The Opportunity Of Together

when my editor at the wire proposed this idea of writing on the broader implications of ‘less is more’, i immediately thought of ‘motion pool’ by main as a distillation of the ideas and forms that had taken shape in loop. the following is a series of questions that were answered by robert hampson, the architect of both main and loop

questions:

with the statement on the back of that album ‘drumless space,’ rhythm was not necessarily eschewed but often made evident through a refined riff bolstered by studio tricks, electronics, samplers etc. when you were making that record, how did the concept of ‘drumless space’ guide the album?

in looking at the themes of loop — just from the titles themselves, ‘fade out’ “this is where you end,” ‘heaven’s end’ — there is a recurrence of annihilation. yes, this is something that simon reynolds mentions in blissed out, but i had wanted to revisit this idea once again but in the context of ‘motion pool’. as loop progressed through ‘a gilded eternity’ and you began main, that annihilation was manifest in sound. by the time you arrived at ‘motion pool,’ i find myself returning to a metaphor of the earth gone and the remaining satellites cast in vertiginous orbits circling that void. is a science-fiction reading apt? if not, where would a better metaphor be located?

what were the working methods for ‘motion pool’? this seemed right on the cuff of digital workstations becoming prevalent, but with midi, samplers, and global clocking, i have a sense of how such a precision was maintained throughout those recordings. could you elaborate on what technologies you were using and how you and scott approached them?

can you talk about your initial inspirations to the big rock ’n’ riffs? what is your perspective on the recent, re-activation of loop in the light of the deliberate deconstruction of those riffs through main?

will there be an ‘array 2’?

how did you and stefan mathieu begin with to work together as main? is there anything else you are working towards as main?

i did catch loop perform in san francisco. that must have been 2016, and i was pretty sure that you played ‘feed the collapse’ or was it another main track? are you still performing that song? how do you see those early main albums (‘hydra-calm’ ‘dry stone feed’ and ‘motion pool’) in relation to loop nowadays?

answers:

Basically, with ‘Drumless Space’, it was very much the idea of trying to abandon the rhythmic element identified with traditional percussive sound and making it more kinetic with what I had liked to describe as ‘outer sounds’.

Derived from other sampled elements, the notion of rhythm was built up by programming these samples in a similar way a drum machine was programmed, but the less percussive nature of the sound made interesting counterpoint elements, which could then serve as a layering textures to build around.

So, it served as very much as a directive in the making of Motion Pool. It has a very clear path of starting with more song like structures and gradually losing those stylings over the course of the record, until it became simply sound design and abstraction.

As soon as Main had started, it was a very evident approach to simply stripping away at the traditional sounds of a guitar, which was not new in any sense in experimental music approach, made by the like of Keith Rowe et al, but we were trying to find sounds that became so abstracted, it wasn’t identifiable at all as to what it was.

It wasn’t immediate, there was obviously a hangover from what I was trying to do in Loop, but it was a thought process and intentional for it to slowly evolve with each release.

Gradually, of course , guitars simply disappeared completely as being used as a source for sounds. They had reached the logical end in Main by the time of the Hz project and just evaporated.

I think it’s safe to say, I have an obsession with decay. It’s always been about things breaking down or simply fizzling out. Metaphors aplenty!

But, I have said this before, I like a notion of mystery in all the things I get involved with. I don’t like to explain things away too easily. I love the idea of people creating their own worlds or ideas around this kind of music. I like to think that there’s many different notions of what a certain track or piece can be about and that they can be wildly different.

The lyrics are always left to interpretation and the vocals are simply an element buried within other elements.

There are perhaps statements on the notions of decay in our world, how we could stop it, a dystopian view that we can’t and we have to simply accept that these are they way it works out. Everything has a starting life and a logical end.

Science fiction certainly plays a part as an influence. I’ve always loved the works of Philip K Dick and early J G Ballard was a massive influence, which remains to this day. Anthony Burgess, William Golding, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury et al, they all have a great influence on how I like to shape these ideas.

Early Main recordings didn’t employ anything close to samplers or midi. It was all done in real time to tape or we used tape loops.

I was very suspicious (in hindsight, very stupidly) of samplers at first. But really that came from the very generic sense they being used in i.e. sampling a drum break.

