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Otago Daily Times
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Cut the noise, put ambience back on the menu
Bare concrete walls, open kitchens and tinny speakers mean it is harder than ever to hear your fellow diners. Dann Wallace meets the people fighting for quiet. When I ask a New Yorker called Greg Scott to recommend a quiet spot in town, two words spring instantly to his mind. "Burp Castle." It's in the East Village, wood-panelled, with burgers and banana-bread beer, murals, staff in monk robes and a stereo that if it plays at all plays very quiet Gregorian chants. Scott likes it because "if you're too loud, the bar staff soon quieten you down". There's a ban on "loud talking". Signs on the wall encourage you only to whisper. Others just read "Ssssh!" One five-star review on Yelp says, "The silence is all consuming." "The staff look mad if you get loud," says Scott. "They put their fingers on their lips. They might shush you." And if they shush you, everyone else in Burp Castle shushes you too. This is not a middle-aged rant. Anyone who is older than they were yesterday knows that restaurants seem louder these days, just as light seems lower, chairs seem harder, fonts seem tinier. Actually, perhaps this is a middle-aged rant. According to a survey by SoundPrint (an app that measures decibel levels), Europe's loudest restaurants are in London. At the top? A place in the centre of town with a regular ambience of 97dB. For context, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People says anything above 90db is like sitting next to a running motorbike, plus you're indoors and hungry. Prolonged exposure to even 85dB can lead to hearing damage. And yes, I'm that guy in his 40s suddenly surprised he can't follow conversation around a table in some packed high-ceilinged industrial joint, as his companions laugh delightedly over who knows what. You're supposed to engage in communal storytelling, but there are only so many times you can go "Say again?" before you just pretend and go "Haha yeah!" That's why I'd like to go to Burp Castle. Scott likes Burp Castle because he too found himself overwhelmed by restaurant noise. "I first noticed it dating in New York. Choosing venues became hard. I was nervous because you don't know what you'll get. Will it be quiet? And I realised one night, I just couldn't make out a single thing my date was saying. "It made me feel frustrated. Awkward. Everything was just so loud." So Scott did what anyone would do. He designed SoundPrint, the app that discovered London is motorbike-loud and let people publish restaurant decibels. Scott found an army of people desperate to "be heard over the noise". And by noise, he means ... "The clatter of knives. Chairs scraping concrete. The bar, the shouts. The espresso machine just roaring. Conversations overheard because people are squished together. The guys a few tables down, talking loudly because the [music] speaker above them is angled right at them, and that means the table next to them have to talk even louder to be heard ... " "The Lombard effect!" Carl Hopkins says. Prof Carl Hopkins PhD BEng CEng MASA MIIAV FIOA has so many letters after his name that when you first get an email from him you worry he has collapsed on his keyboard. He is the head of the acoustics research unit at the University of Liverpool and when we speak about ever noisier restaurant chatter he says, "The Lombard effect is the involuntary tendency we have to increase our vocal effort in loud places to make sure other people can hear us." This doesn't just increase volume, he says. It also changes the very way we speak: pitch, tone, rate and even the duration of our syllables. "And as the restaurant starts to fill up with customers, everyone needs to talk louder in their group to be heard, and the level increases until everybody is basically shouting." Now include music from some devious ceiling speaker and we're forced to talk louder still. Add a heavy pour of pinot noir and our usual social inhibitions disappear altogether. Hopkins thinks restaurants should take care to limit that extra sound. Problem is, that's not fashionable; it's not the 1980s and these are not absorptive times. We are in reflective mood, because "right now restaurants like surfaces that reflect sound, not absorb it". Forget thick velvet curtains. Forget tablecloths or the plush hush of shag pile. Think micro-concrete polished floors. Enormous windows and glazed facades. Exposed triple-height ceilings, metal pipework, wipe-clean surfaces, those super-thin water glasses that go "ting!" if someone even glances their way. Open kitchens "full of shiny, noise-generating tools", which I think is a very rude thing to call chefs. Instead, restaurants should consider how