>> This episode of the Modern Rogue brought to you by Upstart.
>> Go to upstart.com/rogue and check your rate now,
It doesn't affect your credit.
>> Spell it right though, R-O-G-U-E.
[clap with an echo that overstays its welcome]
>> All right, Murphy, you want the good news or the bad news?
>> Oh, bad news first, always.
>> Okay, the good news is we have a studio
that we can make into a podcast studio.
Everybody's always asking,
"When are you going to make a podcast?"
And the answer is, "Well, first, we need a studio."
>> This is the worst possible place to record audio.
The only way this could be worse is if Mötley Crüe
were playing in the corner.
Can we get Mötley Crüe to play in the corner?
>> Okay, first of all, one thing at a time.
You're right, that's the bad news.
The bad news is good god, are these acoustics terrible, terrible,
terrible, terrible, terrible. [echoes]
You couldn't even tell whether or not I was saying that.
>> You know, you were looking away.
He is a magician!
[deep synthetic rumble]
[electrical pop] [gentle vinyl static]
[rising chime]
>> So last summer, I did the Texas Monthly podcast.
It was a fantastic interview, and their podcast studio is incredible.
The guy who designed it
is named Brian Standeffer, and I showed him video
of all of this, and I said, "Is this crazy for us to try
to make this a production studio?"
And he said,
"Yes." [laughter]
And he said, "Well, we can't cure it, but we can tame it."
From what I heard from Brian, the big problem, of course,
is that sound just keeps bouncing all around
and Brian pretty much just gave me a list
of things I should buy for sound baffling,
which are basically just fabric
to absorb a lot of the reflections.
>> Oh, that's what all those boxes were,
>> Yes. >> that have been there forever.
>> For a year, yeah.
No, no, no, no--we'll figure that out.
But, before we even begin, we have to find out just how bad it is.
[boop]
>> Sound number one.
[claps twice]
Sound number two.
"My pickle provider has pleurisy."
>> Sound number three.
[censor bleep]
That lingers around so long! >> I know!
You could just hear it, floating around.
Oh, that's terrible.
[bloop]
>> Sound number one.
[claps twice]
Sound number two.
"My pickle provider has pleurisy."
>> Sound number three.
[censor bleep]
[bloop]
>> Sound number one.
[claps twice]
Sound number two.
"My pickle provider has pleurisy."
>> Sound number three.
[censor bleep]
>> Okay.
I don't have to be an audio specialist
to know that that is horrible.
>> Pretty bad! [echoes]
It's pretty bad, I can't even raise my voice.
>> No, it's really--
>> I feel like I should be shouting at middle school kids
like, "More hustle, come on!" >> Like in a gymnasium?
>> "What are you doing, what are you doing‽"
>> Get a whistle.
[laughs]
>> All right, so at this point we've got all of the sound baffling,
we don't really know what we're doing on installation,
we're just going to do our best and see if it works.
>> It's the Modern Rogue way.
>> [sighs] I like our credo.
[laughs]
♪ [slow rhythmic music]
♪ ♪
♪ [imbued with a nostalgic optimism but grounded in a contemplative melancholy]
♪ ♪
All right, so it took the team about, what,
10 hours to put everything up?
>> Yeah, we worked really--
okay, they worked really hard.
>> There's definitely this moment that you and I realized
like, we're just slowing things down,
but we tried to go with a simple design,
we wanted to stagger everything, the idea being
that we didn't want any one section
where sound could bounce back and forth and give us that echo,
so these in the back are staggered with these
on the other side, the only thing we're missing is one up
in that corner because we didn't have the right size unit,
but already you can tell, I mean just talking,
there's a huge difference.
>> It is remarkably different,
it doesn't sound literally like an echo chamber.
>> Yeah, and we did put down a couple of rugs,
my guess is that the more equipment comes in here,
the less of a chance any sound can bounce back and forth.
>> How about some olive green shag carpet, like some thick--
>> Don't you tempt me.
>> I'm tempting you man!
>> I'll get an avocado refrigerator in here. [laughter]
>> That's all I ever wanted!
>> All right, you ready for the test?
>> Let's do it.
[boop]
My pickle provider has pleurisy
[claps]
[censor bleep]
>> Oh we should wait for each one to finish,
what's funny is there's so few echoes that I'm like, "just go, let's go!"
>> Yeah because it used to be, you could just hear it--
>> We had to wait for like three seconds before.
>> Yeah you could hear it reverberating and bouncing around the room.
>> Yeah, okay, all right.
[claps]
>> My pickle provider has pleurisy.
[censor bleep]
>> I didn't hear any echoes. >> At all.
>> That was amazing!
>> I mean you can hear it a little bit when we talk.
>> Like if I shout, shout! >> Yeah.
>> Like, but even then the drop off is extraordinary.
>> Yeah, because it used to linger, you could hear it bouncing around.
>> Yeah.
[boop]
[clap]
>> My pickle provider has pleurisy.
[censor bleep]
>> I mean, it sounded super dead!
>> I know, it's like my clap didn't go anywhere.
>> Man, that's remarkable.
Okay so, iPhone test.
>> Oh, right. >> For the room mic.
>> Yep, yep.
[boop]
[clap]
My pickle provider has pleurisy.
[censor bleep]
I keep thinking I'm not clapping loud enough.
[laughs]
>> You're like, "Where's the echo?" >> Yeah.
>> Well I think we've proved it,
subjectively, I could say that Brian Standeffer
is a genius, and he had the exact right prescription for this room.
>> Absolutely, I mean, even when we opened them,
right out of the box, we started seeing a difference
before they were even mounted.
