But doing acoustics right, it turns out, can be really expensive.
Mitigating the kind of noise restaurants can create isn't expensive. There's an off the shelf engineered solution that's been around for almost 70 years. Acoustic ceiling tiles. Restaurants are loud because acoustic ceiling tiles are out of fashion even though significantly less expensive than hard surfaces and exposed building services+structure if painted.[1] Though carpeting and upholstery help, acoustic treatment of the ceiling is the first line of noise mitigation. [2]
[1]: Among the most costly finishes are services and structures fabricated to aesthetic criteria.
[2]: The stylistic trend away from acoustic ceiling tile, carpets, and upholstery further erodes acoustic privacy in open offices.
1. Just adding absorption to the ceiling isn't enough - absorption on the ceilings help kill ceiling reflections, but you still need to deal with reflections from the floor, walls and various surfaces. Absorption works best if it is distributed around around the room.
2. In addition to being unattractive, another reason acoustic ceiling tiles aren't popular is that they are difficult to clean compared to smooth, hard surfaces. There are acoustic surface finishes from brands like Pyrok and BASWA that can be cleaned with industrial cleaners, but those finishes are expensive to install.
Adding ceiling tiles to the ceiling goes a long way. It may or may not be enough depending on what enough is. I mean, and as I suspect you know, masking is also important and both masking and absorption need to be tuned to specific human relevant frequencies in the acoustic environment. Kitchens are the critical restaurant ceilings in terms of cleaning. Both USG and Armstrong make cleanable ceiling tiles suitable for kitchens with many decades of successful performance across many restaurant installations. Less exotic tiles (if cleanable tiles are exotic) also have proven performance in dining and other areas. The proven performance is what made ceiling tile a ubiquitous default across building types...
...anyway, tiles outperform what most designers are capable of coming up with on their own and do so with little or no consideration on the designer's part. Loud restaurants largely reflect little or no consideration in the face of changing fashions. Then again, the restaurant business is so iffy that careful attention to acoustics is probably premature optimization. In five years it won't matter because the restaurant will be gone.
That's my point - often just treating the reflections form the ceiling alone isn't enough, you need to stop the reflections from other surfaces as well.
Other reflections may be desirable as masking noise or to create a particular ambiance. Or not. That's part of the experiential difference between a lively bistro and a bordello style steak house.
And it works SOOO well! My (for 25 years) favorite restaurant was setup in a former horse butchery. Tiles all over the place. In my 20s and 30s the echo was not much of a problem, late 40's it became harder for me to distinguish sounds and voices.
Since much of the clientele aged with me, the owner one day decided to have a professional company place the acoustic ceiling tiles: it was breath taking wholesome.
Not ugly (it integrated nicely with the curved ceiling) and incredibly effective. Since then, I have no patience or tolerance for restaurants & bars that echo.
Meeting aesthetic criteria may be non-negotiable, particularly in a hospitality context. So it is probably on top of those that acoustics needs to be addressed.
Acoustic ceiling tile is pretty horrible from an interior design perspective...
When my previous university built a new eatery, the architects decided to put vertical acoustic "blade" tiles on the ceiling. Those actually fitted the architecture of the entire building quite nicely (see [1, 2] for photos), and the effect on the acoustics compared to the previous building (with a similarly high concrete ceiling) was enormous. It was suddenly possible to have long conversations with a relatively large group of people over lunch without growing tired after a few minutes.
I figure that you could use similar, aesthetically pleasing (e.g., coloured) elements in a restaurant setting.
Those are blades, and they exist within the cloud family. I also think they look attractive, but we've gotten a lot of pushback from architects when we've tried to recommend them, excuses have included interference with lighting and sprinkler systems (I'm not an architect so I don't know how valid those concerns really are) and cost.
As with most anything, it's probably easier to incorporate them into a new design from the start then to fit them into an existing space that wasn't designed to accommodate them.
+1; the open plan office in which I work has something like that (only less... symmetrical?) hanging from the ceiling. it helps, compared to other open spaces I've been in, and you can still see the ductwork, power and ethernet. They also have those compressed cotton acoustical panels on the wall behind a lattice of 2x4s, and some kind of grey insulating spray that covers the actual ceiling and I beams.
I mean, it's still worse than a cube farm under a conventional acoustical tiled ceiling, but it is a hell of a lot better than nothing, and conforms to the visual standards of the day, (or at least i think it does; It was built out very recently.)
Are those just black tiles or are they black noise reduction tiles? I don't see any indication of the later. Is vinyl a common material for noise reduction?
Probably! (Probably not that much more, though.) But so do comfortable chairs, nice tablecloths, and good ingredients. (And the reclaimed wood and industrial fixtures everyone's using...)
The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them. So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option. The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services. It's not just a fashion, it's a kind of moral imperative, that those services should be neat and orderly, not a chaotic mess concealed by a dropped ceiling...
> The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them
That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.)
> So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option.
It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces.
> The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services.
Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments.
> It's not just a fashion,
Yes, it is.
> it's a kind of moral imperative,
That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.
> > The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them
> That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.)
