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How Restaurants Got So Loud (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Other sounds that reach 70 decibels include freeway noise, an alarm clock, and a sewing machine. But it's still quiet for a restaurant. Others I visited in Baltimore and New York City while researching this story were even louder: 80 decibels in a dimly lit wine bar at dinnertime; 86 decibels at a high-end food court during brunch; 90 decibels at a brewpub in a rehabbed fire station during Friday happy hour. Restaurants are so loud because architects don't design them to be quiet. Much of this shift in design boils down to changing conceptions of what makes a space seem upscale or luxurious, as well as evolving trends in food service. Right now, high-end surfaces connote luxury, such as the slate and wood of restaurants including The Osprey in Brooklyn or Atomix in Manhattan.
This trend is not limited to New York. According to Architectural Digest, mid-century modern and minimalism are both here to stay. That means sparse, modern decor; high, exposed ceilings; and almost no soft goods, such as curtains, upholstery, or carpets. These design features are a feast for the eyes, but a nightmare for the ears. No soft goods and tall ceilings mean nothing is absorbing sound energy, and a room full of hard surfaces serves as a big sonic mirror, reflecting sound around the room. The result is a loud space that renders speech unintelligible. Now that it's so commonplace, the din of a loud restaurant is unavoidable. That's bad for your health -- and worse for the staff who works there. But it also degrades the thing that eating out is meant to culture: a shared social experience that rejuvenates, rather than harms, its participants.
This trend is not limited to New York. According to Architectural Digest, mid-century modern and minimalism are both here to stay. That means sparse, modern decor; high, exposed ceilings; and almost no soft goods, such as curtains, upholstery, or carpets. These design features are a feast for the eyes, but a nightmare for the ears. No soft goods and tall ceilings mean nothing is absorbing sound energy, and a room full of hard surfaces serves as a big sonic mirror, reflecting sound around the room. The result is a loud space that renders speech unintelligible. Now that it's so commonplace, the din of a loud restaurant is unavoidable. That's bad for your health -- and worse for the staff who works there. But it also degrades the thing that eating out is meant to culture: a shared social experience that rejuvenates, rather than harms, its participants.
Earplugs and text each other across the table.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No more drinks and conversation. Eat and move out, so the next group can come in.
Table turnover is one of the key metrics for profitability.
I avoid loud restaurants; I'm sure I'm not the only one. They may look nice, and maybe their looks attract more people than their loudness scares off; but, I do take note if a place is too loud and I don't return- so there is a downside to being loud, they do lose some customers... unless I'm just a unique freak.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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You can buy a variety of acoustic baffling and other sound treatment that looks sleek and modern. In the end, it's just the restaurant being cheap and confusing noise with liveliness. To be fair, a lot of customers do the latter, too.
That is all.
The noise problem noted is made worse by idiot restaurant owners. One local idiot had two tvs and a radio station, all of which were loud, going at the same time. She refused to turn them down. I paid the bill, left, never went back.
Not much later she went out of business. Gee, I wonder why.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
are now ordering their food delivered. I find going to most restaurants about as pleasant as going to a shopping mall. Ugh!
Coffee shops are usually pretty quiet, if only because they are smaller and fewer people fit into them.
People want to have what they say heard. As the background noise goes up, they talk louder. That brings the background noise level up for others, so they talk louder,
For years, our company held an employee Christmas party at a steak house. The last two years, though, we employees said forget it... the noise level was too high to socialize, even though we all loved the food.
Sound absorbing treatments are usually, at the very least, flame retardant, as they are designed for use in commercial applications and have to follow fire codes for building materials. You can clean them with an upholstery attachment on a vacuum cleaner.
Our favorite breakfast place has pictures hanging on the walls and sound absorbing panels on the ceiling to control noise. It's also broken up into multiple rooms with upholstered chairs and booths. Even when it's packed, which it often is, you can have a conversation with everyone at your table without raising your voice.