But when I was working with Godflesh and Justin was using an Ensoniq EPS 16+ keyboard sampler, I became intrigued. It was real lightbulb moment for me and gave me the idea of replacing traditional percussive sounds in rhythmic patterns, which of course lead towards the ‘dreamless space’ concept, that kinetic energy coming from those ‘outer sounds’.

So i quickly got myself the Ensoniq and set up a Atari ST computer with the original Logic programme, then made by Emagic.

Triggering all these tiny samples with midi from the Logic was just a whole new galaxy opening up in front of me, and I never looked suspiciously again at that kind of hardware.

It easy to forget that in those days, sample memory was absolutely minuscule and buying memory expansions was very expensive.

But as in all things, less is more and it simply made you work harder for the goal ahead.

I did find the Ensoniq very limited in what could be achieved so that didn’t hang around that long once I embraced all this new tech, and I went straight into the world of Akai samplers and then upgrading to a very basic Apple computer.

This was all still triggered by SMPTE codes running off a 16 track tape machine and midi and then all the mixes were done live to DAT. We were not in the world of digital editing then. No ProTools for us… we simply could not afford it.

As Main and my solo work had become purely an experiment in abstraction, musique concrete and acosmatique textures, I did find myself going against all the tendencies I had maintained for so many years in my mind. i wanted to maintain all that I had created down the line, but felt an urge… I really felt like making a huge noise with guitars again, I can’t really put in fine detail why I had such a big change of heart. It still makes me laugh now that I did a complete about face on that.

I had been badgered by others for years to possibly make Loop a going concern again, and I had swatted away those notions more times than I can count.

But, simply put, one day I just really felt like going back to those styles again and seeing what might happen.

I do hope we will make more new Loop music, it’s there to be done. It’s been a strange couple of years, I’ve had a lot of issues to deal with, including someone trying to use the name Loop and it interfered with my workings so much so, i had to go down legal routes to put an end to that. It was not easy and basically takes up a lot of working hours, effort and financing to make people realise they’ve made a very serious error in simply adopting a namesake with such a long history and thinking it’s all ok to do so. The mind boggles… it appears Google wasn’t their friend.

I have to be honest, it drove me to thinking of removing myself from all this mess, it seemed more trouble than its worth. It did at one point make me want to stop Loop again.

But, no-one can deny I don’t have the patience and persistence needed to get through this kind of crap, and a large heaping of sheer bloody-mindedness helps too. I and many others were appalled at the situation that arose, and many other artists came to my defence. It truly mended a very weathered heart to know that I wasn’t losing my mind and fighting over a lost cause. Thankfully, thats over and it’s back to serious business.

I was aware of Stefan and his work obviously and we met whilst both working at the GRM in Paris.

We got along well and I had wanted to make Main a collaborative project again. I had not worked with anyone for a very long time, everything i was doing under that moniker or under my own had been very much solo affairs.

I really wanted to work with other people on ideas and projects and bringing that element back into the fold for Main was the obvious choice.

Main is certainly still a going concern and at some point, there will be more new Main pieces. Loop and all this legal maelstrom has taken up my time for quite a while and Main is just gently resting for now.

The next thing I have is reactivating my Chasm project. I have been working on that and it’s looking like it will be released on Karl O’Conner’s Downwards imprint.

No, we haven’t played any Main material in Loop. We’ve talked about doing Flametracer and There Is Only Light for a bit of fun, but that hasn’t been addressed yet. It may or may not happen.

If you are able, take a moment - 30 seconds or so - and simply listen. 

What do you hear? 

If you, like me, are sitting in a quiet part of the house, you probably hear the wind rustling outside, the hum of electronic appliances, an airplane, or perhaps the faint rumble of distant cars. 

If you are reading this in a coffeeshop or in an office, you probably hear footsteps; several simultaneous conversations; espresso machines or copiers; laughter; traffic. 

Regardless of where you are or what you are doing, when you listen to your environment, what becomes immediately apparent is the total ubiquity of noise. 

There are few moments of sustained quiet in our lives. After all, to reach a place without much noise requires traveling a great deal of distance from any urban or suburban setting, often where there are little to no amenities (which are the source of a great deal of noise themselves.) And so, over the centuries, we simply learned to live with noise. 