It is practically the definition of being an architect to be concerned with truth to materials. No architect wants to be accused of designing paper-thin stage sets, dishonest buildings, things that don't actually work. It's important to distinguish (because this is a distinction that's very important in architectural culture) between the essential structure/function of a building, and features that are merely styling/cladding. The latter are to be avoided. This goes back to the beginning of architecture: a good building is decorated construction, not constructed decoration. Even those architects among the postmodernists who are worth seriously considering played by these rules. (There might be a few perverse PoMo exceptions)
An interior designer can't specify the details of exposed services, so this isn't really part of interior design (and anyway the idea of having exposed services comes from architecture) any more than a model holding an iPhone on the catwalk is part of fashion design.
> > So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option.
> It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces.
I meant attractive to architects.
> > The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services.
> Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments.
The specific "exposed services" trend is hot right now, but the idea of honest construction, truth to materials, form follows function, etc., really dates to the late 19th C. William Morris saw the shoddiness of mass-produced items (e.g. furniture) and called for a return to honest, simple, direct construction. Adolf Loos wrote about the redundancy of ornament, and the falseness of cladding (specifically, of making a material appear to be something it was not). The modern movement came out of an idea that that the customary, superficial, imitative forms of elaborate 19th C architecture could be replaced by a natural geometric simplicity. As Louis Sullivan said in 1892:
‘I should say that it would be greatly for the aesthetic good if we should refrain entirely from the use of ornament for a period of years, in order that our thoughts might concentrate acutely upon the production of building well formed and comely in the nude. We should thus perforce eschew many undesirable things, and learn by contrast how effective it is to think in a natural, vigorous and wholesome way. This step taken, we might safely inquire to what extent, a decorative application of ornament would enhance the beauty of our structures-what new charm it would give them.’
Exposed services, which have been a thing since the 50s, coming after the intentional rawness of brutalism (for example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowellism), are just an iteration of this impulse. For architects, carefully assembled "naked" services express and celebrate this natural honesty, functionality and directness. It's arguably an unjustified extra expense to get the services "right" (neat and tidy), but on the other hand, there's the long-standing traditional Medieval idea that even things that are out of public view will be seen by God, so they should be properly attended to anyway. This principle is a matter of thoroughness, probity and ethics.
> > It's not just a fashion,
> Yes, it is.
If I'd said "it's not a fashion", I'd have been asking to be corrected. But I said "it's not just a fashion", which is a very generous and weak constraint on what is going on–it's certainly visible right now as a fashion, but I'm claiming there's more to it than that, a history, a theoretical hinterland.
> > it's a kind of moral imperative,
> That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.
I'm not going to claim that I can reduce the philosophy of morality to one sentence, as you have. It's definitely the case that ethics and aesthetics both concern judgements of value. (Historically they would both have been considered under the heading of axiology.)
Subsuming morality under aesthetics makes it something personal and sort of implies the transcendence of the judging subject, because only subjects have aesthetic experience. It is IMO very iffy, close to an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticization_of_politics.
For architects, truth to materials is a "moral" imperative because it's thought of in terms of honesty, or a judgement of what is good rather than what is tasteful. I'm not making any broader claim that morality is unchanging. But this is a very long-running architectural design value, which just happens to be manifesting itself in certain conspicuous trendy ways at the moment. It's not a matter of "dressing up [the conversation] in the language of morality"; if you believe architecture is more than just eye candy, you can't avoid considering morality.
So we can agree that exposed services is often just a decision made on superficial aesthetic grounds. But IMO the reason why they are considered appealing has a lot to do with very deep-seated ideas about ethics and right conduct, and as you say yourself, those ideas change slowly.
Architecture is the art of creating buildings that are functional and pleasant. If some architect places a higher value on "truthiness" than on people's reaction he is just plain incompetent.
I'm sincere, if that's what you are asking. I have a postgrad in architectural history and theory, spent 5 years in architecture school, so I guess the answer to your question is probably "yes".
The idea that functional items can be designed in a way that avoids ephemeral styling or fashions (think of the annual model changes in the US car industry of the 50s) is a key modernist principle. Whether it's actually possible to draw that distinction and maintain it in practice is a totally different question.
Left field? I can read plenty of Protestant, conservative reactionarianism in the parent’s description of Architecture. How is that left-field, I don’t s understand. Can you elaborate?
If you look at what happened here, I posted a very short comment asserting that honesty/"truth to materials" was a long-standing architectural value. Somebody followed up, attempting to refute every sentence in my comment. I felt like calling them out on their completely unwarranted, hostile contradiction of my comment.
So I wrote a long reply which supports my initial argument that "architects think like this". Not saying whether I agree with them.
That reply has received multiple abrupt aggressive responses: "architects are liars", "if an architect focuses on theory and fails to please the audience, he is incompetent", and now that my description is "conservative" and worse.
It's like the legend of the hydra, honestly.
My comment was intended as a historical overview. If you know of a significant school of thought in architecture that is profoundly radical, progressive, hedonistic in ways that are in conflict with the moralistic principles that I was attributing to architectural aesthetics, I'd love to hear about it.
Oh I didn't intend it as that, sorry. I just didn't understand the baseball reference of the parent post and thought it attributing the description in your post to a leftist political view. Far from being an attack, it paints the picture of a fairly calvinist, very moralistic enterprise (IMHO) not exactly a social revolution... but perhaps that's what Architecture is, at least in the western english-speaking societies? Don't really know... peace
Providing liveable acoustics isn't a lot less important than providing enough light. But few would argue that such honesty compels the architect to install 70s strip lighting.
i really believe it is just a fashion.
it is meant to trick (trick is not usually associated with moral etc) the visitor/customer/employee into thinking that the restaurant/store/company is being honest, organic and raw.
give it 5 years and people will tire of it and go back to drop ceilings with proper lighting and proper ac. (and while i'm ranting, what it with those terrible weak led filament bulbs. god damn whatever it is they do, it isn't adding light).