The new hipster brunch place that opened up on the other side of town is a giant concrete, wood, glass and steel box. when someone sneezes on the other size of the restaurant it reverberates through the space like a thunderclap.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Yes and one could go on about how most people don't know shit from quality these days.... one may be right even but what gets me is that in this time where about every niche idea seems to prosper, pure quality (without the added and often fake sense of luxury) seems hard to find.
Perhaps I'm just googling wrong.
Continuous loud noise makes people uncomfortable so they won't linger after finishing their meal which results in faster turnover and more customers seated.
Sorry, while the acoustics of a lot of restaurants leave much to be desired it's really the self-absorbed patrons and staff. You see we like to think we're all in our own world while eating out but the thing is your conversation levels tend to be a bit loud. People when they're going out and eating with others tend to be a little more boisterous anyway, hey they're having a good time right? Because your conversation is above a normal tone, the folks text to you can't hear their conversation. To compensate, they retaliate subconsciously and talk louder too. It especially gets bad with large groups with more than 4 people or with families / groups with kids under the age of 7 are seated nearby. Restaurants/bars et. al. could do us a favor by putting up some noise dampening material but that still won't fix the loud obnoxious clods two tables over who are in their own little world.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You can buy a variety of acoustic baffling and other sound treatment that looks sleek and modern. In the end, it's just the restaurant being cheap ...
Cheap and ignorant of the problem. I have, personally, attempted to quiet the equivalent of a loud bar: a conference poster session in absolute worst-case acoustic conditions of hard surfaces and an arched ceiling that concentrated noise. The noise absorbing panels cost a total of $3000, delivered at about $100 per panel, two dozen of them, plus shipping. They took the punishingly-loud situation down through very loud, to merely loud --- with 100 people all talking together in a confined space, you can't do much better than that. The panels are sleek, would look good in any modern decor, and, mounted on the ceiling, are entirely unobtrusive.
So we aren't talking a ton of money, which means the restaurant and bar owners are indeed, being either ignorant, naive, cheap, or some combination of those three.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
If I go to a sports bar, I expect certain levels of noise from the patrons and screens (although most of the screens have closed captioning turned on)
If I go out for dinner, I'd like to be able to hold a conversation with the people at my table, and not hear people 10 tables away. Older, more expensive places usually are much quieter.
One of the places I used to like was quiet to medium loud, but they completely overhauled and expanded the place.
Next time I went in, you couldn't hear the person talking next to you. The new decor included a huge glass cupola which acted like a sound magnifier. It was so loud, I was wondering if there were some sound canceling technology that they could install.
Which people often forget was a major source of gossip in the restaurants of old.
This is really correlation not causation though. The major reasons for the changes mentioned are simple:
ADA
Fire Safety
Sanitation/Inspections.
ADA requires larger spaces to accomodate wheelchairs. Gone are the old timey tight spaces where once a heavyset American would have a hard time squeezing by.
Fire Safety has lead to all possible flammable objects being removed or reduced.
Sanitation has lead to stainless-only tableware, a hard plastic easy-wipe surface, and no tablecloth except in extremely upscale restaurants (and in most of the quality ones those have to be changed after any spills or ideally after the customers leave before the next customers are seated, leading to a few minutes worth of bussing and resetting per table, instead of a simple wipedown and new place settings (which most waiters I have seen can have done in around 30 seconds.
Several years ago, probably over a decade ago, slashdot published an article (that I failed to find) on restaurant noise. Yes, people were complaining about noisy restaurants back then.
To summarize, a restaurant with dining on two floors set up one with hard surfaces, bare brick walls an an exposed ceiling. It was loud! The other was traditional high-end room with wood tables, drapes an other soft sound absorbent surfaces. It was very quiet. Both were serving the same "New American" menu from the same kitchen.
After 6 months the "quiet" floor was closed and refitted to match the noisy floor because the loud floor was booked solid while the quiet floor always had available tables. The hypothesis was that noisy restaurants were perceived as "exciting" while quiet ones were "boring".
The bottom line was that, no matter how much people complain about noise, they prefer that to quiet dining. Loud dining rooms are often very much by design, not acoustic incompetence.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired