soundproofing for urban people

Does extreme restaurant noise ruin your dining experience?  Personally, I get really frustrated if I have to yell in a restaurant or when I have to strain to hear the person sitting across from me. I keep track of particularly obnoxious restaurants and try to avoid them. You can also use an app called SoundPrint to see the loudness of a venue (in decibels) on a map. Recently I decided to start a podcast called about noise, acoustics, and sound solutions, and the first episode focuses on restaurant noise. In this episode, I visit some restaurants and record what it's like trying to hold a conversation at 85 decibels or above. Then I contrast those environments to a restaurant with sound absorbing panels on the ceiling. The panels really made a difference. Finally, I interview the president of Audimute  and we talked about how their acoustical consultants deal with different environments like loud restaurants -- and about some of their sound-panel options. You can  subsc

I went out for dinner this weekend at a tapas restaurant. The food was great, and the ambiance could have been great, too, if the restaurant had taken some steps to reduce noise. After all, going out for Spanish tapas should evoke feelings of pleasure, relaxation, great flavors, and a general "chilled out" environment. However, like many trendy eateries, the floors and walls were made of hard surfaces, and the sound just bounced and amplified. Every table was full of patrons -- which was great, of course. But when we walked in, we were greeted to a blast of noise. We had to yell at our table to hear each other. So I pulled out my mobile phone and checked one of my decibel-reader apps. It was 88.8 decibels. This article from Restaurant Engine states that normal conversation ranges from 55 to 65 dB, conversation gets difficult at 75 dB, and noise becomes "damaging" at 85 dB. Yet our table was clocking in at over 88 dB when we were just sitting across from each ot