True silence is usually not an issue though, but there might be other reasons to record the silent room. Like getting the impulse response data, aligning the DC offset or getting the noise profile for noise reduction.
In other words: It’s mostly used a reference rather than the explanation given in the post.
Their metaphor still works though. The length of the wild sound tells me the OP might be talking about an older process before digital noise reduction was as common as it is now where less than half minute is enough. The idea that a “silent” room has a recognizable unique sound or even that a recording setup has a unique sound like internal mic noise is still valid for the metaphor of basically something that is perceptible to humans but difficult to give a well rounded answer as to the multiple variations that exist because they are generally so very subtle.
Like in regards to water and sound humans can tell hot liquid from cold when it is being poured or moved by sound. Actually explaining the difference in words requires a more complicated use of language but you basically know the differences when you hear it.
Since actual silence is very rare (Edit: on Earth before one considers the vacuum of space) and requires tech to purposefully create one can assume they mean just “a room where no one is talking” which weirdly itself is a more antiquated definition of silence .
‘Silence’ is a highly contextually defined word, with many social, physical, and metaphorical uses, each of which shifts, depending on your intent.
Three versions of the word are running through the recordist’s mind at this point: silence as in hold your tongue and twitches, as an artifact captured as ‘room tone’, and as the absence of unwanted electromagnetic signals in the toolset.
If you want to be fussy about usage of the word, you really have to pin down the intent of both speaker and audience.
To be fair, a simple word like ‘set’ is similar in complexity of usage. ‘Silence’, however, carries a lot of baggage wherever it is used.
Such is the case with most things in language. We really are translating thought through an imperfect medium to reassemble it on the other side in someone else’s brain. Linguistics being what it is that imperfection leads most of the time to pedantry. The idea of “silence” as an absense of sound translates very differently when you start looking at sound with the technological equivalent of a magnifying glass versus just the naked ear.
Well sure most lexicon discussions can turn into hair-splitting, but I would like to make a special case for the word ‘silence’ as a term with more than an average amount of emotional weight and semantic specificity.
Its use is often quite subjective while myopically considered obvious by the user, because it is intrinsically confusing. It can be very politically loaded when referring to reticence or censorship. In physics it’s a problem of absolutes, and in psychology a phenomenological conundrum.
Then there’s zen, sufism, and mystic shit like that. Rabbit holes and silent all the way down.
To the naked ear, silence is always relative to a previous soundscape, since even at the quietest moments you will still hear your heartbeat, breath, digestion. It’s neurophysiology and psychology and philosophy and more when talking about silence to the naked ear, all using different definitions of the word.
I know you’re referring to true silence as a patch over in movies, but classicfm.com/…/worlds-quietest-room-microsoft-an… it seems like people have a real struggle with true silence in that it’s very difficult for anyone to even have an hour of true silence.
Yes it’s fascinating for sure, but a “scientifically silent room” is a very different phenomenon from someone watching a TV show on a TV not producing fake silence in their living room, where there is already noise and reverberation.
You can turn the volume down already if you want to experience the non-phenomen of not having a TV produce noise. It will not upset you, I promise.
The reason why people get disoriented in silent rooms is the lack of response from reverb and/or lack of sensory input at all.
Addition of ambient noise to an audio signal is for other reasons. With proper mixing and envelope control you will not experience cutting in and out of silence. However, audio production is a lot more complicated than just cutting audio together. It makes sense to create or simulate an entire “enviroment” at which to throw audio at, sort of like priming a canvas before painting.
That's kinda the point though. Outside of a true vacuum or a literally perfect anechoic chamber, you won't get true silence anywhere. There's always something, even if you can't consciously perceive it.
Getting pure water is easier than true silence, but it's still not something most people will encounter in their life - and basically anywhere else you can get water on Earth will have some level of minerals in it, as such that background flavour is the flavour of water...
And like with sound, everywhere has it's own flavour of water.
I don’t drink it exclusively, but yes, Zero Water uses a filter that reduces the total dissolved solids down to 60ppm. I rent, and my tap water tastes like pennies, so I think it’s probably better to have too few minerals than too many.
I don’t think that is reverse osmosis, it’s just a filter (which I think is better since we now know about all the microplastics).
I don’t know how distilled water affects our cells by introducing low osmotic pressure (dehydration & bowl issues?). My drinking habits include drinking half or a full liter in one go so I would research the matter and also how it affects the heart (or the whole cardiovascular system).
You’re right. It’s not reverse osmosis. I corrected my previous comment. I’m not to sure that distilled is good to drink either, but I haven’t done research on it myself.
Fun fact: what that audio guy was describing is called “room tone” and correct it’s used for both patching and as a base sitting under all the other audio elements for the mix (music, dialogue, sound FX) and is a common practice after a on location shoot is wrapped to have the whole set “hold for tone”.
The reasoning being it captures the 3D soundscape of the ambient noise in the space and how those noises bounce off surfaces and people that our ears definitely notice when it’s missing like your post says! The reverb of a small office room and a gym would have very different room tones for example. And an absolute void in audio is extremely distressing and it’s why you almost never have absolute 0dB in a sound mix unless intentional.
In her song All I Really Want, there’s a measure of complete silence after the lyrics “Why are you so petrified of silence? Here, can you handle this?”