The LED filament bulbs are probably just dim because they've been dimmed. The filaments themselves are just strings of multiple LEDs in an optical coating and are actually a pretty efficient design.
Those same dim lights are likely quite bright after closing during cleanup when the staff wants to be able to see better.
The comment I was replying to made a clear distinction between acoustic and aesthetic aspects.
Music is aesthetic sound, so you have a point, but most architects consider acoustics as something functional like temperature or ventilation. It's really rare for a space to be conceptualized in terms of a particular desired acoustic, except for theatres and concert halls.
My daughter has a condition called hyperacusis[1] defined as, "an abnormal intolerance, a heightened sense of volume and physical discomfort from ordinary, everyday sounds, which other people can tolerate well."
Because of this, I have become so aware of the sheer amount of noise in everyday environments. I remember sitting in a nice, peaceful environment for twenty minutes waiting for the local coffee shop to open. Come 8am they turned on the loud, thumping music. Why, why, WHY?
I wish there were more people that come to this conclusion. I can't stand busy cities anymore because music bumpers in their cars, people playing TVs loudly with their windows open, people HONKing their car to get the attention of someone in a building, people clicking their cars, people opening and closing their car doors FAR more frequently than necessary.
In Sydney I would always avoid the main CBD street (George St). It’s so noisy with cars, it doesn’t only prevent people from talking, but also thinking... It’s a classical case of 3-lane street with busses going 60kmh, with glass buildings on both sides, so as a pedestrian you’re stuck in a resonnance enclosure.
Once in a restaurant I asked the staff to lower the volume (and they did) for three times, before finally requesting to turn off the music completely. The comic is right though, at least I do have a mental barrier for asking for such favours even as a customer. I likely wouldn't have asked even once if we weren't the only customers.
Well yes, that may work in the specific case of music being too loud. Not so much when the noise is just from people talking and moving about and the coffee grinder whirring and glasses clattering and the room is all hard surfaces that amplify all of this. Designing the audible environment can be as important as the visual design.
Just got back from Italy. We hadn't really noticed the noise levels while there, but when we got back and ate out, we were like "OMG, what happened?" It was almost impossible to have a conversation. And, it seems like all of the newest restaurants are insanely loud. We went to Seasons 52 and a couple ladies at a table next to us almost knocked us out of our seats especially with their laughs and screams.
But, it's funny because so many Americans think Italians are loud. They're much quieter when eating out. And other cultures, like the English and Dutch talk basically in whispers.
And living in California where there's a law for everything. It's gotta be bad for your hearing. Which brings me to another question. I wonder why CALOSHA hasn't done anything about it?
Maybe the same reason that the fire department doesn't do anything about all the locked doors with the sign above that says "These doors shall remain unlocked during business hours". Apparently public servants are only required enforce laws against the homeless and kids riding without helmets to junior life guards ... and people who point out stuff they're supposed to be doing...Uh oh.
It's true, I live in Portugal where there are many tourists and Americans talk by far the loudest in my experience. Mind you, they are not 'being loud', they usually don't annoy at all and don't intend to, they just talk with louder voices than anyone else. Particularly young American men (at 20 or so) talk with loud booming voices that you can barely hear anywhere else.
I don't think there are any physiological reasons, it just seems to be a minor cultural difference, but I wonder what the reasons are. The school system, maybe? College?
Another small difference I've noticed over the years, and, again, I don't mean this in any disrespectful way: Some if not many US Americans don't know how to use knife and fork in the "European way". They don't know how to turn the fork elegantly after cutting meat. Instead, they cut everything first and then use the fork in the right hand for eating. This must have historical reasons, maybe it also differs from state to state?
Re forks, I believe there was a historical difference in which the American etiquette rule was that, after cutting food, you had to put the knife down, move fork to right hand, and then eat. The English rule instead was to keep the fork in the left hand both while cutting and for eating food. Neither would rotate the fork to shovel position.
Edit: spent 10 minutes googling for the right Miss Manners link, but failed. However I may be wrong on the shovel thing, that may actually be encouraged, I'm not sure.
I was definitely taught to eat this way, scolded if I didn't put the knife down and return the fork to my right hand, along with when to abandon a piece as inedible, rather than change from eater to butcher. I am pretty sure I was also trained to use the fork to lift food and not to stab at it. It amuses me to hear this called "shoveling" as the intent is to be less crude. I was likewise trained to only dip a spoon away from me, which avoids any impression of shoveling or bailing food towards the face. Also, numerous details about the staging of bread and butter to a bread plate and when to break it by hand and when to take a bite.
My casual adult practices and lost memories would definitely disappoint my maternal ancestors... My mother was from a mixed family of blue-bloods from the US northeast and German immigrants a couple generations removed. She probably married "down" with my father, my inculcation thus diluted. She didn't talk about it much, but I think there was some pressure to conform to those blue blood ways within her extended family. I believe her sister was involved in the Daughters of the American Revolution and was also put through some sort of finishing school when young. I hear an odd echo of that aunt whenever I hear Martha Stewart speak. I remember events with very formal table settings when I was a small child, though I have forgotten many of the procedural details for upwards of 5 utensils per place.
