John Darko
We’ve all been there: picked a nice-looking restaurant from Google Maps only to find the real-life dining experience arduous. When the conversation with the person sitting across the table has slowly turned into a shouting match, we often look to the other guests as the culprits. You can’t complain about the traffic when you are the traffic. But the problem goes deeper than the hell of other people. The bigger foe is the room itself.
The laughter; the calls to the waiter; the clatter of cutlery on crockery; the scraping of chairs. These sounds mix with conversation as it snookers around the room in seemingly unpredictable directions, hitting walls, the ceiling, the floor, tabletops and countertops (including their undersides) along the way. Each reflection robs a sound of energy. Energy loss causes a volume drop. Decay takes time. We call this reverberation.
Restauranteurs put the din in dining by decking out their establishments for the eyes, not ears. They often play to a minimalist aesthetic whilst simultaneously ignoring (or not noticing) the very audible problem of reverberation. Minimalism is visually restful and (sometimes) easier to clean but it can sound awful.
Conversation generally takes place between 80Hz and 255Hz but we are most sensitive to sounds between 250Hz and 4kHz. Exposed walls, floor and ceiling all cause reverb in this region. Hard surfaces are a problem but not as much as their surface area — reverb is mathematically encoded into a room’s dimensions.
What’s the solution? Artwork and judiciously placed shelving might help a little – like salt and pepper topping off a dish of the day – but at which exact frequencies will they operate? Furniture manufacturers tell us nothing of their products’ sound absorption coefficients. Just as it is back at home, we fly deaf (not blind) when buying tables, chairs, sofas, entertainment units and houseplants. A rug on the floor will only have a meaningful impact above 1kHz. And what to do about the ceiling?
“Three stars. Would not visit again.” Are we talking about the restaurant or the room in which the hi-fi resides?
Shrewder hosts, hip to such sonic issues but unwilling to pony up for the necessary acoustic treatments – or tolerate their visual intrusion – know that any promotional video content will have to be shot with camera and cardioid (not lavalier) microphone to pick up only the direct sound of the presenter’s voice and none of the reverb returned to sender by nearby surfaces with…de…lay.
π₯ Camera: John Darko / Olaf von Voss
π¬ Editor: John Darko
π Colour: Olaf von Voss
πΊπ» Motion GFX: John Darko
π° Ad segment: Jana Dagdagan
π΅ Song IDs? Playlists of all music heard in this video – and other videos – can be found on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/johndarko
Further information: Vicoustic
π As seen in this video…
Umik-1 room measurement microphone
π https://amzn.to/42kiOyF
Room EQ Wizard
π https://www.roomeqwizard.com/
GoldenEar T66
π https://darko.audio/2024/01/in-lisbon-for-review-the-goldenear-t66/
Klipsch Forte IV
π https://howl.me/cimB6UfWWkx
Cables and power products by AudioQuest
π https://howl.me/ckbW8ZBoZAg
Hi-fi furniture and speaker stands by Solid Steel
π https://howl.me/ckbW9947Hdi
Darko.Audio may earn a small commission from items purchased via affiliate links, which are indicated with a ‘π’.
