this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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Fun fact: what that audio guy was describing is called "room tone" and correct it's used for both patching and as a base sitting under all the other audio elements for the mix (music, dialogue, sound FX) and is a common practice after a on location shoot is wrapped to have the whole set "hold for tone".
The reasoning being it captures the 3D soundscape of the ambient noise in the space and how those noises bounce off surfaces and people that our ears definitely notice when it's missing like your post says! The reverb of a small office room and a gym would have very different room tones for example. And an absolute void in audio is extremely distressing and it's why you almost never have absolute 0dB in a sound mix unless intentional.
Source: work in professional production
This is also why all online meeting tools and teleconference systems also have a background tone. It tells you that you're still connected, you're live.
I should know exactly what you’re talking about. But not sure I do. Will listen for the slight lack of nothing next time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_noise
Sold
“Here, can you handle this?”
— Alanis Morissette
Wait, why did she say that?
In her song All I Really Want, there’s a measure of complete silence after the lyrics “Why are you so petrified of silence? Here, can you handle this?”
Oh. I'm dumb, I was making a joke because I thought they were implying that listening to her was a bad time but it turns out it really was a quote. I got wooooshed this time.
Edited to add: I mean no offense to fans of Alanis Morissette, to be clear. I don't think I'm super familiar with her discography.
Genuine question, what do you do for outer space? I know what you mean by a complete audio void being unsettling, and I’ve seen sci-fi movies where using complete audio void for space enhances the anxiety of the scene very well. But when it’s not a complete audio void, what simulates space silence?
It should be the sound of the machines on board, but now I also wonder what is used
Well if you mean creatively, there's lots of options. But yes, using a complete void of audio can also be an intentional creative choice to force you to feel certain things, I believe 2001 did this for a lot of the external space shots. Cut to black endings to a lot of movies use an empty block of audio too as a punctuation.
A lot of other movies/shows use a lot of different creative options. Like if you're exposed in space you'd hear your heart and blood pressure sky rocket before stopping, maybe your last breath of oxygen molecules vibrating in your cranium like The Expanse did. You could maybe create the sound of an exposed star bombarding you too. Star Trek often uses ambient engine noises or their ships to fill any empty space in the mix. Another common example is if you're in a space suit, you'd hear the internal machines and your heartbeat would be super loud. All of these are creative choices of course and not meant to be realistic, which nothing really is meant to be in a movie mix.
Is it not also useful to record the ambiant noise in order to subtract the noise from a record you want as clean as possible?
It will not allow you to just subtract the noise, as specific sound will slightly differ each time, but knowing characteristics might help. But if you plan on doing this, you're better off with using several microphones in different places, afaik
I remembered doing that during home recording. I had a tool that required to record the background noise and then I could apply it to my actual record to reduce the background noise on it.
Im confused. How exactly is the room tone used? Is replayed in the background during something like an A roll?
It's used in a number of different situations, but its most common use is as fill during dialogue cuts: let's say you want to put two different pieces of dialogue together, but have a natural pause between them, room tone is necessary to maintain continuity.
In a study during World War II regarding comprehensibility in radio communications, radio static was less destructive to understanding an interrupted statement than no sound at all.
Oh wow. Really interesting. Thanks
Also, one of the most effective forms of jamming was a recording of multiple voices all talking over each other, it made it virtually impossible to make out who you wanted to hear.
Not a professional, but studied it in college. It's mostly to either fill in gaps or loud noises.
One thing you can often do is get a "noise print" of the room, and you can isolate someone's audio basically perfectly. From there you can create a room tone and slap it under the entire track. Now if you need to mute or something you just cut the talking track and the room noise carries over.
If you don't get a good room tone, say you want to use someone looking at the camera, but the director was talking. If you try to filter out the directors voice, it's likely going to sound weird because some of the tones overlap with the room. So you mute it and slap the room tone over and you're good. They often get too much, because room tones vary ever so slightly. If you get a tiny half second sample, unless you get very lucky you'll pick up that something is repeating or sounds weird. If you have 10-20 seconds you can loop that no problem.
Oof yeah noise reduction and frequency remover tools can be awesome or really frustrating.