All of this is to say: it is a formal cultural practice at least in parts of the US, not some absence of training. I would also believe it has some origins in a display of disarming, much like a hand-shake and other rituals. I wonder if anyone from the UK can comment on whether there are notable regional or class-based practices and any that seem to match the American method described here. I would expect there were British roots, though it might have died out.
More practically, the US method limits eating to a polite pace. Out of context, European and East Asian eating methods look extremely crude to an American eye, with people shoveling, lapping, and slurping food towards their faces. In context, I of course realize they are culturally expected and my American way would seem odd or perhaps even disdainful.
As an aside, I found it interesting to learn how Thai people use a fork and spoon. They use a spoon in their right hand much like an American uses a fork, except they may keep a fork ready in the left to assist in loading much like a European uses their knife (but with hands reversed). But, if an item needs to be cut, the spoon is suddenly a knife without any hand switching and the fork may control the item as it does in American hands.
Cool thanks for the data point. I'm still mildly shocked to re-discover about the shovelling, this was certainly not allowed... jokers would ask how you were then supposed to eat peas on the convex side of the fork, but clearly any cook worth their salt would have thought ahead & avoided this. (But the soup, and bread, rules sound similar.)
It would indeed be interesting to know if there used to be regional variants in the UK. Actually, do you have a feeling for whether this has strong regional ties in the US, e.g. to Virginia vs Boston?
How does a cook prepare peas to be eaten with an upside-down fork? Or does proper etiquette demand not eating tasty, healthy, cost-effective foods if they interfere with making a fancy show of putting food in your mouth?
I think I eat the "American way" here in Brazil. I eat rice and beans almost every lunch and I just have to use the fork as a spoon..
-edit-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fypq2qhRZnI Also worth noting that both ways are considered good etiquette in this video, but considered childish by most people commenting.
The european way seems to a piece of meat in the end of the fork to "hold" the vegetables/rice - but this would depend on always having meat available until you finish the plate? Its complex...
It's true that Europeans keep the fork in the left hand, but I've never seen anyone keep it with the tined pointing down and doing that meat blocker thing. I'm used to the fork bring returned to tines up position after cutting meat and then the knife gets used to gently push food onto the fork.
>> they cut everything first and then use the fork in the right hand for eating
I am European too, but I heard this from an American. A knife is a weapon. They try to quickly get it out of their hand, in order that everyone else is able to relax.
My theory is that the US is a much less formal society and eating the European way is hard and requires training and correction by parents. If the goal is to just get food in your mouth with a fork and knife you end up eating much closer to the American way. It's worth noting that my wife who grew up in a very formal household in NYC eats the European way.
America was founded on the principle of egalitarianism (despite the flawed implementation), so class-shibboleth etiquette rules like formal-dancing with your fork while you eat didn't take deep hold here.
In some European countries the neighbouring table may ask you to keep your voice down if you're talking too loud. It would be nice if this habit became more widespread, as I believe many people aren't loud intentionally -- they just never realized the disturbance they are causing.
Dutch guy living in New York here. Americans are way, way louder than us. Not only do they talk and laugh louder, they also interrupt each other a lot. It took me a long time to get used to when I first moved here, and I still walk into restaurants and immediately leave again because of the noise level. I want to have a nice dinner, not spend the next two hours shouting at people.
My girlfriend is American and I don't think she realized the difference until I called her attention to it. It's just a cultural issue.
I once read a lovely observation from an American who came to live in Germany and was surprised to be called out for being so loud all the time.
Then she learned about the "1 meter voice" that her kids get thought in school. Once she got the concept she too was able to speak in a "decent voice".
Load voices are partly culture, partly self awareness.
Yes, in Germany they'll call you out if you or your child are too loud. Stateside, on the other hand, asking someone to keep their/their offspring's voice down doesn't go down too well, especially if it's someone's out-of-control child.
So you moved to New York and are surprised and upset that it's loud? What were you expecting? This is a bit like going to a Caribbean island and complaining about all the sun.
I've spent much time in the Netherlands in cafes, restaurants and bars and never once have I been struck by just how much quieter it was or the Dutch were.
>"My girlfriend is American and I don't think she realized the difference until I called her attention to it. It's just a cultural issue."
Honestly, this and the rest of your comments sound more like a "cultural superiority" issue on your part.
Belgian here. Yes we consider the Dutch loud but Americans louder. On top of it, they seem to share the illusion that if someone does not understand them, it helps to increase the volume. I've observed this in a restaurant in Italy:
> D: "Betalen? Kunnen we betalen?"
> I: "Scusi?"
> D: "BE-TALEN! IK WIL AF-RE-KE-NEN!"
> I: "?"
I spent much of my childhood in Greece, and thus around tourists from all over the world. In my experience speaking loudly and slowly reliably improves enunciation. It also often comes with exaggerated mouth shaping which gives useful visual cues that are interpreted subconsciously (see the McGurk effect [0]) but manifest in what you hear.
Obviously this isn't going to overcome complete ignorance of a language. But especially in touristy areas it's common for locals to know a few dozen words in several languages. My experience has been that people speaking loudly and slow makes it much easier for others to latch on to the few words they do know.