Oh. I’m dumb, I was making a joke because I thought they were implying that listening to her was a bad time but it turns out it really was a quote. I got wooooshed this time.
Edited to add: I mean no offense to fans of Alanis Morissette, to be clear. I don’t think I’m super familiar with her discography.
It’s used in a number of different situations, but its most common use is as fill during dialogue cuts: let’s say you want to put two different pieces of dialogue together, but have a natural pause between them, room tone is necessary to maintain continuity.
In a study during World War II regarding comprehensibility in radio communications, radio static was less destructive to understanding an interrupted statement than no sound at all.
Also, one of the most effective forms of jamming was a recording of multiple voices all talking over each other, it made it virtually impossible to make out who you wanted to hear.
Not a professional, but studied it in college. It’s mostly to either fill in gaps or loud noises.
One thing you can often do is get a “noise print” of the room, and you can isolate someone’s audio basically perfectly. From there you can create a room tone and slap it under the entire track. Now if you need to mute or something you just cut the talking track and the room noise carries over.
If you don’t get a good room tone, say you want to use someone looking at the camera, but the director was talking. If you try to filter out the directors voice, it’s likely going to sound weird because some of the tones overlap with the room. So you mute it and slap the room tone over and you’re good. They often get too much, because room tones vary ever so slightly. If you get a tiny half second sample, unless you get very lucky you’ll pick up that something is repeating or sounds weird. If you have 10-20 seconds you can loop that no problem.
This is also why all online meeting tools and teleconference systems also have a background tone. It tells you that you’re still connected, you’re live.
Genuine question, what do you do for outer space? I know what you mean by a complete audio void being unsettling, and I’ve seen sci-fi movies where using complete audio void for space enhances the anxiety of the scene very well. But when it’s not a complete audio void, what simulates space silence?
Well if you mean creatively, there’s lots of options. But yes, using a complete void of audio can also be an intentional creative choice to force you to feel certain things, I believe 2001 did this for a lot of the external space shots. Cut to black endings to a lot of movies use an empty block of audio too as a punctuation.
A lot of other movies/shows use a lot of different creative options. Like if you’re exposed in space you’d hear your heart and blood pressure sky rocket before stopping, maybe your last breath of oxygen molecules vibrating in your cranium like The Expanse did. You could maybe create the sound of an exposed star bombarding you too. Star Trek often uses ambient engine noises or their ships to fill any empty space in the mix. Another common example is if you’re in a space suit, you’d hear the internal machines and your heartbeat would be super loud. All of these are creative choices of course and not meant to be realistic, which nothing really is meant to be in a movie mix.
It will not allow you to just subtract the noise, as specific sound will slightly differ each time, but knowing characteristics might help. But if you plan on doing this, you’re better off with using several microphones in different places, afaik
I remembered doing that during home recording. I had a tool that required to record the background noise and then I could apply it to my actual record to reduce the background noise on it.
Tap water tastes different from bottled water, and the bottled water from Brazil tastes different from the bottled water I had in Chile, which came from glaciers.
And yeah it’s the minerals that give taste to the water, but I don’t think you’re supposed to drink completely distilled water in the first place.
I drink predominantly distilled water at home since I have a tabletop distiller. Makes custom mineral water easier to mix up since you’re starting from ~0 total dissolved solids. I’m often too lazy to add the minerals though, and the straight distilled water doesn’t cause any digestive discomfort or anything
I have prescription fluoride toothpaste so I’m not too worried
Reverse osmosis filters produce pretty much distilled water that usually goes through remineraliser to add back some minerals. Fun fact is many of those remineralisers are sold as “improving water taste and smell”, probably because they do improve taste and smell, but also not to make users too suspicious about adding back minerals after they just filtered the minerals out 😅
but I don’t think you’re supposed to drink completely distilled water in the first place.
It’ll harm you a bit over time if you’re not getting those minerals elsewhere in your diet, but otherwise it’s not that big of a deal.
I have some on hand for other stuff and I’ve drank it in a pinch when I didn’t have other water (my tap tastes horrid and purifiers that don’t cost shit tons of money don’t filter out the reason why) and I’m still hydrated as fuck
Distilled water tastes empty, like the flavor is being removed from my mouth. Quite odd
The reason I’ve heard repeatedly is that distilled water isn’t just harmful because it doesn’t provide minerals, it’s that it strips needed minerals from your body.
I don’t know the exact mechanism and can’t be bothered to look it up, but there was a WHO study years ago that reported this finding.
It’s because of osmotic pressure, the cells try to reach equilibrium with their environment so if the difference is too big then it leaks from one side to the other (in this case out of the cells which needs the minerals). It’s similar to how salt hurts snails but in the reverse direction, it seeps in when there’s so much more on the outside of its membranes.
This doesn’t happen just from drinking one glass of water.
That’s funny. The only thing I ever remember feeling that way about was this insect protein bar I tried maybe 10 years ago. Ok up front, but the aftertaste was just… Well, evil was how I described it. Have yet to try another such product, but that’s mostly because I never see them at my local grocery stores these days.
After we got a reverse osmosis filter our water tasted like nothing. We had to get a remineralization filter to put minerals back into it. Now it tastes good.
My buddy once bought a few cans of Space Coke for us to try. I told him it tasted like TV static. He said “well technically, TV static is interference from space, so it literally tastes like space”.
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