Category Archives for "Acoustics"
- in Acoustics , Book Excerpt , Production , Studios by Bobby Owsinski
The Most Overlooked Items When Building A Studio
It’s inevitable. No matter how many times you’ve built a studio, you have that “Oops, I forgot,” moment at the end. If you’re lucky, it’s something that isn’t major, but a lot of people have been known to do things they’re sorry for later, like close up the walls before installing the electrical or the […]
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Where To Find Materials For DIY Acoustic Panels
I posted about this a few years ago, but the question keeps popping up so here’s an updated version. “Where do you find materials (like Owens Corning 703) so I can build my own DIY acoustic panels?” At one time, the acoustic panel materials needed for top-notch acoustic panels weren’t found at your local Home Depot, but […]
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Recycled Nike Shoes Are Being Turned Into Acoustic Panels
Being ecologically responsible means recycling as much as possible, and that goes for manufacturers too. We’ve seen numerous instances in the past where common textiles or materials are made into an acoustic control product, but there’s one that’s been under the radar that you should know about – Nike shoes. Nike has been repurposing all […]
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The Sound Of Mars Is. . .Underwhelming
NASA has given us the first sound from Mars, courtesy of its Perseverance Rover. While the technology behind capturing the sounds is unbelievable, the actual sounds themselves weren’t all that much. It turns out that Mars is a very quiet world thanks to its thin atmosphere that’s mostly made up of carbon dioxide. Sound doesn’t […]
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Sound Eclipse Might Be The Answer To Annoying Neighbors
We all have home studios these days, but that also means that most of us have isolation problems as well. True acoustic isolation comes from mass, which means some heavy construction is in order to keep your sounds in and outside noises out. Most people are not able to go that far since isolation also […]
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New Navy Sound Weapon Will Make You Hear Voices (Hint: Your Own)
Using sound as a weapon isn’t anything new. All branches of the U.S. armed forces have experimented with different techniques through the years with varying degrees of success. The latest Navy sound weapon is a novel idea though, and one that’s non-lethal as well. According to Interesting Engineering, the U.S. Navy has developed a new […]
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Are We On The Cusp Of A Sound Isolation Breakthrough?
Thanks to a book that I wrote and video of a presentation that I did up at Nimbus Recording School in Vancouver, I get a lot of questions about studio building. While I’m not a studio designer and would never claim to be, I understand the basic principles of how isolation and acoustic treatment work […]
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This Might Be The Transducer Breakthrough We’ve Been Waiting For
For about a hundred years loudspeaker technology has worked pretty much the same way. An electronic signal is changed into mechanical energy thanks to a magnet and moving coil attached to usually a paper diaphragm, which then moves the air. Sure, there have been other tries at transmitting sound through the air, like electrostatic and […]
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The 3 Building Blocks Of Acoustic Treatment
I’ve posted this before a few years ago, but I’ve been getting so many questions on acoustic treatment lately that I thought it was time for a refresher. While soundproofing the space where you have your recording gear set up can be an expensive and time consuming proposition, treating the acoustics of your room luckily […]
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Using A Cave Impulse For A Truly Natural Sounding Reverb
The world is currently flooded with reverb plugins and just about all of them are usable with a few that are truly fantastic. That said, most are based on the impulse response of either some excellent sounding recording environments, or early hardware reverb gear. What you don’t see much is some truly natural spaces, especially […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Etymotic Research MP9-15 MusicPro Adaptive Electronic Earplugs
If you’re in the business of audio then hopefully you don’t take your hearing for granted and use some sort of hearing protection when around high-SPL situations. I’ve been a huge fan of Etymotic Research ER-20 ETY’s for a long time and have used them with great results. The new ER20XS earplugs updates the original […]
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440Hz Vs. 432Hz Tuning Standard Comparison – Again
Every few years musical conspiracy theorists push forth a new iteration of how our A = 440Hz tuning standard was actually meant to be 432Hz instead. I’ve written about this in the past, but every so often a new video comparison shows up that makes it worth at least looking at and listening to. Just […]
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Amsterdam Airport’s Unique Landscape Art Is Actually A Low Frequency Noise Baffle
If you’ve ever lived around an airport you know how impossibly loud it can get. I live in the flight path of the Burbank/Hollywood Airport on days the winds blow north/south, even with some pretty good insulation it can still be distracting. Imagine what’s it’s like to live near the 3rd busiest airport in the […]
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MIT’s PixelPlayer Lets You Isolate Sounds From Videos
One thing that musicians and producers alike forever longed for was software that would separate a mix into its vital instrumental and vocal parts. We’ve had this available for a few years now, but the next step is extracting different sounds from a video by pointing on the part of the screen that we want […]
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Beware: Alexa And Siri Can Hear Inaudible Commands
Just about everyone has a smart phone these days, and more and more households are purchasing smart speakers. While some love the convenience of voice commands that these smart devices respond to, it does open up a security hole that only now the general public is becoming aware of. It turns out that both Alexa […]
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