[HN Gopher] Acoustic Naturalism
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       Acoustic Naturalism
        
       Author : tintinnabula
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2021-10-15 18:23 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aeon.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
        
       | hammock wrote:
       | >Much of the sound we hear in a typical movie is either created
       | or substantially altered in post-production. If the sound were
       | simply recorded along with the picture and left at that, the
       | microphone would pick up too much background noise and not enough
       | dialogue. An engineer therefore adjusts the intensity of the
       | audio at different frequencies, adds or filters out ambient
       | sound, and introduces a subtle amount of reverb, so the sound
       | matches the spatial environment shown onscreen.
       | 
       | That's not the half of it. For many scenes and pretty much every
       | scene outdoors, they use ADR, which means the actors went into a
       | studio and recorded their lines dubbing over their lip movements
       | on film. Not to mention foley artists recreate every footstep,
       | door open/close, etc - very little of that is natural in a
       | hollywood film.
        
         | robbedpeter wrote:
         | Fight noises are the best - that's part of what makes a great
         | kung fu flick.
         | 
         | The original Bruce Lee movies were groundbreaking acoustically.
         | Whoosh, whep whep, waaaaaauuuuu yaa!
         | 
         | Now I have to wonder, though, how much of his vocalizations
         | were recorded in post production?
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | Full marks for submitter's HN name!
       | 
       | I skimmed the article briefly and didn't see this mentioned, but
       | it was pivotal in the advancement of architectural acoustic
       | design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Clement_Sabine
       | 
       |  _Sabine tackled the problem by trying to determine what made the
       | Fogg Lecture Hall different from other, acoustically acceptable
       | facilities. In particular, the Sanders Theater was considered
       | acoustically excellent. For the next several years, Sabine and
       | his assistants spent each night moving materials between the two
       | lecture halls and testing the acoustics. On some nights they
       | would borrow hundreds of seat cushions from the Sanders Theater.
       | Using an organ pipe and a stopwatch, Sabine performed thousands
       | of careful measurements (though inaccurate by present standards)
       | of the time required for different frequencies of sounds to decay
       | to inaudibility in the presence of the different materials. He
       | tested reverberation time with several different types of
       | Oriental rugs inside Fogg Lecture Hall, and with various numbers
       | of people occupying its seats, and found that the body of an
       | average person decreased reverberation time by about as much as
       | six seat cushions. Once the measurements were taken and before
       | morning arrived, everything was quickly replaced in both lecture
       | halls, in order to be ready for classes the next day._
        
       | klik99 wrote:
       | As a sound guy, I've always been into acoustic architecture. It's
       | overlooked (except for performance spaces or recording studios)
       | and under appreciated, when done well it really makes a
       | difference, it can really set the atmosphere of a place. As part
       | of the backlash against open office it's gotten a lot more
       | attention (as the article mentions).
       | 
       | But this being Hacker News, I want to complain about the most
       | annoying trends in acoustic architectural design: Restaurants.
       | I've noticed over the last ~10 years up-scale restaurants
       | designing their spaces to be extremely "live", IE not much sound
       | dampening so the place echoes amongst the concrete walls. The
       | idea is that it sounds like so many people are there and it's
       | really happening, because with even with two tables it can sound
       | full. But so hard to have a conversation!
        
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