This is part of the reason I don't go out nearly as much anymore. I got convinced that I was losing my hearing, but it could also be that people are just loud and getting louder, at least in America. After hearing myself say "I can't hear you" and "what's that" over and over again, and resorting to buy more alcohol so I could at least enjoy myself in the haze of speech, I eventually just went "eh" and realized I just don't even care anymore.
Part of me thinks that the idea of a noisy atmosphere is to cause confusion, and confused customers are probably better customers. If they're getting all their enjoyment out of conversations, maybe they're less likely to buy more food and drinks to "smooth over" and "lubricate" their interactions.
Different restaurants have different noise levels. You can choose to visit quieter locations. Choosing the right restaurant for the occasion and company is actually one of the most important things to get right in dining out.
The noise level seems to be rising everywhere. I can't think of anything other than fine dining where I live that isn't obnoxiously loud at all times. The frustration is that you just don't have a choice these days.
I particularly despise live music (restaurant can't even try to adjust volume there), which all of the establishments in my area are competing to have as often as possible.
You are totally right. Even at restaurants that are usually quiet a group of more than four people in the room is frequently all that's needed to make the entire place loud. It seems especially bad with groups that are entirely made up of one gender.
The frustration is that you just don't have a choice these days.
That's odd. Must be culture/country-dependent? Even in the relatively small town closeby (100k inhabitants) there's a choice of multiple small and not too expensive restaurants. Because of the size (max abot 20 to 30 people dining, plus no loud music) it never gets very loud. There's also a choice of quite expensive ones which, large or not, do take acoustics into account and hence remain comfortable.
If your town is all chain restaurants then it's possible they all have loud music -- it limits talking and so reduces table occupation times, increasing covers and hence profits. The game nowadays is basically make dining as uncomfortable as possible but just this side of obnoxious; at least in any place I can afford.
Having moved from Europe, I can agree that people in California are incredibly loud. Most conversations are normal, but people seem to always want to react with exaggerated laughs, or exaggerated replies for some reasons. (yes, the stereotypical "OOOH MY GOOOOOOOOOD")
The loudness of American and status is an interesting question.
I suspect that the observation by Taleb that high status people talk more softly needs a caveat. I think people who know they have status talk more softly to convey that they don't have to fight for attention. And such signaling naturally requires the situation allow people to notice.
Which is to say in that in a more primal situation, where no one knows anyone's status, being loud and aggressive is the way to gain status when status is not yet established. And this seems like source of American loudness, America being a nation where many seek status and the hierarchy of status is often not established.
I think it’s more a sign of insecurity. Insecure people want to signal some status, so they feel the need to talk loudly and make a show of themselves.
It depends on the venue, loud people tend to aggregate in loud coffee shops etc because that's the environment they like.
You can sometimes cross the street and the environment in a cafe is the complete opposite.
I noticed this and thought maybe it's because in the bay area there are a lot of choices for everything (restaurants, cafes) so everyone gets in their little niche. Maybe in your place of origin there is less variety?
All the quiet people are taking advantage of the mountains and miles of miles of quiet wilderness across the state. Leaving only loud people in the cities. I have no proof to back this up.
I don't know about all the quiet people, but I fall into your generalization. I'm on vacation and while I've enjoyed the places I've been I can wait to get home to some peace and quiet where I can curse my refrigerator for being so noisy. (It is just fine, but when it is all you can hear it starts to seem loud.)
I like the peace when hiking, except in bear country. I don't mind a loud mouth in the group so we don't sneak up on things that cause injury to life and limb.
Romans are generally louder then people from Milan, but often foreigners are louder than us, especially South Americans and Americans (from USA).
On the contrary, Chinese and northern African are quiter.
French sound nicher to many, so they usually don't notice their loudness, but in my experience they usually make more noise than Italians, are more rude with the waiters and complain a lot.
I think it all depends on the setup, Italian restaurant are usually family businesses, cheap enough that you could eat there everyday, where tables are mostly very close to one another, if you are too loud people at other tables can easily be annoyed by the noise, while French restaurant have more space between tables and they feel free to turn the volume up a bit and it becomes an habit.
I am personally a very private person and I don't like being loud cause I don't want other people's to listen to what I'm saying, which is very easy if the other table is literally 50 cm away, and have developed an habit of being extremely quite, such as I have a very hard time having a normal conversation when I'm abroad and everyone scream (for my standards)
It is true tough that we are famous for "making a scene" it's not uncommon to go to the restaurant and find a couple fighting loudly
I put Italians in the middle of the bar, on average.
Things have changed a lot across Europe over the past decade or so, with smoking in bars, restaurants, clubs and other public spaces illegal across much of Europe. Honestly, sometimes is seems like smokers are treated as a leperous sub-class (I'm not a smoker myself, just an observation).
Outdoors things are changing too - tax on tobacco is ever increasing, even if it's still relatively cheap in some European countries, and more people are conscious of the damage smoking does to their bodies. Additionally, a lot of smokers, especially in more affluent European countries, have switched to vaping.
> Honestly, sometimes is seems like smokers are treated as a leperous sub-class (I'm not a smoker myself, just an observation).
That's because these f are blowing stinking odours in everybody's faces and clothes. Yes, even outside. I strongly defend that my right to fresh air trumps their right to smoke and annoy a whole terrace.