to suck up the chatter and clatter. "Carpets are sound absorbent," Hopkins says, "but they also absorb food and drink." Jonathan Downey is a successful restaurateur launching a new place next month on London's Drury Lane, called Town, and he really doesn't want it carpeted. "They're trip hazards and a bit suburban. Though you get them in old Mayfair restaurants; the ones where all the customers look half dead." He wants a solid wood floor "but I'm concerned how it'll sound. We'll adapt, using 'sound baffling' where we can. We're using sound-absorbent tiles on columns and walls, we've got about 30 large panels in there, special paint, and we're avoiding flat surfaces. But you need people eating to know if it works." At the least, there won't be tinkly piped-in music to compete with. "No chef should be playing Oasis. I don't know why so many places play Oasis. I don't want to sit in a restaurant listening to Oasis dribbling out of awful little speakers. If I wanted Radio 2 out of a tinny speaker, I'd eat in my car." Downey has launched bars and restaurants across London, and in Somerset, New York and Chamonix. He likes the detail of it all, "the lighting, the smell, the sound — the whole experience. "The chairs." The chairs? "Chairs are a key consideration," he says. "We're looking at the chairs and thinking, 'Is this a two-hour chair or a four-hour chair?' If it's a two-hour chair, can we make it a four-hour chair with a seat pad, or by adding arms? A lot of people want customers in and out. I want them to feel like they want to come back next week with friends. So we spend time in every chair at every table, and we ask, 'Is this a good place to sit? Am I at ease? Can I hear?"' A restaurant can't thrive in a fug of sound, he says. "You want it to buzz. You want it to hum. But you want your table to feel private because you can't hear the conversations of others and others can't hear yours." And if there is music, it should be "something that people like without even knowing what it is". "Done wrong, music is annoying, distracting. Done right, it massively impacts your night without drawing focus. Like a Hans Zimmer score. Like a soundtrack to the evening." Lars Bork Andersen is resident soundtrack designer at Alchemist — the two-Michelin-starred Rasmus Munk restaurant in Refshaleoen, a remote and industrial part of Copenhagen — for which you need six-hour chairs. For $NZ1332 a head, diners are served nearly 50 bite-sized dishes, including a sheep's brain filled with cherry sauce and a freeze-dried butterfly. "I definitely see [what I do] as a score," Andersen says. "I see it as one big six-hour soundtrack." Usually, he says, restaurants pump out loud music to mask mundane backstage sounds — plates clearing, cutlery dumped into sinks, empty bottles bashing metal bins — and as a tool to "force people to think they are having a good time". But sound can bring good times more effectively: what Andersen does is ditch three-minute dad rock and create a rolling ambience that gets people to hyper-focus on the evening. "Music that has background emotional impact. As if the music in the restaurant was part of the tapestry, or like the paint on the walls." Dramatic audio moments may silence a room as a dish is served under projections cast on to a vast 3-D dome above, before the sounds retreat and the room fills with excited chatter and the rare noise of shared joy. "Some of the dishes have political messages," he says. "Maybe about plastic in oceans." (Diners are served a piece of cod with edible "plastic".) "And I'll create an underwater soundscape. Or we have this one ice-cream which is shaped like a droplet of blood." (It's a pig's blood ice-cream.) "And there's a QR code on the plate. And you scan it to become an organ donor. And there is a big beating heart in the middle of the dome. And soft music. And the sound of rhythmic heartbeats. "With red colours, and blood vessels flowing. And, visually, you look up and you are in a chest cavity." "I'm sure it's wonderful," I say. "But it sounds horrific." "But people will start talking about these topics. Talking together. About recycling. Or child labour. With the space for them to do this given by the support of the soundtrack." Ronnie van der Veer is a foley artist based just outside Amsterdam, creating sound effects for film and television — including, of course, hundreds of dining scenes. He seems a good person to ask what restaurants should sound like. "When I think about what annoys me in a restaurant," he says, "it's usually sharp sound. Knives and forks clinking. Loud conversation. Echoes that make five people sound like 20. You also don't want a silent restaurant. I think 'mellow' is the word." He's got a particular dislike of glass. "Glass tables. Glass walls. Glass makes everything sound