>> The biggest leap was going from zero to literally anything in this room,
the moment mass was in here, it got better,
but then, once they were out of the boxes,
it was like, "Okay, we're really onto something."
>> Yeah, one of the things that would've been easy
to overlook are the hanging panels on the ceiling,
they make a huge difference, and it's still not perfect,
there's still work to be done, but we've come a long way,
and this is actually kind of functional now.
>> So, subjectively, huge success this definitely works,
massive massive difference, thank you very much, Brian.
Objectively, I guess we have all the data,
we have all the recordings, at this point you and I
are not going to be qualified to chime in
on what the difference is.
>> With the little waveforms and stuff like that?
>> Or even having golden ears and being able
to understand anything. >> Mostly deaf.
>> This is where we toss to you, Brandt.
[airy whoosh]
>> Hey everybody. So, I have to admit,
our testing wasn't done under let's say,
the most rigorous of testing conditions,
but, I have one last bit of audio that I think
is going to demonstrate quite clearly
just how much the audio has changed in the room,
and the key lies
in the on board microphone of the GH5,
the cameras we were already recording with.
Now the microphones on the GH5 are completely impractical
for picking up clean vocals due
to the omnidirectional nature of them,
they pick up a lot of ambient noise, but
for this particular test,
that's exactly what we need.
So for this last bit here, I'm going to focus primarily
on their clapping.
Claps are great for this because they
have a really short attack, and effectively no sustain
which means that, the sound is basically immediate,
and it dissipates just as quickly,
so any sound you hear after the initial pressure wave
of the clap is going to be the echo.
Okay, so here are my two samples and I think you'll be able
to notice a pretty distinct difference,
even before we get too deep into the analysis.
[clap, lingers with heavy echo]
[clap, slight echo]
So to make sure that we're not just hearing what we expect to hear,
I've imported this into Audition,
and we're going to be looking at the spectral frequency display,
which really visualizes the shape and character
of the sound by showing you the frequencies
that it makes over time.
So in both of these samples, we can see that the body
of sound of the clap covers
a really wide range of frequencies,
this is the initial pressure wave of the clap.
Anything after that is pretty much just going to be echo.
So now our job here is to effectively determine
when the echo ends, the bulk of the echo I would say
is right in this area.
Now lets go ahead and listen to it just so
that way we can verify that this sounds about right to us.
[clap echoes]
And a good way to verify this is to listen
after the selection for any residual echo.
And to me it does just sound like room tone,
and if we do the math, that's about 36,245 samples.
I feel pretty confident about that, the after sample lasted
about 0.755 seconds.
So let's compare this to the before sample.
Now this one has a fairly strong echo that takes a
really long time to dissipate, but I feel like
somewhere around here is appropriate.
Let's go ahead and give the selection a listen.
[clap echoes heavily]
So with this selection we have 81,625 samples in duration,
which approximates out to 1.701 seconds.
All right so, after this rudimentary analysis,
I was able to show about a 55% decrease in duration of the echo,
last night my figures were a little bit closer to 60% so,
somewhere in that range
and not all echoes are built equal,
so in listening to the before and after sample, you can hear
that the early bounces in the echo are already much quieter
in the after sample.
So it changes the characteristic of the sound
and I think it makes it much more manageable and easy
to listen to, even when there is still a little bit of echo.
Now the room has already changed some,
we've started moving equipment into the room,
which I show off in the CTA at the very end of the episode,
but for now,
I'm going to toss it back to the guys,
because they got to talk about some ad stuff
or something, I don't know.
Bye.
>> The diabolical catch 22 of applying for credit, Brian.
>> Okay, don't even get me started. You want to be able to
know how good your credit score is, then you go
apply for a loan, and god forbid you should find out
what your rate is, but then the mere fact
that they run the credit score check
and then next thing you know it's like,
for the crime of wanting to know your credit score,
your credit score is lowered!
>> Upstart does not do that though, they actually go
in and look at your education and your work history and everything.
[affecting an ostentatious accent] >> What‽ This is madness, it's me the voice of credit scores!
Your education doesn't matter, [meaty punch]
your work history doesn't matter, all that matters
is my secret number which you must not ever find out,
or I will lower it.
>> Yes, but if you go to Upstart, you can check
your Upstart rate, it doesn't effect your credit,
and it could help you build your credit
and consolidate all of your existing loans if you have any.
>> This sounds like a threat to my hierarchy!
>> You're going down, your days are numbered, Mr. Credit.
>> Oh no! >> Yeah.
>> The only thing worse would be if I found out
that you could get a personal loan
without consulting me, your credit score at all,
and that you would get the money the very next day
in most cases.
>> Guess what. [vocalizes impressed existential shock]
Yeah, that's what I'm telling you!
>> It's only you, at least it's not 300,000 other people
who've used upstart.com/rogue.
>> Bad news credit monolith!
>> Oh no! >> Yeah, you're screwed!
Out of the 300 companies in their category on Trustpilot,
Upstart is ranked number one.
>> What‽ >> Yeah!
>> That sound very trustworthy!
>> You can't win on this one.
>> [wilting] I'm melting!
[dropped accent] End scene, thank you Upstart!
♪ ♪
[slow clap from off screen]
[laughs]
>> Please.
-- CC BY BIZARRE MAGIC --
>> BRANDT: Bryce, what's up?
>> So, a lot has changed since we shot this video,
we've got our computers going in,
I have a little, Brian's podcasting desk, so
where he does Night Attack and Cordkillers.
We're getting that all set up today,
we got a couch from the other room,
and we even have arcade cabinets so people can have a little bit
of fun here sometimes.
>> BRANDT: Wow. >> BRYCE: Yeah.