It’s striking how many people smoke tobacco in Paris - the French average 1089 cigarettes per person per year, compared to 685 where I live. The US is 1016.
Coming from South America, I agree. I've had this exact conversation with friends from my home country, it definitely called our attention when each one of us moved to LA.
Not so long ago, loudness was the stereotype of the English. Booming voices, conversations that felt shouted to their European neighbors, raucous laughter at their own jokes...
Making a room easy to conversate in is pretty easy and cheap (carpets, curtains, ceiling tiles...). Making a room pretty is quite tricky and expensive (design of materials, architecture, ...).
What’s really rare and ultra expensive is making both at once. Create a space with clean surfaces, high ceilings, etc and still manage acoustics.
That’s where restaurants fail. And I get that they fail because if quiet+pretty is too
expensive, then in the choice between quiet and pretty you will do better going for pretty. Because as much as people complain about noise, we never even visited the quiet place with fitted carpets and acoustic tiles.
A related observation I made was that light really makes people loud. I recently had breakfast in a hotel that made an unusual design choice: a very dark candle lit space was used as the breakfast restaurant. Despite being full of people, most were naturally whispering. But light is just another design element. If you design with lots of light, you also get louder conversation (at least that is my observation based on just a few data points).
I had to quit an exercise class to it essentially turning into a musical torture chamber. They upgraded their speaker system to mega club levels with base bins and massive hanging speakers.
The volume was so loud and the music so intense I actually had to stop at times and block my ears. This sounds melodramatic but it is honestly ridiculous.
After those few classes I went to I would have ringing in my ears for a few hours, and my ears would feel very blocked. I also noticed I became a lot more agitated and anxious afterwards.
DJs often seen to have hearing problems, I don't know why specific noise limits aren't legally mandated.
There's a barracks that is literally a mile away from us in our city, they had a party and the music was loud enough that it woke children in our street ... that has to be damaging prole hearing who are close-by.
In Europe/Belgium there is but as you mentioned it people don't realise the dangers and basically think the government wants to prevent them from having fun.
A lot of misinformation too (eg: "it's okay,above a certain threshold the ears close themselves, that's why you feel a bit deaf for a day or two after a concert).
Surefire makes good comfortable reusable earplugs that aren't too visible (if you buys the transparent ones). They're not as effective as foam earplugs, but often that 10-12dB is good enough! Some models have holes you can plug/unplug to increase or decrease the amount of sound blocked.
They're often promoted for firearms use. However I don't own a gun and I enjoy mine for loud clubs and the like.
It's simple. The music is now part of the decor. It must be heard at all costs, so up goes the volume once people fill the place. Then it becomes a positive feedback loop of people shouting to hear each other speak, volume goes up again, and everyone goes deaf.
Noise is worsening everywhere. Gas stations and checkout queues have obnoxious ads. workplaces are built out of concrete warehouses, with open floorplans, so even a quiet conversation turns into a raucous. If sugar was the new smoking then noise is the new sugar.
do what I do and keep earplugs around your neck wherever you go. they're more effective at reducing anxiety than any other remedy
I wish there was some sort of logitudinal data to demonstrate that the levels are still climbing or are just louder now due to shifts in design trends. There is not much data in this article aside from a few examples in New York which are probably not representative of the rest of America. That said, lately my partner and I (mid 20s) nearly always wear our hearphones [0] so we can speak in restaurants.
Tom Sietsema, restaurant reviewer for the Washington Post Magazine, has been including decibel readings in his restaurant reviews for the last 10 years. I'm not sure if there's a summary of the change in those numbers over time or not.
You are hitting your nail straight on the head, my friend.
Main culprit is: Unfinished ceiling/metallic ceilings (usually corrugated steel pannels, either square or triangular profile pattern).
It's very trendy now to have exposed mechanical equipment and venting, people do not bat an eye anymore. Been ok for about 25 years now. Source: me, working in the business, I specifically avoid any public place with such unfinished ceilings. I cannot stand it anymore!
So this is kind of a complex question. Neither of us have hearing problems (I have tinnitus but it is more of an annoyance than an impedance) so we exclusively use them for the active noise cancellation (reducing world volume) and not for the world volume boost. The directional noise cancellation and microphone directivity works quite well for us but I cannot really speak to how well the world volume boost works since I don't have an easy way to measure its effectiveness.
My only criticism is that they use HSP during phone calls, then switch back to A2DP when music/audio resumes. This means that audio quality during phone calls is significantly worse than normal audio output, but this occurs with every bluetooth headset I have tried.
HSP/HFP for calls is very standard; A2DP isn't suitable for calls since it's unidirectional. HFP 1.6 supports wide band (16khz) speech with the mSBC codec, which is a big improvement, but adoption has been very slow.
E.g. in Android, I think Oreo finally added some HFP 1.6 support, and 16kz SCO output should be theoretically possible (I wasn't able to get it to work). But for some reason, 8khz SCO input remains explicitly unsupported, as per the AudioManager doc:
> "The following restrictions apply on [SCO] input streams: [...] the sampling must be 8kHz"
From what I've seen, most bluetooth devices and cellular providers don't seem to support 16khz speech either. At this rate, it seems like most of us won't enjoy wide band bluetooth calls until 2030 or so.
