Monday, 11/13

I don't think I've ever been so thankful for a soundproof studio.

As you know, we've had a run of bad luck recently. We're still dropping out on the air here and there, and we're no closer to figuring out what's causing it (although, in my mind, the fact that it's clustered around the top and the bottom of the hour HAS to have something to do with it). And last Thursday, we had another problem start to plague us, although thankfully in a way that no one listening noticed. Last Thursday, a pipe going to the furnace in our building burst, sending water shooting everywhere. And while we didn't have to deal with the worst of it, water flooded the floors of and got sucked up into the drywall in our bathroom and back conference room. Serv-Pro was called in to clean it up; the water's now gone from the floors, and to dry out the drywall there have been six industrial-sized air fans blowing into holes drilled into the walls of the affected areas.

Guess whose office is right next to the affected areas?

Now, if you didn't immediately answer “yours, Jim”, you haven't been reading these long enough. Of course my office is right next to the flooded areas. And while I'm thankful (very thankful, in fact) that my office didn't get any water it in, having six industrial air blowers running 24 hours a day right outside my door isn't how I thought I'd be spending these past few days. While the blowers basically emit nothing but white noise, the white noise they emit is so loud that I can't hear anything my co-workers say, I can't hear the radio playing in my office, and in some instances I can't even hear myself think.

Not that the last is necessarily a bad thing.

You do get used to the noise after a while. At least, you get as used to it as you can get to something that would probably deafen you over time. And since you basically hear it every place you go on the station, after a while it's kind of like background noise. It's there, and you tune it start to tune it out. Except, of course, until you go into our air studio, which is soundproof, and you close the door. You then notice something that takes a second to register in your brain, but when it does register it's glorious.

It's the (literal) sound of silence.

You don't realize just how loud those blowers actually are until you're suddenly not exposed to them. Instead of hearing this wave of white noises all you can hear, assuming the air monitors are turned down, is the soft, subtle sound of computer hard drives gently whirring in their boxes, oblivious to the audio chaos that surrounds them. If you strain, you can hear fans that are blowing cool air into a few pieces of equipment. And if you close your eyes and listen, really listen, you can even hear yourself breathe.

It's quite the shock to the system.

It's funny, because I usually don't mind having a little noise in my work life. I always have music on, whether it's what we're playing or new stuff that I'm checking out. I myself am always making noise whether by talking to myself or horribly singing or by providing my own sound effects track to whatever I'm currently doing. So I'm obviously not adverse to noise. I guess it just takes having six industrial-sized air blowers to make one realize just how blessedly peaceful silence can be.

And that's why I'm really glad we have a sound-proof air studio.

(jim@wmqt.com), hopeful the air blowers get taken out later today. Keep your fingers crossed!