I can't hear you...

I’ve consulted for Zagat for the past few years. For them, the second most complained-about part of a restaurant experience is noise (second only to poor service). People hate airstrip-loud restaurants, yet they abound. When I reviewed for the SF Chronicle I covertly took a noise meter to each review and that information was listed at the end of each story.

• Under 65 decibels: pleasantly quiet, can talk easily
• 65-70 decibels: 60-70 is the level of normal conversation at 3-5 feet, normal piano practice, or a fortissimo singer 3 ft. away
• 70-75 decibels: talking normally gets difficult
• 75-80 decibels: can only talk in raised voices (75-85 is the level of chamber music in a small auditorium, 80 decibels is the dial tone of a telephone)
• 80+ decibels: too noisy for normal conversation

Continued exposure to noise at 85 decibels or higher eventually can cause hearing loss, according to standards set by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The restaurant I’m reviewing next week has a serious noise problem. I’d love to get readers’ thoughts on noise:

Is it a deterrent?
Should restaurants concern themselves with noise abatement?
Which restaurants are noisiest?

Comments

[Two Travelling Chefs]

There has to be a happy medium and distinct balance between feeling like you are inside the engine of a 747 or at a funeral. Growing up in Europe and my husband in South America, we have to concede that the noise level in the restaurants there are probably quite a bit higher than we are used to here.
In part because it is as much a social event as a food marathon, and if 4 people are not talking all at once with hand gestures to match, it just would not be eating out or in.
That said, even our restaurant, with its 14 foot high ceilings can sometimes get a bit noisy, although there are certain tables where the din is less, and we can steer guests there. Eating on our patio, en plein, is often another solution (okay not now, but give it another month or so).
We could hang material from the ceiling, which would make it look like a Moroccan Casbah, not the look we are going for or hang large pieces of painted cork board, reminiscent of a ceiling art gallery. But with less than .05% of our customers ever mentioning it, I think we are safe, for now.

[The Mouth]

Two T. Chefs, you are definitely safe. Even when your restaurant is at capacity, it's a nice hum of noise, not an assault. I'm trying to find a sound engineering company that specializes in restaurant sound design that might let me know all the tricks of the trade in terms of noise abatement.

[Richard Guzinya]

I know of a fantastic acoustical engineering firm called Performance Media Industries that consults on interior room acoustics for everything from recording studios to home theaters to restaurants. PMI uses clandestine architectural finishes to create effective reflection absorption and reverberation decay reduction. There are actually psychoacoustic targets and measures for appropriate reflection behavior in a room ... based on exhaustive testing of thousands of human test subjects. No one should propose anechoic chambers or "funeral parlor" performance; diffuse field reflections DO add ambience --- but not dominating specular reflections and grotesquely long reverb decay. The REAL rub though is that restaurant owners are too cheap to do the right thing, or are possessed about their interior decor. A great solution PMI offers is acoustical absorber panels that are concealed as any type of artwork you can digitize --- Monet to Playboy Centerfold. The art is applied to fabric and then wrapped on an absorption panel and then framed in a tasteful frame. For myself, I suffer from hearing loss (too many years next to guitar stacks & drummers), so it is nearly impossible for me to engage in boisterous conversations from the other end of the table when I'm in one of those "shabby acoustic restaurants". There really is good science to fix this stuff, but as with many things it comes down to spending some of those restaurant profits. Otherwise why wouldn't restaurants cook all organic and free range. A massage with dinner? I JUST TALK LOUDER TO COMPENSATE ... and tune out when grampa is talking at the other end of the table. RG