeah, to the face of the driver, then
you're knocking out whatever that— That could be—
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah, that could be a two.
I don't know.
Something to look into.
Have you guys seen those?
I remember seeing it.
But yeah, it is like the 70s, right?
And I think part of the reason for

(07:31):
that, too, is that also when you put
a horn in front of a mic, you
are just as much bouncing sound right out
of that horn and right into the mic
itself.
You know what I mean?
Like you have a bell of a horn
reflecting sound into the mic as much as
the horn is blasting sound into the mic.
But I never used one.

(07:52):
No, I never did either.
I think I did live sound once for
a band that had them.
But all I did—like that band was organized
enough that they had their own guy, so
I just kind of set up and I
was the in-house guy.
Yeah.
But I mean, just thinking logically, that's exactly
what would actually happen is it would splash
back your own sound to you so you

(08:13):
could tell if you were in tune.
I mean, now everybody's got in-ear monitors,
and this monitoring on stages now is insane.
But in the 60s and 70s and stuff,
not so great.
Pretty bad.
And it could be hard to play in
tune, especially with brass.
Brass instruments are hard to keep in tune

(08:34):
because it's all done by ear with your
lips, whereas a reed instrument is different.
You can affect the tuning of the reed
instrument too, but brass instruments, the tuning is
100% done by ear.
All you.
Yeah, it's all you vibrating your lips.
It's all you.
Yeah.
You can literally pitch up and down just
by squeezing your lips.

(08:54):
It's harder.
The reed instrument, you can pinch on the
reed and get it to go up in
pitch.
Yeah, you can kind of force it out
of tune.
Yeah.
But naturally, it blows in tune once it's
tuned.
But brass is so much tougher.
It's funny hearing you talking about wedges.
How often do you go to a gig
these days and see wedges?
Very fucking rarely.
It's all in-ears.

(09:15):
They're usually older people on stage.
True.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, guys like Billy Joel and Elton
John.
Yeah, absolutely.
But yeah, so often it's just in-ears
now, isn't it?
Or a DJ.
DJs seem to like to have their ginormous
speakers on each side of their podium, but
that's a difference.
Just being a wanker.
Yeah, exactly.
Mine's bigger than yours.
You said it, not me, man.

(09:37):
Yeah.
Apologies to any DJs out there.
I bet the truth hurts.
But when you look at the old footage
of the 60s, like the Beatles playing or
any band playing live, they had a stack
of Vox amps behind them.
And that was it, though.
That was actually the amplifier for the concert
and them listening.
They would maybe have a side fill.

(09:59):
They'd maybe have a side fill for the
drummer.
Right.
Like a little bit every now and then
they'd have that.
But yeah, wedge monitors don't show up until
the later 60s and 70s.
Yeah.
I think.
The last time I did live sound, nobody
had IEMs. Everything was wedges.
So I mean, I've been out of it
for a long time.
I've never had to mix in-ears for

(10:21):
a...
My brother, though.
My brother does a theater gig.
He's full-time at this theater.
And it could be 20 people doing a
musical review with Labs or a tribute band
doing Rush.
It's all over the map, man.
It's all over the map what they do.
It's pretty amazing.

(10:42):
It's a lot.
There's a lot to manage.
And they'll have their apps to control their
monitor.
Well, it's like opera where they just hang
the mics from the ceiling.
Yes.
I've done those on live stages, hung mics.
Yeah.
It's just a way.
It's a Band-Aid fix for bad acoustics.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.

(11:02):
And talk about bad acoustics.
Reflection filters, yes or no?
Probably for this voiceover, probably a no.
I say no.
Yeah.
I say get your room treated and...
Fix your room instead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My thought is that the cost of one
that actually works, which is generally more than
$200 to $300, that money could be spent

(11:23):
on sound blankets, moving blankets.
And they don't travel well.
No.
These reflection filters are bulky and heavy.
And they don't travel well, so they're not
really...
I don't travel well either.
I don't know.
There is one portable acoustic treatment thing that
you can squish down like the Chaotica Eyeball.

(11:45):
But they have their own set of issues.
And I haven't been...
I have not yet been convinced that they
don't cause more problems than they fix acoustically.
But it blows me away sometimes.
I watch videos of musicians on YouTube and
they have one on their U87.
I'm like...
Oh, no.
Is that helping?
I bought one years ago because I was

(12:06):
curious as to whether they were any good
or not.
And I think it was more not.
I saw it when it was launched at
AES in New York.
I think Robert was at the same show.
I interviewed him and everything.
The reflection filter or which...
No, the eyeball.
Oh, the eyeball is...

(12:26):
I mean, you know, I think that thing
is 99% marketing.
And it's just too close to the mic.
It changes the sound way too much.
I think we did an episode with yours
very early on.
I think we did, actually, yeah.
I took it once on the road with
me.
And another thing about the eyeball is that

(12:46):
if you think about it, part of the
reflection filter is also if you're speaking into
the room, you don't want your voice to
get to the wall to bounce back.
And the chaotica is too small to stop
your voice from getting to the walls and
bouncing back.
From propagating, traveling, yeah.
Right, but the things like the port-a
-booth and the tri-booth, they're big enough

(13:06):
to do both, contain your voice and also
try to keep the wall reflections from coming
back in as well.
Yeah, exactly.
You're getting the full use of both sides
of the material with a blanket booth, tri
-booth, those kinds of things.
But these reflection filters, well, again, it depends
on the model, how it's designed, the layers
of materials, et cetera.
But mostly, they're not doing you a whole

(13:29):
lot of good on the reverse, you know,
the sound coming back at you from the
room.
I think actually still one of the best
things I used was I used to have
a tall absorber that was about five feet
tall on a hinge, so it was like
a gobo.
And I would just stand that up behind
the person in my room, which was pretty

(13:51):
live, and that would help so much.
Because a lot of it, it's the direction
of the mic that it's sensitive to.
And stuff would bounce off the wall, and
then you'd stop it from getting into the
front side of the mic.
The back side of the mic is generally
pretty, you know, cardioid instead a little bit.
So, yeah.
Maybe you can take the reflection filters that

(14:12):
are acoustically transparent and put them in front
of the mic, and...
A giant pop filter.
Let's not go there.
Giant pop filter, right.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
The Pro Audio Suite.
With thanks to Tri-booth.
And Austrian Audio.
Recorded using Source Connect.
Edited by Andrew Peters.

(14:33):
And mixed by Robbo.
Got your own audio issues?
Just ask Robbo dot com.
With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
Don't forget to subscribe to the show, and
join in the conversation on our Facebook group.
So leave a comment, suggest a topic, or
just say g'day.
Drop us a note at our website.
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