The Rest Is Just Noise
by Andrew Mitchell, Francesco Aletta, Tin Oberman
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 celebrat
Episodes
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Spectres, Camouflage & Unruly Sound with Fiona Smyth
In the beginning there was a morass of Unruly Sound but then came the Acousticians. Pistols were fired. To record the introduction for today's episode, Francesco and Tin went to St Paul's Cathedral in London, looking for a suitable sonic background for this episode, which we recorded in October...
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Soundscape Odyssey Québécois with Edda Bild
Ben là, we recorded this episode during the two days in May 2024 while travelling through Montreal, Québec (CA). Edda Bild (la ville sonore) led us from one luring soundscape intervention site to another. Francesco, Tin and Andrew applied field recording and field rant techniques, in situ, to…
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Urban Soundscapes in Microscope with Usue Ruiz Arana, Richard Bentley, Sarah Jones-Morris et al.
First of all, thanks for coming! Today's episode was recorded in Microscope, Dalston last June at Usue Ruiz Arana's book launch, and we were lucky that Dan Rea from Periscope kindly introduced us, Usue and her guests. Stay tuned for an enticing conversation on soundwalks, soundscape practices and...
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Left Ear Right Ear with Lola de la Mata
Left Ear Right Ear Pink Noise Some listeners may find some of the sounds in this episode disturbing. In today's episode, we meet with a conceptual sound artist, composer, curator and musician, Lola de la Mata, working with tinnitus, spontaneous auto-acoustic emissions and aural diversity. We talk...
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#WiA special series with Jude Brereton
Welcome to Episode 7 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have the fabulous Prof. Jude Brereton from the University of York. Jude is a professor in audio and music technologies. We are going to talk about her interests in music, linguistics and acoustic phonetics and how...
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#WiA special series with Mariana Lopez
Welcome to the Episode 6 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have Professor Mariana Lopez with us. Mariana is a Latin American researcher based in the UK, specialising in sound design and accessibility, as well as acoustical heritage and historical soundscapes. She has a...
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La ville sonore avec Catherine Guastavino
For today's episode, our hosts Francesco and Andrew met up with Prof Catherine Guastavino in Ottawa, during the May meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. They will be talking about the science and beauty of Sounds In The City - la ville sonore - easily one of the most famous research...
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#WiA special series with Reena Mahtani
Welcome to the Episode 5 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a very special guest with us - Reena Mahtani. Reena is a Senior Acoustic Engineer at Sandy Brown Associates. We shall delve into Reena's personal and professional experiences, her international travels…
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Soundscape Gentrification with Bethan Prosser
...If you're sitting, come to me... In today's episode we meet the soundscape trespasser and researcher, Dr Bethan Prosser, who is resisting the never-ending waves of gentrification on the English seaside through sound and participatory listening. Find Bethan at University of Brighton. Follow her...
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#WiA special series with Alice Eldridge
Welcome to the Episode 4 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a wonderful guest with us - Professor Alice Eldridge from University of Sussex. Alice is a Professor of Sonic Systems (Music) and a musician. We are going to talk about her love for music and her curious...
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Complex Auditory Scenes with Maggie McMullin
For this episode, Andrew recorded an interview with Maggie McMullin, a researcher at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Indeed, this episode is about complex (natural) auditory scenes, but - what makes them so complex? Why we need machine learning tools to analyse them? How to start looking into…
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Sensory Urbanism with Jieling Xiao
Sounds, and then soundscape and planning and then urban sensory planning. We are expanding on our usual scope on sounds towards smell and sensory environments. Today's guest is Jieling Xiao, a Reader in Architecture and Sensory Environments at Birmingham School of Architecture and Design,...
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#WiA special series with Helen Sheldon
Welcome to the Episode 3 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a very special guest with us - Helen Sheldon from RBA Acoustics. Helen is a charted engineer and Director at RBA Acoustics, who actively promotes acoustics as a STEM subject speaking in schools and...
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Listening to Landscapes with Usue Ruiz Arana
In today's episode we have some big words in the title and with Usue Ruiz Arana, a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Newcastle University, we are going to revisit some of concepts we have talked about very often: What is a soundwalk? How should we use soundwalks? How do we bring this concept…
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Radio Utopia: La Biennale di Venezia 23 with Carlotta Darò and Nicolas Tixier
Welcome to The Rest Is Just Noise, a monthly podcast about what do architects & acousticians, researchers & artists, engineers & academics have to say about the science and beauty of sounds in cities and landscapes. So, is there a better place to look for those answers than in the Laboratory of…
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#WiA special series: Sustainable Careers with Angela Lamacraft
Welcome to the Episode 2 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a very special guest with us - Ms Angela Lamacraft from Sustainable Acoustics. Angela is working on how to make buildings acoustically pleasing for people who are working in them and the people who are...