harsh. "Imagine the noise of a wine glass set down quickly on a glass table. It immediately makes you uneasy." He says a good restaurant "does not surprise you" with noise. "The worst sounds are those that interrupt focus. Sharp sounds, scraping. As an audio artist, you don't want to distract your audience. You want a sense of distance from others. In my studio, I choose my props carefully for sound quality. "Restaurants should do the same. So I choose glasses that have a nice ring. Crystal glasses sound much nicer than, say, an Ikea glass. Some knives sound too dull or aggressive when placed on a table, so I pick ones with a pleasing tone. Small things like the right combination of knife and plate can make an enormous difference." The last time Scott left the kind of noisy New York restaurant that triggered the birth of an app, it was with "a sense of complete relief. When you get out of a place like that your shoulders are lighter. You can breathe again. Hear again. The world is quieter again". He knows he is not alone. He knows because of the emails he gets from other people who fail to understand why eating out should require ear defenders or employing a live subtitler. So is this a rant? I hope not. I hope it's just seeing if we can all agree that restaurants aren't supposed to make you feel pleased to be back out on the street again. The best restaurants make you pleased someone chose the right combination of knife and plate, even if you have no idea they did. They make you delighted someone has gone to the trouble of thinking about a four-hour chair, even if the thought of one never crossed your mind. And they make you relieved you don't have to tell your date that you'd rather get out of here and head instead to a little place in the East Village you only just read about. A quiet corner, where you can hear me, and I can hear you, and which I am going to mumble the name of, so you don't quite understand when I tell you it's called Burp Castle. Sound check Check out Soundprint for its Otago restaurant noise ratings which go from a quiet 60dB in some local cafes to a very loud 85dB at some of the region's burger joints. — The Observer
Tom's Guide
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
Can you hear that? Sonos just made it easier to actually listen to what people say in movies
The rewind button on my TV remote is worn to the point of exhaustion. It feels like every time I want to watch a movie at home, the soundtrack is so loud it could wake up the neighbors a block away, but the dialogue is like a whisper. I pause, rewind 10 seconds, double the volume and scrunch my face in concentration as I try to work out what the characters actually said to move the plot along. It's a frustrating and time wasting dance, but I always wonder how much more difficult it must be for people with hearing loss. Though, I think I might have found the one AI feature that is actually useful in real life. Sonos (yes, that Sonos, the company that decided to annoy every single one of its customers with a badly thought out app update last year), just announced a new AI-powered Speech Enhancement feature. According to a Sonos Newsroom post, the company has managed to use machine learning to separate dialogue from other audio in real time. This means no more temporary volume adjustments as you try to navigate blasting soundtrack and mumbling dialogue. It'll roll out as a free update to the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar from May 13, 2025. Whether it comes to other Sonos devices in the future remains to be seen, but let's hope this software update is less dramatically catastrophic than the app debacle from last year. The feature, developed in collaboration with the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), will be available as a tiered setting in the Sonos app, allowing you to toggle between low, medium, high, and max enhancement levels. Low through high are designed for people like me who just can't pick out the dialogue in otherwise noisy films, but the max setting specifically caters to people with hearing loss. In this mode, the software enhances the speech but also adjusts 'non-speech' elements to elevate the dialogue. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. I've owned Sonos speakers for about a decade, but I lost a lot of trust in the company after the terrible mess they made of the app last year. Even all this time later, I still have to wait up to 30 seconds just to change a track. But it's rare that tech companies actually prioritize accessibility. Making sure that everyone can access and enjoy the things they like should be a core part of any product. And if Sonos spends time on this, and can encourage other brands making some of the best soundbars, then maybe I'll be able to forgive its past mistakes.