Meyer Sound has a system called Constellation that as they put it "balances the buzz of a lively room so patrons don’t have to raise their voices to converse comfortably over the din, and allows the staff to control the sound level as the room’s occupancy changes." Comal in Berkeley, where I live, was the first to install it and I can attest to its effectiveness. More on this here: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/High-tech-system-let...
I didn’t see anyone comment on this so I’ll add my 2 cents:
I think that people think that if they complain that the noise is excessive that the venue will respond. I haven’t found it to be true. The blasting volume of the advertisements at the movie theater, the noisey restaurant, the freezing temperature, etc. they are probably that way for a reason i.e. it’s not an oversight they will correct now that you’ve brought it to their attention.
I’ve gone to restaurants and after being seated found the conditions unpleasant enough that we get up, apologize (“it’s too cold/loud/etc”) and leave.
A few months ago I was in a pub in Cupertino (Duke of Edinburgh) and was astounded by how quiet it was. All you could hear was a murmur of conversation from nearby people. No loud music playing, no yelling or shouting. It was an incredibly pleasant experience and made me realize how miserable most pubs and restaurants are in comparison.
Maybe I just got lucky that particular evening, but it really stuck in my memory as a good experience.
My family and I recently moved to the Los Angeles CA area and we've yet to find a bar or restaurant that isn't incredibly loud.
It's almost like the local building codes, or the air or something else conspires to make the acoustics in every single place we've tried completely miserable - even when it's not very busy.
I'd say it is culture, not code. Twenty years ago, chains like California Pizza Kitchen were archtypical as noisier than average with lots of metal, glass, and other hard surfaces. It was already a cliche by then, but it wasn't the only style successfully operating.
What I've seen over the decades is those others going out of business and being replaced by either the glossy, clean style or the unfinished industrial style. Nobody is using soft materials which remind too much of our fathers' or grandfathers' banquet halls and family restaurants.
Those materials generally last longer and are easier to clean/maintain. As margins are driven down by competition, so will the amount expended on the decor.
Industrial design looks intentional (ie. Not necessarily good, but it looks like it's supposed to be that way) and is inexpensive.
I think you're right about the hard materials aspect. We moved from San Francisco though which seemed to have a similar number of places with cold, hard materials.
For quiet bars, try 1642 Beer and Wine, and Bar Bandini. For restaurants, smaller ethnic places are usually quiet. Americans unfortunately are just loud, extroverted folks.
I'm surprised the article didn't recommend the simplest solution for individuals, which is to use ear plugs. Nowadays you can get versions that are tiny and flesh-colored, i.e. nearly invisible. I felt a little dorky wearing them at first, but they make a world of difference, and I've seen other people start to wear them as well.
Obviously this doesn't exactly address the root of the problem, which is that restaurants shouldn't require the kind of PPE that you'd have at a concert venue.
A much simpler solution is to leave a restaurant if it's too loud. Alas this article that talks about "how to fight back" omits these simple obvious solutions.
If people don't give precise feedback why they are leaving, nothing will change.
Start by asking the staff to turn down the music. Then ask the manager. When it is still too loud, tell the manager why on the way out. And then leave negative reviews about the noise on Trip Advisor and Yelp...
Yes! A few years ago I quit going to a restaurant I liked because it was so noisy. I'd leave with a headache and felt like I couldn't carry on a conversation.
I carry high fidelity ear plugs that cut noise levels by about 15 decibels. These can be good for some restaurants, churches, and stores where noise levels are high but you still wish to hear people around you. Flesh-colored foam ear plugs can block 30+ decibels and are great for places with extreme volumes.
Have some high fidelity ear plugs myself. The hi-fi goes a long way!
I wear them in the car, in the bus, on the train, at a loud restaurant (can still hear friends), at concerts, in the datacenter.
I never expected them to be so comfortable. It feels completely natural now to pop them in if I'm feeling like the enviornmental sounds are higher than desirable.
Are there any with good carrying cases along the lines of apple airpods? I can fit those in my pocket and forget about them. Would love to do the same with some hife earplugs. (Have never tried any but they sound great)
Alpine Partyplugs come with a small keychain case that I carry wherever I go. So if we are going out with work and it's loud I can just plug them in discretely. Most of the time they don't even notice.
The name is cheesy but the plugs are good. I have tinnitus in one ear (from loud headphones and stupid overconfidence) and refuse to get it in the other one.
mine (etymotic) came with a small squeeze to open coin-pouch thing, maybe 5cm by 8cm. it disappears pretty well into a jeans pocket.
expect to pay 100-200 for custom molded ones. if you want inexpensive ones that are still pretty decent and low profile, I recommend Hearos. barely visible when they're in.
I guess that works if you don't intend to hold a conversation. Maybe an even better however unrealistic solution is for people that want their dinner accompanied by loud music to bring headphones.
Agree with this recommendation! The ones I have came with a case that attaches to my keychain, so I always have them available nearby and don't have to worry about forgetting them. They're also useful when walking past construction noise.
I quite often wear the orange Max ear plugs my Dad acquired bushels of over the years as a logger and diesel mechanic, at work when people are talking excessively loud next door, or the general buzz of conversation gets overwhelming. I'm not sure if there's anything special about them, but they seem to do a really great job of cutting out the frequencies that make up background noise, while still allowing you to hear people that are talking directly to you.
