The Rest Is Just Noise
The Rest Is Just Noise is a monthly podcast exploring the relationship between sound and our cities. Each episode our passionate and excitable hosts (three soundscape researchers) are joined by an expert guest from fields such as acoustics, architecture, and environmental psychology, to discuss their latest work and introduce our audience to the science, beauty, and noise of urban sound.
From the announcement of the 2023 ASA Science Communication Awards for Acoustic Expert Multimedia Winner:
"The Rest is Just Noise Podcast stands out as a remarkable audio journey into the realm of acoustics. With deep knowledge and captivating storytelling, co-hosts Dr. Andrew Mitchell, Dr. Francesco Aletta, and Dr. Tin Oberman explore various acoustical phenomena and their impact on our lives. Through interviews with experts and immersive soundscapes, this podcast educates and entertains listeners, creating a space where the beauty and significance of acoustics are celebrated."
Episodes
46 episodes
Can you hear me?
Today we're bringing you right into the conversation with us by recording the episode on a binaural head. We're going to be speaking with a Professor in Psychology Mats Nilsson about his work on studying sound perception and psychoacous...
How much is a decibel worth?
How much is a decibel worth? Can you put a price on sound quality? From house prices to heart attacks, from airplane noise to church bells, sound costs us money and years of our lives but can also bring value. How to quantify the value ...
Lockdown Soundscapes
The lockdowns due to COVID-19 had a huge impact on our urban environments and the sounds of our cities. In one of our recent publications we wanted to have a look at not just how much did those sound levels decrease but how would people have pe...
The Songs of Notre-Dame - Special ASA episode with Sarabeth Mullins
Notre-Dame de Paris is famous for its music - from the famous bells to its three pipe organs. But did you know the building itself has influenced how Western music developed? Today (actually nearly five months ago, but who's counting?) we're sp...
ASA ReCap - Once Upon A Time In Seattle
In early December 2021 our host Andrew attended the Seattle meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and now walks us through the highlights of the conference. We talked about electric vehicles additive sounds, deep learning for audio class...
Picnics at the Wall with Pamela Jordan
Throughout the last year, we've seen a whole bunch of articles, projects and research about how much urban noise was reduced due to COVID-19 lockdowns. This is our 2nd episode in a series looking at the impacts of those lockdowns worldwide on s...
Live from the ASA! Mini-episode with Ronald Altoon - Ethics and Culture in Acoustics
This week Andrew is at the Acoustical Society of America conference in Seattle. Throughout the week, our goal is to bring you some highlights about the talks he found most interesting. At the end of it we'll put together a full episode with t...
Ep. 12 Soundscape Legacies
We've talked a lot about soundscapes: how we perceive them, how we measure them, how we can predict them... but all of these soundscapes existed. What about the ones that - like purgatory - are just somewhere in our minds or floating out there ...
Ep. 11 Mechanical Birds - Drones and Soundscapes with Dr. Antonio Torija
In our very first episode, we learned that not all natural sounds are equal, and not all of them are pleasant. In today's episode, we'll talk about how not all mechanical sounds are equal and not all of them are necessarily bad. As we move into...
Lockdown Soundscapes - The Stockholm Syndrome with Romain Rumpler
This month we're kicking off a new series of episodes looking at how the COVID-19 lockdowns impacted urban soundscapes around the world! Throughout this past year, we've seen countless articles, podcasts, and twitter threads about how cities we...
Ep. No. 9 with Prof Gascia Ouzounian and Dr Ruth Bernatek
Number 9, number 9, number 9...As promised, today we're back where we left as we talk with Assoc...
Ep. 8 "Stereophonica" with Prof Gascia Ouzounian
Today we understand sound is inherently spatial. It interacts with and informs us about the space it - and we - exist in. But as recently as 1900, scientists held that sound itself could not relay "spatial attributes" and that the human ear had...
Ep. 7 Circumplex Conversations - Measuring Soundscape Perception with Simone Torresin
This month we return to one of our favourite topics - how do you actually measure perception? We trace the development of the circumplex model of affect from it's start in 1980, to it's first application in soundscape in 2010. Finally we speak ...
Ep. 6 S̶t̶a̶r̶ Sound Wars with Dr Linda O'Keeffe
Happy May the Fourth! In this episode, we're speaking with Linda O'Keeffe, a sound artist and head of the School of Art at Edinburgh College of Art. Her work on gender inclusion in the sonic arts has led to the development of the organ...
Ep. 5 Highlights of the Urban Sound Symposium 2021
This week marked the second Urban Sound Symposium, held virtually! Featuring keynotes with 30 speakers, panel discussions, and 27 posters, the Symposium brought together some of the leadi...
Ep. 4 "Musikiosk, Misters, and More!" with Dan Steele and Edda Bild
Today we have a just-long-enough chat with Drs. Edda Bild and Dan Steele from McGill University about their various soundscape intervention projects. They'll take us through installing free-to-use speakers in a small park in Montreal to testing...
Sonic Appropriation and the UK Policing Bill with Edda Bild
In light of the UK's newly proposed policing bill which aims to impose noise limits and other new restrictions on protests, we bring you a special episode. Recorded a month before news of the bill came out, our host Andrew spoke with sociologis...
Ep.3 2020 was The Year of Sound (among other things) with Marion Burgess, Michael Taroudakis, & Jean-Dominique Polack
The International Year of Sound is a global initiative to highlight the importance of sound in all aspects of life and to promote an understanding of sound-related issues at the national and international level. 2020 was the Internation...
Ep.2 Up and Down the Soundscape Scales with Dr Sarah Payne
How do we measure sound perception? How can scientists quantify something so subjective?Dr Sarah Payne walks us through how scales for soundscape are adapted from visual research. We'll discuss a whole range of scales and theories, like...
Ep.1 "The Birds" with Dr Ellie Ratcliffe
Today we speak with Dr Ellie Ratcliffe, "Queen of the Birds"! Can bird sounds help us recover psychologically? What do we even mean by that? And what is it about specific sounds that we find pleasing? Ellie will walk us through all ...