Sparkling water tastes like when your foot falls asleep.
It also tastes like TV static
My buddy once bought a few cans of Space Coke for us to try. I told him it tasted like TV static. He said "well technically, TV static is interference from space, so it literally tastes like space".
You mean when your foot wakes up?
Sparkling water tastes like coins to me.
I love the raspberry & lime foot falling asleep
As someone who has done plenty of sound recordist work, it's known as 'room tone.'
Also, I feel seen because I've had to explain that so many times. Even to people who really should know.
Ditto. We call it 'atmos' here.
Conclusion of a stupid brain: Dolby sells nothing, their top cinema technology
I don't work in a sound recording space, but I know this because I had to do a voice recording for a project in middle school.
The recording picked up some extraneous noise in between a couple sentences, so I opened Audacity, took the noisy chunk, and deleted it outright so that there was empty space. It sounded very weird for some reason... so I simply recorded over the gap with me doing nothing, as if I were in between sentences. It worked! And I had no idea why...
Granted, this was less 'room tone' than 'white noise from the amount of gain on my shitty mic', but same concept.
Terry Pratchett writes about this, how there is a difference between the sound of someone not being there and the sound of someone hiding and not making any noise.
He often writes about how things like bird song can be a type of silence and how a train that always passes at the same time every night, not passing at that time, can wake you up from its absence.
I used to live right next to a big ol' belltower. It'd chime every hour and on special days, it'd be chiming throughout the day. A friend came to stay and was baffled at how I could sleep and work through it all
I grew up half a block from elevated railroad tracks and it's the same. People visiting kept noticing the trains going by regularly, but I'd been tuning it out all my life and had to work to consciously hear it.
Later in life I visited my childhood home as an adult, and spent the night. It had been long enough since I'd left that I began noticing the damn trains, and I had trouble getting to sleep.
True silence is usually not an issue though, but there might be other reasons to record the silent room. Like getting the impulse response data, aligning the DC offset or getting the noise profile for noise reduction.
In other words: It's mostly used a reference rather than the explanation given in the post.
Yeah, what this person is referring to is called "room tone", it's not silence.
Their metaphor still works though. The length of the wild sound tells me the OP might be talking about an older process before digital noise reduction was as common as it is now where less than half minute is enough. The idea that a "silent" room has a recognizable unique sound or even that a recording setup has a unique sound like internal mic noise is still valid for the metaphor of basically something that is perceptible to humans but difficult to give a well rounded answer as to the multiple variations that exist because they are generally so very subtle.
Like in regards to water and sound humans can tell hot liquid from cold when it is being poured or moved by sound. Actually explaining the difference in words requires a more complicated use of language but you basically know the differences when you hear it.
Since actual silence is very rare (Edit: on Earth before one considers the vacuum of space) and requires tech to purposefully create one can assume they mean just "a room where no one is talking" which weirdly itself is a more antiquated definition of silence .
'Silence' is a highly contextually defined word, with many social, physical, and metaphorical uses, each of which shifts, depending on your intent.
Three versions of the word are running through the recordist's mind at this point: silence as in hold your tongue and twitches, as an artifact captured as 'room tone', and as the absence of unwanted electromagnetic signals in the toolset.
If you want to be fussy about usage of the word, you really have to pin down the intent of both speaker and audience.
To be fair, a simple word like 'set' is similar in complexity of usage. 'Silence', however, carries a lot of baggage wherever it is used.
Most places are not perfectly silent but have some small level of background. Wind, the distant sound of cars, the hum of lights, that kind of thing.
I know you're referring to true silence as a patch over in movies, but https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/worlds-quietest-room-microsoft-anechoic-chamber/ it seems like people have a real struggle with true silence in that it's very difficult for anyone to even have an hour of true silence.
I just found this interesting is all
Yes it's fascinating for sure, but a "scientifically silent room" is a very different phenomenon from someone watching a TV show on a TV not producing fake silence in their living room, where there is already noise and reverberation.
You can turn the volume down already if you want to experience the non-phenomen of not having a TV produce noise. It will not upset you, I promise.
The reason why people get disoriented in silent rooms is the lack of response from reverb and/or lack of sensory input at all.
Addition of ambient noise to an audio signal is for other reasons. With proper mixing and envelope control you will not experience cutting in and out of silence. However, audio production is a lot more complicated than just cutting audio together. It makes sense to create or simulate an entire "enviroment" at which to throw audio at, sort of like priming a canvas before painting.
I don't drink bottled water simply because all I can taste is the plastic of the bottle, filtered water is so much better
Plastic from reused plastic bottles can oeech into water and give you headaches
The different sounds of "silence" are the same as the different flavors of "water."
You're not hearing the silence, you're still hearing the absence of it caused by different things making little noises. (Or in some cases hallucinating)
You're not tasting the water but the non-water that's in the water.
Ahh, water. The room tone of beverages. Lol.
This is very very true. I have a decent water filtration system at home. I use a stainless steel water container both when I'm home and when I leave. Always highly filtered water. I've gotten so used to the fairly pure water from my filtration system that tap water, doesn't taste right anymore. If someone gives me tap water or something, it kind of shocks me how badly it tastes.
My water filtration stuff isn't the best, so I'm sure my water is filthy compared to some of the stuff you can get, but it's clean enough that I notice when there's a significant drop in quality and purity now.
Meanwhile, I think a lot of purified water tastes kind of bitter and metallic compared to my own tap water. I generally don't like purified water unless it's ice cold. I can taste the minerals in tap water of course but it's not unpleasant to me. It probably just depends on the area. I've noticed the tap water in some states tastes really bad by comparison to mine
Tap water tastes different from bottled water, and the bottled water from Brazil tastes different from the bottled water I had in Chile, which came from glaciers.
