The Rest Is Just Noise

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 2024 in Cambridge with Fiona Smyth.  We hope you will enjoy a conversation about the history o...

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 stay focused on their mission. We hope you will enjoy this sound collage of ambiances and witful insights...

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 the future of mutispecies approach to soundscapes with Usue, Richard and Sarah and the very...

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 about how research-informed art shouldn't...

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 they all tie in together to understand the singing voice in various acoustic spaces. This further goes...

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 background in music and sound design and we were very excited to chat about medieval video gaming! Fin...

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 projects in the soundscape community that has been running for 10 years now. So, how it all started? W...

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, and everything which helped her develop as an expert in occupational noise and sound measurements a...

...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 on X: @bethanmathiasp and LinkedIn . Check out Bethan's upcoming chapter Listening to...

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 mind which has led her to a foundation interest in sound, and moving in between the strictly defined aca...

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 them in the first place? This conversation took place at the ASA May event in Chicago, Illinois, but it&a...

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, Birmingham City University. Find Jieling at Birmingham City . Read Jieling's paper about a participa...

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 universities and promoting engineering to a wider public. Find Helen at: https://www.rba-acoustics.co.uk/team...

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 to the cities? Is landscape a superior format to portrait? Find Usue at Newcastle University . Che...

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 the Future, the 18th edition of the world-famous exhibition on architecture that’s being hel...

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 living in them. She looks at the different types of materials that are used and how to better the performa...

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 and consider taking part in many exciting projects, whether as a recordist, a composer, or both. U...

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 have already had the honour of hosting in our previous episodes, such as  Aural Diversity with John Drev...

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 are and how being an exceptional woman has set her career in acoustics. Prof. Eleanor Stride is th...

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. We'll talk about what is an everyday sound, the politics and philosophy surro...

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, Gunnar Cerwén. Through his work looking at the soundscape of Japanese gardens, we're...

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: @JustNoisePod Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/ Twitter: @JustNoisePod

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 promote his rigorous probabilistic approach to soundscape - enabling engineers to finally start using it. Ch...

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 the episode features some binaural samples depicting a summer in Verona - headphones recommende...

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 chance to put our hands on Jordan Lacey during his busy research tour and speak about...