A Brief History of Noise (not the genre of music, sorry)

Before modern industrialization, there was relatively little noise pollution, just as there was relatively little light pollution. Every evolution in human infrastructure has brought about more and more noise. I’m sure there were a nostalgic few in the distant past who longed for the days before cobblestone streets and the endless fractious clacking of horse-drawn carriages.

We don’t have much documentation on pre-technology noise, but it is posited by some that regular, consistent noise originated with two developments: the keeping of time and urbanization. The Medieval church bell (and later the public mechanical clock) is posited by sound scholar R Murray Schafer in one of the first texts to be written on the subject, The Soundscape, as being one of the first consistent, documented sources of urban noise.

According to Schafer, as cities and towns consolidated around industries present in early capitalist (or feudalist) societies, several different types of noise were introduced, such as the noises of infrastructure like water-powered mills, the labor of tradesmen (think a blacksmith’s anvil), the opening and closing of businesses, the public advertisement of wares via town criers - and each of these soundscapes - the word given to sonic profiles of specific places and times - were unique depending on their geography and the customs of the people who lived there. 

An old water mill, the heavy industry of yore. Public Domain.  

However, it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries that the noise level in urban areas began to amplify with the invention of heavy machinery such as the steam engine, the hydraulic press, and of course, the railroad. Even previously quiet activities began to make noise - such as sewing with the invention of the sewing machine or writing with the typewriter. With the development of modern capitalism, this noise only proliferated more and more, as the railways expanded and brought noise to even the most rural areas, continued by the invention of the internal combustion engine and the inescapable sound of rubber tires on tarmac. The more a city produced, the more powerful it was, and the noisier it became. 

The next big shift in noise was electricity, which ended the cycle of work according to the rising and setting of the sun, and therefore expanded noise deep into the night. The hum of electronics at 50 or 60 Hz, a hum you’re probably hearing somewhere right now, became ubiquitous. 

Importantly, for the first time, through electronic sound reproduction, sonic content was divorced from its event. Before sound reproduction, a sonic event was finite - restricted to a specific source, in a specific place and a specific time. With the telegraph, (and later, radio) a sound source was no longer relegated to a specific place - it could travel long distances and be received by distant ears - though it was still often restricted by time. It wasn’t until the invention of recording that sound became completely separated from its event for the first time in human history - a severing of both time and the human senses.

For all of the good broadcast and recording has done for us, namely giving us the ability to reach larger numbers of people and to preserve sound instead of only images, it has a rather sinister side effect, which is turning the previously respected sound-making practices of music and speech into at best, background noise, and at worse, a nuisance. After all, when was the last time you went shopping or out to dinner in a place without background music? 

In fact, in 1969, the General Assembly of the International Music Council of UNESCO passed a resolution denouncing “the intolerable infringement of individual freedom and the right of everyone to silence, because of the abusive use, in private and public places, of recorded or broadcast music.” (Schafer, 97)

But - you might say - “I like when they play jazz at the coffeeshop. It helps me work. I don’t think it’s noise at all!” 

This brings some interesting questions into play: what is noise anyway, how do people relate to noise, and is it inherently bad? 

What is Noise?

What is noise? The definition of noise has been shaped by both culture and technology, but Schafer posits a variety of qualities that have been used to define noise. 

The first, earliest, and perhaps most practical definition of noise is simply unwanted sound. This definition is useful because it is subjective - some sound can be perfectly desirable by some and not for others. 

The second definition of noise is unmusical sound. “Unmusical” is used here not as a subjective pejorative, but describing the physical qualities of sound composed of non-periodic vibrations (such as wind or leaves) as opposed to the periodic vibrations produced by most musical instruments. To clarify, when people refer to “white noise” they are using this definition of noise. 

The third definition consists of noise as any loud sound. This is the second most used definition of noise today and the one used by legal statues on noise.

The fourth definition of noise is noise as a disturbance in any signaling system. This is the type of noise referred to in electrical, broadcast, and recording engineering (Schafer 184). I would expand this definition to include mechanical systems that are either in disrepair or inefficient, such as a poorly executed air conditioning/ventilation system or a sputtering muffler. 

Noise and the Law

Of course there is a so-called “objective” definition of noise, that is the legal definition of a specific sound exceeding a specific decibel limit. But, as Schafer points out, it is rather silly that a car producing 86 decibels of sound is noise but a car producing 85 decibels is not. 