ITV News
24-04-2025
- Health
- ITV News
'I had to tell my dad he had cancer': Families speak out about 'serious failings' in deaf healthcare
The daughter of a deaf man who died from cancer says his care was impacted by a severe lack of sign language provision. Kate Boddy's father, who lived near Mold, was diagnosed with cancer in 2022, but when the NHS was unable to provide a BSL interpreter, she was forced to deliver the news. She said: "The healthcare providers relied on me to do all that interpreting. I had to suppress every emotion to be able to translate, and it wasn't just at that moment. It was right the way through his treatment up until he died. "In the process, I forgot to be a daughter, I didn't have the opportunity to be a daughter. Cancer stole his life, but the failures of the NHS and the lack of access to interpreters stole time from us." Throughout his treatment, Kate says the lack of provision also meant her father was unable to connect with support groups or even access resources about his treatment. Kate said, "He was a proud deaf BSL user. "He was proud of his language, he had limited understanding of written and spoken British English because BSL is such a different language to English. "He was used to not having that access and campaigned for improvements, and unfortunately, they never happened and didn't happen in time for him." In Wales, more than 900 people have BSL as their main language and nearly 600,00 people are deaf and hard of hearing. Kate has now joined calls for more to be done to improve the provision of BSL interpreters across all healthcare settings, to address what are described as "serious and widespread failings". A Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) report found that seven out of ten deaf people and people with hearing loss in Wales have never been asked about their communication needs within a healthcare setting. The report also found that almost one in ten people who are deaf or have hearing loss have avoided calling an ambulance or attending A&E because of "inaccessible communication". Martin and his wife, Denise, are both deaf and said they have faced the same issues in the healthcare system. "She's had to go into hospital on a number of occasions as an emergency patient, and each time she's not had access to a British Sign Language interpreter, so therefore she's struggled to communicate", Martin said. He said that without his help or the help of an interpreter, he worries critical things might be missed. "I've actually witnessed my wife being questioned by healthcare professionals and giving incorrect answers when there's not a British Sign Language interpreter present. "This could lead to the wrong investigations taking place or a misdiagnosis." Polly Winn, from the RNID, says these concerns have real-life impacts, and it is far too common in Wales. "It's really hard to overstate the impact this has on deaf people," she said. "It is stripping them of their independence, privacy, and decency. "It is really dangerous because even if families have the best of intentions, they are not qualified to relay that information, so people are coming away from appointments confused and maybe missing out on really important treatment." The Welsh Government says it is "reviewing the standards across healthcare in Wales" and is "working with organisations such as RNID and the British Deaf Association".
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
NHS ‘routinely failing' deaf patients in England, report finds
Deaf patients face systemic discrimination when it comes to learning about their own health due to NHS failings, with some not understanding that they might have a terminal illness, according to a damning report. The study by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) accuses the NHS of 'routinely failing' deaf people. A survey of more than 1,000 people in England who are deaf or have hearing loss found that almost one in 10 had avoided calling an ambulance or attending A&E due to their disability, and a quarter had avoided seeking help for a new health concern. The survey also found that about half of sign language users reported not having understood their diagnosis, or how their treatment worked. NHS staff said a lack of training, time and a poor IT system were major factors in being unable to provide these accessibility requirements for deaf people. The report also highlights instances of deaf people receiving particularly poor NHS care. In one instance, a woman was not provided with an interpreter, which meant she was unaware she had had a miscarriage. Another example was a patient receiving no food or water during a hospital stay as they could not hear staff offering it to them. Sharing her experiences as part of the report, Dr Natasha Wilcock, a deaf doctor who works in palliative care, said she had met patients who had been referred to palliative care services who, due to the lack of communication, did not understand they were dying and no longer receiving cancer treatment. Last year the NHS was accused of 'dragging its feet' on bringing in new accessibility procedures, leading to disabled people routinely struggling to access healthcare and facing cancelled appointments. Crystal Rolfe, the director of strategy at RNID, said: 'Imagine not being able to understand a cancer diagnosis, or having to rely on a family member to tell you that you're seriously ill or even dying. The horrifying truth is that too many deaf people in England today don't have to imagine it – it's happening to them in real life. 'The NHS is systematically discriminating against people who are deaf or have hearing loss: it's a national scandal. It is not acceptable that deaf people and those with hearing loss are being routinely failed by an NHS that neglects their communication needs. Lives are being put at risk because of communication barriers, delays and out-of-date systems that are not fit for purpose. 'The government needs to urgently address these issues, make staff training mandatory and overhaul current NHS systems, so that everyone can access their own health information in a way that makes sense – equal access to healthcare is a human right.' Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Louise Ansari, chief executive at Healthwatch England, said: 'Everyone should receive healthcare in a format they can understand. People who have sensory impairments and learning disabilities have been waiting too long for the NHS to meet their communications needs, which are underpinned by the Equality Act. 'We have asked the government to strengthen legislation to ensure the NHS fully complies with the standard and we urge ministers to publicly confirm their commitment to address this important equality, safety, communication and patient experience issue.' An NHS spokesperson said: 'The experiences mentioned in this report are shocking and unacceptable – all NHS services have a legal duty to provide clear and appropriate methods of communication to ensure that patients, including those with a sensory impairment such as hearing loss, and their families or carers can fully understand everything they need to about their treatment and care. 'NHS England is committed to meeting its responsibilities with the accessible information standard and will continue to support organisations to ensure it is implemented in a consistent way, including with the upcoming publication of a new patient safety framework highlighting the importance of ensuring people's communication support needs are met.'