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Cities and Memory (and Microphones)
For today's episode we went on a walk through a maze of alleyways in Central London to meet Stuart Fowkes, the founder of Cities and Memory, and to learn firsthand about this fantastic international platform for promoting urban sound and its impact on society. Check out Cities and Memory webpage...
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Urban Sound Symposium 2023
Your hosts Francesco, Andrew and Tin went to the 3rd edition of the Urban Sound Symposium, locally organised by researchers at La Salle Campus Barcelona this April. As expected, it was a truly lovely event featuring the protagonists of the most recent developments in the field, some of which we...
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#WiA special series: Bubbles Everywhere with Eleanor Stride
Today we celebrate the #INWED23 with the first episode in our new special series Women in Acoustics #WiA, led by Dr Hasina Begum, EDI Champion for the UK Acoustics Network (UKAN+). But what have bubbles to do with it? Apparently everything. We talk with Eleanor Stride about what bubble acoustics...
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Engaging with Everyday Sounds and Marcel Cobussen
Stop - listen to the sounds around you! Our today's guest is Marcel Cobussen, Professor of Auditory Culture and Music Philosophy at Leiden University. Marcel has recently published his book 'Engaging with Everyday Sounds'. It's a journey to rediscover sounds around us and transform how we listen....
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Sayonara Soundscapes
How do we implement soundscape design in practice? What tools are available for a soundscape designer? And when should it even be considered? And what's the difference between a landscape design approach and an engineering approach? All this, and more, we're going to discuss with today's guest,...
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Aural Diversity with John Drever
Today we talk with Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art, John Drever, about what aural diversity is in the first place and how it all started, from paper towels to Kafka. Find John's and Andrew's book Aural Diversity @ Routledge. Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/ Twitter:...
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Engineering Soundscapes
Recently Andrew defended his PhD thesis so we came up with this episode to celebrate him. Andrew has stepped down from his hosting role, for this episode only, and came along carrying his jazz trombone to record one or two licks and talk his coding work, predictive soundscape modelling, and…
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Highlights of the Acoustics of Ancient Theatres Symposium
In early July 2022 Tin attended the Acoustics of Ancient Theatres Symposium in Verona, Italy. In today's episode, we took a nostalgic look back and talked Greek and Roman ancient theatres in modern cities, Italian Opera, British parliament and beyond! If you bear with us, you'll also find that…
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"Urban Roars" with Jordan Lacey
We've talked about "musical drones" in one of our previous episodes. Well, this time we decided to investigate this idea a bit further as we look into Melbourne's underground and seek out the soundscape potential a humble air conditioning unit (well, four of them actually) can offer. We had a...
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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 psychoacoustics of blind and sighted people. Find Mats at the Stockholms...
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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 of that is difficult. Today we're speaking with Like Jiang, a...
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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 perceived this change in their urban soundscape. Come...
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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 speaking with Sarabeth Mullins, a researcher at…
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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 classification, social isolation for older people with...
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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 sound in cities. Today we're speaking for the 2nd time...
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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 that run down, but Andrew is also sitting down for some...
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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 in space? These are historic soundscapes - ones which...
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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 the "age of the future" we expect to see drones…
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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 went quiet as people were forced to stay at home. We…
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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 Associate Professor Gascia Ouzounian, joined by her colleague, a Bartlett alumna Dr Ruth Bernatek. They reflect on their ongoing ERC project Soncities at University of Oxford that brings together sound...
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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 physiological limitations that prevented it from...
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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 with Simone Torresin, who has done the most recent...
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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 organisation Women In Sound, Women On Sound, whose goal is to make...
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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 leading researchers in urban sound and soundscape. In today's bonus episode, Andrew and Francesco discuss their...
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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 out different water feature installations, with many...
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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 sociologist and soundscape researcher Edda Bild about 'sonic...
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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 International Year of Sound, but it may have been just a tad…
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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 Attention Restoration Theory (ART), Perceived...
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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 that and more as we discuss her paper Predicting the Perceived...
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Ep.0 A Noisy Prelude
Meet our hosts and our podcast! In this introductory episode we introduce Andrew, Francesco, and Tin and clue you in to what you can expect to hear about on The Rest Is Just Noise. You'll hear about how each of our hosts found their way from architecture, physics, and music into the world of…
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About this show
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 celebrat
Hosted by
Andrew Mitchell, Francesco Aletta, Tin Oberman
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