Some of these noise laws can be beneficial, specifically those limiting industrial or environmental noise pollution from highways and factories, or those that exist to protect the hearing of workers, such as the 1981 hearing protection and noise exposure standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). 

However, many garden variety noise ordinances are often more societally harmful than they are sonically helpful, for they require a greater police presence, discourage reasonable neighbor-to-neighbor conflict resolution, are often racialized, and disproportionately punish both young and poor people who cannot afford to pay expensive fines. 

Above all, these laws are really unenforceable. Properly calibrated scientific environmental noise measuring equipment is very expensive, and there is a significant difference in data between professional and amateur equipment. And really, the ordinances aren’t about policing noise - they’re about policing behavior. 

Noise and Society

While Schafer’s book (which was written in 1977 and is steeped in all kinds of “return to nature” sentiments that have not aged well) was without a doubt groundbreaking in that it was one of the first examinations of the role sound has played both historically and environmentally, there is an underlying assumption that I fundamentally disagree with: the supremacy of silence over sound. 

An RF anechoic chamber. Photo by adamantios (CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Schafer posits that the mechanical noise of the modern era is inherently unnatural, but ignores the fact that true silence is also unnatural. The only truly silent place is an artificial one: an anechoic chamber. As a student of acoustics, I’ve had the displeasure of being in an anechoic chamber and experiencing the suffocating terror that is total silence, a silence so strong you can hear every sound made by your internal organs, a silence so strong people can only stand being in an anechoic chamber for mere minutes. 

There is a reason silence is described as “eerie” or “foreboding”: it’s because the act of making sound is inescapable, it’s a function of physics - there’s only a matter of time before the silence is lapsed. And yet there is a recurring societal notion that silence is somehow virtuous - an idea that manifests itself in several ways, such as the ideas that a well-behaved child is quiet, or that “proper” women are seen and not heard, or - on a more lighthearted note - the stereotype that musicians have inherently lax morals and will run off with your teenage daughter. 

The idea that life was better when it was quieter is also rather silly, because with noise also came great improvements in our quality of life. However, disputing the idea that silence is superior to sound does not mean that noise should be defended, because many types of mechanically-based environmental noise from industry and infrastructure is deeply harmful to our health and well-being. 

One term Schafer uses is much more powerful and insightful in describing the role noise plays in our world: sound imperialism. It is true that environmental, mechanical noise, like an invading empire, has conquered and occupied our lives against our will. We did not ask for noise, and we did not have a say in the matter. (Personally, if it were up to me, my pharmacy would stop playing breakup songs from 2004.) Also, we are biologically defenseless against noise - our ears and brains developed for a very different sounding world, one with much less noise. 

Via OSHA

The effect this ceaseless barrage of noise has on our ears and brains is an environmental health hazard - both for us, and for the natural world, where it disrupts plant and animal life. Talk to any acoustician (hi!) or audiologist, and the health results of escalating environmental noise is grim, whether it’s ear fatigue, tinnitus, or permanent hearing loss at younger and younger ages. We often cite earbud use as being particularly traumatic to our hearing, but ignore the primary reason most people use earbuds: because they are more effective than conventional headphones at blocking out external noise. 

Environmental noise is not individualized - it can’t be resolved by calling your neighbor and asking them to stop playing the drums at 12:30 AM, or by politely letting your roommates know that you will be having friends over and that it might get loud. Environmental noise, like all forms of pollution, takes place on a large scale - it is systemic, and it is mired in power. 

Industrial giants, energy lobbyists, and HVAC people who always seem to end up working on concert halls all have a vested interest in keeping things noisy, because it is time consuming and expensive to make things that are quiet (and energy efficient). It’s not shocking that things that are bad for the regular environment are also bad for the sonic environment - car dependency, nonrenewable resource extraction, factories, the list goes on. And, like other types of pollution, the people who are most exposed to noise pollution are working people (occupational noise), poor people and people of color. 

If you think that you’re not effected by noise pollution because you don’t go to, like, 50 metal shows a day or whatever: you know that immediate feeling of lethargic relief you get when you enter a quiet building after a busy day of work, a walk in the city, or a long car ride? That’s auditory fatigue.

You know that feeling of being in a busy place and feeling like you can’t concentrate anymore even though you’ve spent the day doing relatively little? Your brain is tired because your ears have no choice but to receive sound waves all the time, regardless of how actively you are listening. Studies have emerged showing that environmental noise is also harmful to those who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. It’s a problem for everyone. 

