Now that I’ve got 40+ years under my belt, every part of my body has begun the slow journey of deterioration that will define my next 40. (I guess I should say hopefully slow, and hopefully I get another 40!)
Among my various aches, pains, and other newfound limitations is a more vexing problem: a case of Hyperacusis, or sound hypersensitivity, in my left ear. Hyperacusis is a disorder that’s related to but distinct from Tinnitus, the constant high-frequency ringing that many people, particularly musicians, experience later in life. Hyperacusis is a less common issue, and manifests for me as an odd pressure giving way to an aching pain when I listen to certain frequencies above, say, 75 decibels.
I’ve been on a whole emotional/medical journey with it since my first diagnosis in 2021, and I’ll doubtless write about it more down the line. Short version is, I’ve found a terrific audiologist who specializes in Hyperacusis and am undergoing a treatment that involves listening to 8 hours of specially tuned white noise every day. Perhaps more importantly, I’ve also learned to accept and coexist with it. These days I mostly just feel thankful that my actual hearing is fine, and that I can still play and enjoy music like I always have, give or take an earplug or two.
Along with my increased sensitivity to sound, I’ve also acquired an increased sensitivity to the frankly bonkers levels of noise at many bars, restaurants, and social spaces. I carry my custom earplugs with me everywhere I go, and while I would expect to put them in at concerts and movies, I wouldn’t have expected to use them as often as I do when I’m just out at a bar with my friends. (The fact that I need earplugs at the movies is actually kind of weird; imo movie theaters shouldn’t push past 90dB as often as they do.)
Over this same period of time, I’ve become a fan of the crowdsourced sound tracking app SoundPrint, which allows users to check noise levels at a given restaurant and take and share their own measurements at the venues they visit. It’s a good way to have some forewarning about the worst acoustical offenders in your town, and man, there are some pretty serious peak decibel levels going out there.
The average bar or open-seating restaurant seems almost custom-made for horrible acoustics, particularly given current trends in dining room design and layout. At your average urban bistro, diners are basically crammed into a box with hard, flat floors and ceilings, sharp corners, a glass wall up front, and a multi-speaker sound system aimed directly at them. Add in the open kitchen floorplan favored by many restaurants and, in addition to conversation and background music, you’ve got a steady stream of clanking dishes and silverware, frying food, escaping steam, and kitchen chatter. No wonder most of us can’t hear what anyone more than two seats away is saying. And, as unpleasant as an 80-90+dB environment can be for a diner, it has a far more damaging effect on servers and kitchen staff, who spend shift after shift having their ears pummeled.
I loved this exceptionally well reported and illustrated 2024 Washington Post feature about the issue, featuring no fewer than three bylines and a variety of sources from the worlds of acoustics, audio, and restaurant ownership. As it turns out, noise is routinely one of the most complained-about aspects of a given dining experience, and has been for ages.
Among the experts featured in the article is acoustician and engineering professor Dr. Lily Wang, who does a great job explaining the physics of the issue:
Wang says that each clinking of cutlery and every vowel uttered by a diner makes sound by vibrating molecules in the air. This vibration moves away from the source not in a straight line, like a laser beam, but outward in a growing sphere of sound waves.
The scene gets more complicated when these waves interact with all the objects in a room. In this dining space, we have bottom-lit walls with a large art piece made of orange ceramic cups, wood floors and ceilings, a few plants in white ceramic pots, sleek wooden furniture and lots of people.
When a sound wave hits anything in here, three things can happen, depending on the materials involved. “Some gets reflected,” Wang says. “Then there is some of it that will … continue propagating … and then there is some that is absorbed.”
A solid, smooth, stiff barrier — such as painted concrete, metal or glass — will reflect most of the sound back into the room. The nearby bar is tiled in a stunning shade of blue that looks incredible, but it must be reflecting our noise back to us, just like the smooth ceilings, walls and floors.
Pisco y Nazca is nestled just below street level. The ceilings are low. In this confined space, our voices have the chance to reflect several times off the nearby polished surfaces, staying active and hitting many more people’s ears.
