Tag Archives: ambient sound

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Ambient Sound: the Presence We May Not Notice

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Here’s the thing about ambient sound: we tend to put it out of mind even when it is having its way with us.

There is always a scenic dimension to the various physical elements that limit or enhance our actions. The funny old aphorism that ‘everybody has to be someplace’ is a reminder that our lives must unfold in some particular space. Sonics are always a part of a scene, even if they are hardly noticed. Pure silence is almost never an option; even a “quiet” place is full of ambient sound that affects the qualities that shape any particular moment. For example, ambient sounds are what transform stilted film dialogue captured on a set into conversations that seem to be happening in real space. Like the visual cues of color and texture, aural cues define where we are: anywhere from a busy playground to a space deep in the woods. More than we might acknowledge, it is ambiance that defines a desert from a busy city street, a cathedral from a conference room, or a busy office from a bedroom.

I was reminded of the importance of ambiance several years ago, when I was working on a chapter about film sound design. Since mics can barely do more than capture dialogue, Foley artists and sound editors recreate sonics that were inadequately captured on location. They add the aural details that make a place real.

In crowded places like midtown Manhattan we often want to escape what has gone beyond ambience and become intense noise. The constant racket of the city is the number one complaint of its residents. And we know that heart rate, irritability and blood pressure rise in very noisy spaces. But I know from experience that some of those same folks transported to the quiet acres of rural forest may also find the stillness pretty creepy. Though not loud, small Eastern Screech Owls at night are dependable producers of the kinds of quiet cries we might expect from ghosts passing through the trees.

Here’s the thing about ambient sound: we tend to put it out of mind even while it is having its way with us, increasingly making us anxious, annoyed, impatient or—too infrequently—calmed. Our brains scan the information that we obtain from incidental sounds. And while our ears aren’t as sensitive as many other mammals, they are good enough to detect an oncoming car we still can’t see, or an air leak in a window that is supposedly sealed.

The films Blow Out (1981) and The Conversation (1974) are good explorations of how we rely on incidental sound to make sense of the world. Both show technicians using just ambient sound to solve crimes. More happily, Joni Mitchell subtly embeds one of her signature songs with the soothing ambience of summer crickets.

Sound anchors us to a scene. Experiencing a completely silent environment, as in an anechoic chamber, is unnatural and, for most, unpleasant. A quiet spot is one thing, but we are only too happy to be in the presence of enough sound to blot out the sounds of our own heartbeats.

Americans living near cities and traffic often live within what has become sewers of noise. Tokyo and Mumbai are also bad, but we have our own unique mix. Aircraft noise is often a constant presence. And American reliance on gas engines is even more prominent, with most towns falling short of reining in the constant din from sources ranging from souped up motorcycles and cars, to the horrible pollution of machines we use to manicure green spaces. A recording studio built in most towns must be built like a bank vault in order to keep all of that chaos at bay. One science writer has cleverly imagined that if noise pollution could be seen, its scale would produce a level of filth we would never tolerate.

But the basic point here is simpler. We need to give the tiny sensory organs behind our ears a break, and the chance to hear quieter ambient sounds. That was always a birthright of our species for millennia before the relatively recent mechanical and electrical ages.

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The Costs of the Din Add Up

We’ve turned the ‘soundtrack of our lives’ into one long visit to the land of auditory commotion.

As readers of this blog will know, sound is a current preoccupation.  I’m not sure if its a curse or blessing, but once a writer starts down the path of a new project, its hard to stop. Everything is seen through the lens of the work.

A new book on the noise in our lives by David Owen (Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World) is a timely reminder of how much racket we tolerate. The modern frenetic existence isn’t just a function of being busy.  It’s also an effect of living full time in a din of disruptive noise. We turned the soundtrack of our lives into one long visit to the land of auditory commotion. It’s the kind of effect you expect entering a busy pre-school or sharing the street with a group of motorcyclists out for a Sunday ride. The areas  surrounding busy airports are especially hazardous to one’s ears and mental health.  Huge amounts of fuel are thrown into a jet engine that compresses and then explodes it.  Even the ostensibly quiet ones are noise demons. It’s din easily passes the 85 db threshold that can cause permanent ear damage over just a few hours.  And the pummeling of the air by helicopter blades overhead is even more brutal: the rough equivalent of watering orchids with a fire hose.  As Owen notes, virtually all of us arrive at adulthood having done some irreparable damage to our hearing.

Below the obvious case of airports, what are the sources of ambient noise that most of us experience on a daily basis?  The list is long: hair dryers, leaf blowers, snow blowers, tree cutters, high aircraft on approach to a distant airport, helicopter traffic, heaters, refrigerators, microwave ovens, mixers, radios and televisions that are often left on to become aural wallpaper, auto and motorcycle mufflers—some tuned  to be loud, vacuums, car alarms, emergency vehicles, general traffic, internal combustion engines, truck pick-ups and deliveries, copying machines, nearby construction equipment, exhaust fans, truck ‘engine braking,’ Muzak, cooling fans, microwave ovens, video games, bars and restaurants, live concerts and sporting events, domestic pumps, clothes and dish washers, lawn mowers and garden equipment, elevators, subway and truck brakes, the impossible-to-block long waves from a bass speaker, nearby foot traffic, portable generators, barking dogs, phone rings, cooling systems for server centers and industrial plants, garages for auto repairs and more.

Of course we don’t confront these sources at once.  But a good guess is that a city resident will experience most of this noise in the short time frame of a few days. And some of this noise pollution—traffic, appliances, planes, lawn equipment—is ubiquitous. Their sounds almost never go away.  That is, until we are old.  Then, creeping deafness and tinnitus leave the marks.  Deafness is one of the great and mostly undiagnosed causes of depression and withdrawal in older Americans.

You can audit your own environment with a simple test.  Turn off the master switch in the electrical panel where you live. You’ve eliminated most of your own noise sources at that point.  But how much still seeps in from your neighbors and the proximate environment?  I live in the country on a one-lane road surrounded by woods. By all accounts the noise level in my home should be below 20 db.  But 30 db is about as low as the sound levels go: a function of distant air traffic, a noisy fan in a cable controller box that can’t be turned off, the noise of a heater, and a new “quiet” refrigerator in a distant room that carries the sound of its motor vibrations through the wood structure of the building.  100 years ago, that 20 db mark would have been easier to achieve.