Quiet the Source

Ultimately, when UNESCO claims people have a “right to silence,” what they really mean is that people have the right to live in a world without being subjected to the violence of auditory trauma. We shouldn’t have to carry earplugs everywhere we go, or keep building noise barriers on the side of roads. 

In the field of noise control, the first line of defense and often the most effective strategy for solving a noise problem is to simply quiet the source. That means both making mechanical objects that are quieter and more efficient, more sound regulations for manufacturers and realizing and changing our toxic cultural norms about sound like “music is supposed to be painfully loud”, or “actually bars and restaurants are supposed to be painfully loud”, or “no matter what retail store you go in, it’s good and productive somehow to hear the same fifteen songs from 2000-2008 [also usually too loud]”. 

Via CDC.gov

These changes are societal, large scale, and will stretch years into the future. As for more immediate solutions, theres… acoustics! Which is what our next (less depressing) installment (and my Master’s degree lol) will be about. 

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Also JUST A HEADS UP - I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!

Not into recurring donations or bonus content? Consider the tip jar!  Or, Check out the McMansion Hell Store ! 100% of the proceeds from the McMansion Hell store go to charity!

What is acoustics?

Acoustics, broadly, is the science of sound. Some would argue that the term applies solely to the physical properties of sound, but there are many fields within the discipline that focus not on the sound itself, but how it can be perceived, shaped, and applied.

Sub-disciplines such as electroacoustics (the study of electrical applications of sound, such as recording, processing, and reproduction) and architectural acoustics (the focus of this article) inform not only our understanding of how sound works, but also play a key part in shaping the role sound plays in our daily lives. Both have design methodologies every part as rich and nuanced as their sister fields industrial design, interior design, and architecture.

An Inseparable Art

While there are many resources available describing how sound works in rooms, these sources rarely discuss the role acoustics play in the places we live and work.

Architectural acoustics is inseparable from architecture, in that every building has its own unique acoustical profile, hence why many architectural descriptors have a sonic connotation, such as “airy” or “intimate.” Regardless of whether or not a building is designed for sound, its acoustics are shaped by its external environment, intended use, and the architect or builder’s choice of materials, technology, geometry, interior design, and construction.

Most of us understand and expect how sound works in rooms without ever cracking a book on the subject. We know by empirical observation that rooms with many hard surfaces such as stone or wood are much more reverberant (”echoey”) than rooms filled with carpets and heavy drapes. Similarly, we know that a large room with high ceilings is more likely to be reverberant than a small room with low ceilings, and that an empty house is more likely to be reverberant than a house filled with furniture and people.

Public Domain.

This empirical knowledge was the basis of designing for sound from the Greek and Roman amphitheaters up until the late 19th-century. Performance spaces were a result of architectural trial-and-error – successful spaces were imitated or improved, and the unsuccessful spaces often lost to history. Many are surprised that some of the world’s most beloved concert halls and opera houses, such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam or Milan’s Teatro alla Scala were constructed before the field of acoustics itself. However, outside of sacred or performance spaces, sound played a minor role in architectural design until the field of architectural acoustics was established by the Harvard physicist Wallace Sabine. 

(Sabine was also cute as hell, let’s be real here.)

While trying to solve the acoustical problems of the Fogg Museum lecture hall at Harvard, Sabine discovered a relationship between a space’s volume, the surface areas of the room’s different materials, and how long it took for sounds (of a certain frequency) to fade away within the room (reverberation time). He devised a mathematical equation to explain this relationship. In doing this, Sabine not only quantified the degree to which certain materials absorb certain frequencies, he devised a scientific method that could be used to anticipate certain acoustical qualities of a room prior to its construction. (He later used this knowledge to design Boston Symphony Hall, which is a total banger.)

However, even with today’s technological advancements, architectural acoustics still relies, to some extent, on historical success, trial-and-error, and a pinch of design magic. It’s one of those rare fields that is equally an art and a science.

