WHY ARE RESTAURANTS SO LOUD?
Ask a group of friends what spoils a night out, and many of them will mention the same thing: they could not hear each other. In a national survey of restaurant guests last year, noise came second on the list of complaints, beaten only by slow service. Most people blame the fashionable look of new dining rooms, with their bare brick walls, high ceilings and hard wooden tables. Sound engineers agree that design plays a part, but they say there are other reasons too.(lines 1–6)
Why does a noisy meal leave us so tired? According to hearing scientist Dr. Lena Marsh, the problem starts in the brain rather than in the ears. In a quiet room, it takes almost no effort to follow a friend's voice. When that voice is mixed with dozens of other conversations and the clatter of plates, however, we cannot pick it out easily, so the brain has to work hard to guess the missing words. Background music, Marsh adds, only makes matters worse. Guests raise their voices to be heard over it, the staff turn the music up so that it can still be heard, and soon everyone is shouting.(lines 7–13)
Researchers have also looked at how diners behave in loud rooms. In one experiment, a restaurant played its music softly on some evenings and loudly on others. On the loud evenings, guests ordered fewer desserts, finished their meals about ten minutes sooner and left soon after paying. The researchers believe that constant noise makes people slightly tense, so they are in a hurry to get out. For owners, quicker meals mean more guests every night. Diners who would rather take their time can ask for a table away from the kitchen and the bar, where it is usually quieter.(lines 14–20)
Yet total silence is not the answer either. When a dining room is very quiet, guests know that the people at the next table can hear every word, and many of them feel uncomfortable sharing news or jokes. A gentle buzz of voices gives each table a kind of privacy. This became clear at a small café that once covered its whole ceiling with thick sound panels. Within weeks, regular customers were complaining that the place felt "like a library", and some stopped coming. The owners soon took down half of the panels, and their customers returned.(lines 21–26)
The good news is that the right balance can be found. More and more restaurants now hang fabric under the ceiling, cover their tables with cloths and place large plants between the tables. Diners can help themselves, too. Several free phone apps measure the sound level in a room, and users share the results online. Before booking, anyone can check how loud a restaurant is and choose one where conversation comes easily.(lines 27–31)