I think that they are these[1]. At least that is the same design; the flared-out base fills the ear and stays in better than most others I've seen. I'm not totally sure on the model; the plant my Dad worked at had huge boxes of the things everywhere, so you'd pick up a couple new pair every day. They survive going through the washing machine, so my mother accumulated coffee cans full of them that were left in pockets over the years.
Most of the time when I’m out at a restaurant or cafe it’s not to listen to loud music, but to sit down and have some quality time with one or a few people. It completely ruins the experience for me when they have music playing so. Damn. Loud. Especially in places packed with people where it’s already loud due to everyone talking. There are certain places where the food and service are good but I just won’t go because of the noise levels.
And this is coming from someone who loves heavy metal and goes to some pretty loud concerts. But there’s a time and a place for it.
Although young, I've found this a real problem. Many places have terrible acoustics and I totally disagree that making them better (maybe not great) is expensive - there's many simple things you can do to make a huge difference.
What I struggle with is hearing the conversation with the person across the table from me, what has actually recently helped is running a device with iOS 12 (beta) and using AirPods (https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/05/live-listen-ios-12-apple...) - it actually works pretty damn well, I just feel like a bit of a jerk wearing ear buds while dining / having a wine.
I always avoid loud restaurants and bars when given a choice, but if there is a work event I need to go to then they are useful. It's annoying carrying them around when I rarely use them, but it's better than giving yourself permanent hearing damage just because you need to go to a (poorly organized) meetup or whatever.
This has become my default selection criteria nowadays when choosing a cafe or restaurant to enjoy a meal or meet friends/colleagues at. No more is it about the food or coffee/tea quality. Noise levels are a critical factor. And this is coming from someone who regularly plays loud guitar on stage (though I do that with etymotic earplugs in nowadays).
I hate the modern "stark industrial" design trend in modern eating establishments. All that concrete and bare wood just act as echo reflections and harmonic cacophony.
Wetherspoons pubs in the UK don't play music, as a deliberate policy, and it's one of the reasons they're so successful. It's great if you just want to drink with your friends and have a conversation.
I feel that noise level risen across all retail and the service industry outlets. It seems commonplace now to walk into clothing stores, drug stores or even sometimes grocery stores and the music is way too loud.
I think it's part of a wider problem that either a) people might now require too much stimulation or management has concerns that there's not enough stimulation for their customers.
agree, nothing worse than the barista banging whatever it is to remove the coffee grounds. I know the noise is trying to create a busy buzz, but it's ridiculous after a while. Like working in a tool shop.
As a misophonia sufferer, the acoustics of loud restaurants have, at times, caused me to walk out and eat elsewhere. If I was with company when this urge to leave happened, I would squirm and wince in my chair, toughing it out. The worst offenders to my ears are piercing, sibilant s sounds and low, loud, bassy voices. I circumvent 90% of my discomfort by wearing Airpods emitting a low dose of white noise.
I usually bring a pair of bone conduction transducers, similar to the ones found in the Google Glass product. They allow me to communicate with my dining partner at a normal volume. The downside is that you hear more eating noises (chewing, etc) but you get used to that.
Many of my friends and I do indeed hate loud restaurants. So we sometimes wear discreet ear plugs, and pretend that we're hard of hearing. Actually, some of us are, and they just turn off their hearing aids.
I skimmed the article and didn't see this information: I'd like to know how this breaks down by region of the country, by urban vs rural, and by age of the patrons.
I always thought they designed them to be loud so that they could turn tables over faster. More table turnover means more revenue with little increase in cost.
sometimes I wish I could just grab something to eat and perhaps an alcoholic beverage without having to shout.
Also the tipping culture in North America really needs to go. It's prohibitive. Just take a look at Asia. People eat out more because people are not tipped. Of course North America is expensive. So why not create a livable wage and happy staff? Oh right, food industry is cutt throat and low margins.
At least here in Seoul, groceries/produce are actually more expensive than just ordering food delivery (there are many UberEATS-like competitors in Seoul because everything is so dense) or going to a restaurant.
Where is not loud anymore? It’s so noisy everywhere that people have to seek their quiet moments at home which in modern lifestyle it means using an smartphone and social networks where we can talk/hear without noise by writing/reading. While we fairly blame smarphones and social networks for changes in our families, I’m pretty sure noisy environment is one of the escalators.
The main reason I like to host people over for food or drink. You can actually properly discuss with people without shouting and distractions (waiters, other people yelling, children etc)
I wonder if this is partly because for Americans eating out is more commonplace? It's certainly a more rare thing in Germany, but afaik in the rest of the EU as well (?).
I guess you are in your late teens or early twenties? People tend to gain more appreciation for a good conversation and high-quality food as they grow older.
Mitigating the kind of noise restaurants can create isn't expensive. There's an off the shelf engineered solution that's been around for almost 70 years. Acoustic ceiling tiles. Restaurants are loud because acoustic ceiling tiles are out of fashion even though significantly less expensive than hard surfaces and exposed building services+structure if painted.[1] Though carpeting and upholstery help, acoustic treatment of the ceiling is the first line of noise mitigation. [2]
[1]: Among the most costly finishes are services and structures fabricated to aesthetic criteria.
[2]: The stylistic trend away from acoustic ceiling tile, carpets, and upholstery further erodes acoustic privacy in open offices.