Hello, I'm listening...

I’m always in awe of those technicians who set up the acoustics for major theatres like the Disney Hall in Los Angeles. It’s such a baffling science. Sound travels in mysterious ways and patterns. A singer can stand on a stage in a cavernous Broadway theatre, sing without a microphone, and you hear her clearly in the last row of the balcony, which is in a different zip code. And then there’s a lovely 99-seat theatre in the San Fernando Valley with almost stadium seating and fantastic sightlines but you can’t hear a damn thing in the upper five rows.

Technicians use special panels to enhance the sound, to deaden the sound, to channel the sound, combat echo, filter out unwanted sound. They construct nooks and crannies, place walls strategically – I don’t know how they do it.

Why is one restaurant so loud you can’t hear yourself think and a similar restaurant in a similar space is quiet and comfortable? This keeps me awake at night.

The reason I bring up this topic (besides looking for something else to talk about after 5200+ posts) is that I have a weird acoustic quirk at my house. My house sits back from the street up an incline. If I’m in one of the upstairs rooms that fronts the street and two people are talking on the sidewalk across the street I can hear them as if they were right under my window. It’s bizarre. They’re maybe ten yards away, but they might as well be in the same room. Meanwhile, order a sandwich at any Subway and the person behind the counter can’t hear you.

I find this phenomenon fascinating. Do you have any audio quirks where you live or work? And seriously, how hard is it to hear “A BMT with NO CHEESE?”

from By Ken Levine