And yeah it's the minerals that give taste to the water, but I don't think you're supposed to drink completely distilled water in the first place.
but I don't think you're supposed to drink completely distilled water in the first place.
It'll harm you a bit over time if you're not getting those minerals elsewhere in your diet, but otherwise it's not that big of a deal.
I have some on hand for other stuff and I've drank it in a pinch when I didn't have other water (my tap tastes horrid and purifiers that don't cost shit tons of money don't filter out the reason why) and I'm still hydrated as fuck
Distilled water tastes empty, like the flavor is being removed from my mouth. Quite odd
Reverse osmosis filters produce pretty much distilled water that usually goes through remineraliser to add back some minerals. Fun fact is many of those remineralisers are sold as "improving water taste and smell", probably because they do improve taste and smell, but also not to make users too suspicious about adding back minerals after they just filtered the minerals out 😅
supposedly the only downside to drinking distilled water is lack of electrolytes and taste
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317698#risks
I drink predominantly distilled water at home since I have a tabletop distiller. Makes custom mineral water easier to mix up since you're starting from ~0 total dissolved solids. I'm often too lazy to add the minerals though, and the straight distilled water doesn't cause any digestive discomfort or anything
I have prescription fluoride toothpaste so I'm not too worried
Distilled water tastes like someone cooked pasta in it.
Silence is almost never silent.
I used to live in a pretty decently sized city. The quietest I ever experienced was in an old high-rise apartment after the power went out. I climbed up the seven or so flights of stairs because I needed to get into my unit to grab something, nearly all the residents of the building had vacated or were out of the building for one reason or another, so I was probably only one of about a dozen people inside during the power outage. I don't really know how many were still inside, but I'm sure it wasn't many.
Anyways, after I got into my unit I had to stop and listen for a minute. The windows were all closed and there was nothing. It was so quiet that I couldn't hear anything. At least to my ears that were numbed from the droning of the city. It was a marvelous experience. Normally you hear the buzzing of transformers, rumbles from steps and wheels and other things being moved around, the feint trumming of someone listening to music, and the constant mechanical whirr of the elevators working away. All of that was quiet. It was so still and calm.
I didn't experience that again until I moved into my current residence away from the city. Here I'm so used to the much quieter silence that I can hear the rush of air when the fans from the furnace turn on, I am acutely aware of the bubbling from the pet water fountain we have for our cat in the next room. Even the familiar pattering of my cats paws as he trots down the hallway.
Silence is almost never silent.
Aliens come to earth and are immediately escorted to meeting with all leaders. Glasses of water are offered to all guests.
Alien trys a sip
Alien: ew, yuck, oh my zorb it taste like spaceship fuel.
I can't describe the taste but if I can tell the difference between spring, purified, and distilled, there's a taste.
It's the minerals, Marie
There are lots of things dissolved in our water that give it "flavour", but the goal of all utilities is to minimize this as much as possible. Some water objectively tastes better than others, and a common segment of local drinking water conferences is a taste test. That said, for normal people usually the water they prefer is what their palette is used to. Someone who grew up drinking groundwater with very high alkalinity and pH will prefer that over surface water that is actually more "pure". Similarly, if you normally drink water from a private well that you don't add chlorine to, you likely dislike the taste of "city water".
The common offenders for bad tasting water are excessive chlorine and some specific organic compounds. Both of these flavours can be removed using a granular activated carbon filter (e.g., a Britta), but you can actually remove the chlorine by just letting your water sit in the fridge for a while.
Definitely called room tone
Or ambient noise
Aaaaand I can hear my Tinnitus again
A bit related a few months before me and my wife beame parents a friend of ours stayed by us for a few days with her very active toddler. I will never forget the moment they all left and I was chilling on my couch and it felt like negative sound. Like I would have to hear something just to break even.
After we got a reverse osmosis filter our water tasted like nothing. We had to get a remineralization filter to put minerals back into it. Now it tastes good.
I kinda love how you filter water to get rid of its other contents and then basically add them right back in
Yeah it's important that you re-mineralise water otherwise it will leach minerals from your body
Yes, this also.
Wrong warm water tastes smoother and smells weirder
Cold water tastes spikier and doesnt smell weird
This is why I'd actually really like to hear a live performance of John Cage's 4'33.
No two performances are ever the same
I learned all about this from comedy bang bang the podcast.
Water is lightly sweet and a tiny bit astringent.
Water is flavorless. You are tasting the salts in the water.
That's kinda the point though. Outside of a true vacuum or a literally perfect anechoic chamber, you won't get true silence anywhere. There's always something, even if you can't consciously perceive it.
Getting pure water is easier than true silence, but it's still not something most people will encounter in their life - and basically anywhere else you can get water on Earth will have some level of minerals in it, as such that background flavour is the flavour of water...
And like with sound, everywhere has it's own flavour of water.
You're flavorless
Found the spicy one!
/j
100% correct. If you think purified water tastes funny, it’s probably time to brush your teeth or see the dentist.
ALRIGHT, LET'S DO THIS! FORM A PERIMETER AND HOLD FOR ROOM TONE!
GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!
Stay Fresh, friend
Gonna be honest, this is a cool anecdote but that isn't relatable to anyone but audiophiles.
(or production nerds, fwiw)
John Cage's 4'33 is really so much more of a masterpiece with that in mind.
Won't someone think of the dogs?
Hello darkness my old friend
Just letting you know I scrolled right past this message after I saw that biography of text, yet I wasted my time to write this comment lol