Sound can have a variety of psychological and physiological effects, many of which are summarized in the Post article. A loud environment is mentally exhausting, since your brain has to do so much extra work to keep your attention focused on a given person or sound. And the louder the environment becomes, the louder people talk, a vicious cycle known as The Lombard Effect. It also triggers stress hormones and increases blood pressure, and is particularly difficult for older people (hi), those on the Autism spectrum, non-native speakers of a language… you get the idea.
And of course, prolonged exposure to high decibel sound can damage your hearing over the long term, and hearing loss has been linked to any number of serious health issues in old age, including dementia.
The whole article is worth a read; it details a bunch of different techniques and contraptions that an acoustician may deploy to improve an acoustic environment, including floating baffles on the walls, hanging “clouds” from the ceilings, placing low-frequency traps in the corners, installing raised, absorptive backs on booths, and even suspending vertical panels in the air between tables. Any or all of those can make a noticeable difference in the overall dining experience, despite the fact that, at least based on my experience, many restaurant owners appear to have acoustics pretty far down their list of priorities.
I read that Post article while in the midst of my own acoustic project: overseeing the design and construction of The Caldera, the now-finished recording studio in which I make music and podcasts. Seemingly every day last fall, I was on the phone with Derek Trost, the acoustician I hired to design the space, and I learned a ton from him about many of the same techniques outlined in the article. Notably:
How corner traps control the longer sound waves generated by lower frequency sounds
Why acoustic panels should sit at least a few inches away from the walls and ceiling, rather than sitting flush
How important a symmetrical layout can be for creating a balanced and controlled environment
How frigging hard it is to control sound in a room with a low ceiling
Those ideas were all interesting in theory, but the experience of being in the finished studio is something else entirely. The Caldera is easily one of the most comfortable acoustic environments I’ve ever occupied. And while it’s great for working, recording, and practicing music, it’s also a pretty great hangout space.
Any time we have a group of friends over, I excitedly take them down to the studio so they can see what we built. And every time we do that, the whole group winds up standing around or sitting on the couch, just hanging out for a while. It’s a remarkably chill place to have a conversation—there’s no room ring or mid-frequency buildup, so everyone can speak at a relaxed level. Multiple small groups can have independent conversations without having to fight against one another. If I put on some music, it blends with and enhances the overall vibe without overwhelming anyone or making them raise their voice. I’ve actually begun eyeing some of the other rooms in our house with that in mind. The dining room is great, but it’d be even better with some tasteful ceiling panels…
It is, of course, too much to expect a given restaurant to cover the no-doubt exorbitant cost of converting their dining space into a professional recording studio. But in my experience, a little bit of acoustic treatment can go a long way. I’ll sometimes find myself at a restaurant or bar and realize that, hey, I’m actually feeling relaxed, and I can actually hear what everyone is saying? And then I’ll look around and see acoustic panels hanging from the ceilings, or carefully arranged dividers placed around the space. I’ll return to my meal, and to the conversation, knowing that I’ll probably return to this restaurant, too.
I Let The Beast In Too Soon
Strong Songs season seven, episode two is now in the wild! It’s all about Fiona Apple and her 1999 single “Fast As You Can,” which was a collaboration with producer Jon Brion and drummer Matt Chamberlain.
I’ve said plenty about this song and this episode already, so I’ll just share this one thought: After listening to the episode, an LA-based friend of mine remarked that it was striking how much 90s music was influenced by the LA drum and bass scene of the same era, and how interesting it was when one regional musical subculture influenced another in that way. That’s definitely true, and I agree that it’s interesting; I’m less familiar with the LA drum and bass scene, but I know it’s something that happened a lot in the first half of the 20th century as the jazz of different regions—New Orleans, Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Kansas City—was shifting and spreading.
I’m sure that similar phenomena exist today, though I wonder if the regional specificity is less pronounced than it used to be. After all, many musical “regions” now exist online, and people from all around the world can belong, if they know where to look.
Onward
That’ll do it for now. As always, you can find me on Instagram and Bluesky, though also as always, I’m not on either one all that much.
I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, who was extremely displeased that Emily and I went out of town for a week and didn’t let her come. Hell hath no side-eye like a golden retriever abandoned.
Take care, and keep listening -
~KH3/28/2025