The Guardian
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Rose Ayling-Ellis: Old Hands New Tricks review – funny, beautiful TV that leaves a lump in the throat
There is a neat trick, used sparingly but to great effect, in Rose Ayling-Ellis: Old Hands New Tricks. According to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, 80% of adults over the age of 70 will have some hearing loss. To demonstrate what this loss might be like for hearing viewers, the programme-makers amplify the background noise until it obfuscates the conversations that are taking place. The point is made simply and well. Ayling-Ellis made her name as an actor on EastEnders, but became something of a national treasure when she won Strictly Come Dancing, as the programme's first deaf contestant. Her sensational Couple's Choice dance with Giovanni Pernice, in which the music cut out while the dance continued in silence, is one of the show's all-time great moments. In this charming, intelligent and emotional two-part documentary, she makes a hard sell for what she says is her passion project: teaching British sign language (BSL) to older people who may be struggling with hearing loss. She explains that she understands the frustration of not being able to hear what people are saying around her, and repeatedly emphasises the importance of being understood, connected and included. Sign language, she thinks, can be helpful, not just for the profoundly deaf but for people who may be losing their hearing, too. In order to test her theory, she persuades the residents of a retirement village in Buckinghamshire to embark on a pilot scheme with her. Hughenden Gardens Village is not a regular retirement home; it's a cool one. It looks a bit like a hot-desking office crossed with a brand new school or hospital, and there are more than 300 older people living there, with an average age of 80. One resident describes it as 'a combination of a hotel and a holiday camp', which seems about right. Ayling-Ellis is filled with enthusiasm when she arrives, but it is to the credit of this series, and the benefit of its narrative arc, that setting up BSL classes for the residents proves quite a bit trickier than she expected. She is nervous before she delivers the pitch to residents, and fumbles it. The initial response is far from positive; one woman points out that she is 101, and therefore too old to learn new skills. Ayling-Ellis appeases her, says she isn't. 'I'm not really interested, you know,' the woman replies, not unkindly, but firmly nonetheless. Belinda, the friendly village manager, suggests that they put a six-week limit on the course. 'They can be quite forgetful,' she explains. Initial uptake for the classes is low, and the attendees are late. 'They're a tough crowd,' says Ayling-Ellis. But she is not put off, and the fact that the BSL classes take place at all are a combination of tenacity and sheer belief. She calls upon a charismatic BSL teacher, Marios Costi, to tutor them, and he proves more than up to the task. And of course, while some of the early mishaps are lightly funny, it blossoms into something beautiful and profound. We learn more about the Hughenden residents, and their loves and losses. At times, it becomes a meditation on not just mortality, but what it means to live life with purpose and dignity, and how we might start to resist loneliness. Eric has been married to June for 69 years. She has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and Eric says he no longer speaks to many people because he struggles to hear in crowds. He comes out of his shell in the BSL classes, to his daughter's astonishment. This is more than a fairytale, however. It is nuanced and smart. Ayling-Ellis explains that she has mixed feelings about hearing aids, which many older people come to rely on; she says they are seen as a panacea, when that isn't really the case. Learning BSL offers a more expressive way to communicate and, in turn, that reduces the risk of isolation, not feeling understood and not fitting in. There are many moving moments in which we see the possibilities. Sue is losing her sight. She needs to learn braille, but admits she is scared that she is too old to do it. Ayling-Ellis takes her to meet Michael, who was born deaf, then lost his sight, and now communicates with hands-on signing. He tells her not to give up. I have a lump in my throat. The wider point is that BSL can, and must, be learned by more people than those with hearing loss. Here, you see how it can spread. The village staff begin to learn it. Eric's grandchildren show off a few words. If it works as well on everyone else as it does on me, viewers should come away with at least a few new words for themselves, too. Rose Ayling-Ellis: Old Hands New Tricks aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.