How Sound Works in Rooms: A Quick & Dirty Overview

Acoustics, McMansion Hell-ified. Original photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas

Those of us in the fields of acoustics, music, recording engineering, or physics probably have some understanding of how sound interacts with architectural geometries. It’s important to mark here a clear distinction between how sound works within vs between architectural spaces. Keeping spaces quiet and insulated from sound is the duty of noise control, whereas shaping how sound works in a room to fit a certain use or aesthetic preference is the more public-facing side of architectural acoustics. The two are combined to create the best possible sonic scenario - after all, a wonderfully shaped room becomes intolerable if it is noisy.

Sound in a room has four main relationships with the room’s surfaces: absorption, reflection, diffusion, and transmission. When sound energy meets certain surfaces such as carpet or drapery, those materials absorb said energy. When sound is reflected, that means it is bouncing off of a surface, creating the effect of “liveness” or, when excessive, “echo”. When sound is diffused, that means its energy is scattered. Transmission is what happens when sound energy is strong enough to enter into other spaces by passing through a barrier. 

For those who wish to learn more, consider watching this video which explains these concepts using Nerf guns:

Room acoustics is all about balancing these qualities to create useful and aesthetically pleasing spaces. Too much absorption can make a room sound dull and lifeless. Too much reflection can make small rooms loud, speech difficult to understand, and many activities generally unpleasant. Too much diffusion can make it difficult to localize where a sound is coming from. Excessive transmission loss can make rooms susceptible to…

NOISE!!

There are three main types of architectural noise problems: flanking, transmission loss, and structure-borne noise. Briefly, Flanking is literally “sound leakage” in which sound escapes into another space via doors, windows, or improperly sealed walls, joints, or floors. Transmission loss (airborne noise) is when airborne sound has enough energy to pass through an architectural barrier into another space. Structure-borne noise occurs when vibrations from a source are transmitted through the surfaces the source is touching.

This short (<2 min) video is a great explainer for how transmission loss and structure-borne noise work/can be mitigated:

Surely there is some sonic problem in your home that is particularly frustrating. When wall-mounted TVs were very popular, the person on the other side of the wall to which the TV was mounted could often hear the TV very clearly due to structure-borne noise. If you live in an apartment building and find that your neighbor’s plumbing is particularly noisy, it’s probably because the connections between the wall and fixtures are improperly sealed, allowing sound to leak through via flanking. 

The Acoustics of Everyday Rooms

It’s not just noise problems that make up our everyday acoustical environments, it’s our architecture, too. During the time when industrialization first made homebuilding affordable for more and more people, common houses had a markedly different sonic profile than they do today, by means of architectural, furnishing and material choices. Socioeconomic factors also played an ancillary role in everyday architectural acoustics, as changes in family makeup and economy drastically shaped the sizes and shapes of everyday housing. 

Four Houses

The soundscape of the everyday single family house has changed radically since the time mass housing became common after the growth of the railroad. As plans evolved, so, too, did their sonic qualities. These houses, from 1893, 1915, 1936, and 1963, exemplify how changes in technology, economy, and architecture bring with them changes in the architectural acoustics of our lives. 

1893

This Queen Anne plan from 1893 is typical of the period. At this time, neither the indoor bathroom nor electricity were affordable or widespread. Furnaces were becoming more common, but were considered to be upgrades rather than established features in middle income homes such as this one, which was heated by fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. 

As we are well aware, privacy and prudence were very important to 19th century society. This is reflected in the home’s closed floor plan, which takes great lengths to separate “public” (e.g. formal parlors & dining rooms) and private (e.g. kitchen, storage, bedrooms) spaces:

The home’s ceilings were 9 feet 6 inches on the first floor, shrinking down to 8 feet on the second floor. The floors were most likely wood, and the walls, plaster. The rooms are modestly sized - the largest room being the parlor, which is 14x14 feet wide. 

Acoustically, the home was likely very quiet. These types of homes were commonly built outside the city limits in early suburbs connected either by rail or by streetcar, which made them less susceptible to environmental noise than their urban counterparts, despite the large number of windows. Additionally, because the home lacked electricity, plumbing, or a furnace, internal noise levels were likely low as well. 

Despite the home’s tall ceilings and reflective surfaces, the rooms, with the exception of the hallways, probably weren’t very reverberant due to 19th century interiors being heavily upholstered and densely furnished, as explained in great detail by this 1887 promotional handbook on furnishing. Interestingly, the guide insists on “noiseless” carpets for the hall and stairs, which suggests that some design decisions in the 19th century home were acoustically-minded.

 1915