Levels of noise that can affect floats – DSP 129

Soundproofing is costly and difficult, especially for float centers. Most recording studios don’t have to worry about showers or a solution that eats up concrete. It makes sense that we might want to quantify the challenge of sound in a very straight forward way, but the reality is much different than that. Different types of sound can penetrate float rooms at different intensities and different floaters will care more than others.

Graham and Ashkahn share some of their own frustrations with creating their ideal soundproofing for Float On and some helpful tips for identifying noise as well as some advice on how to keep your sanity.

FTS Product – The Construction Packet – How to Build a Float Center

FTS Blog – The Construction Secret to Soundproofing: Storage Between Float Rooms

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Today’s question is, “is there a minimum and maximum level of sound that affects a float experience?”

Ashkahn: Oh. That’s yeah, I mean it’s almost more like the type of sound.

Graham: Yeah that’s exactly what I was gonna say. Like yeah, sharp sudden noises coming out of nowhere are of course, I think a lot worse to a float.

Ashkahn: They’re a lot more alarming. So, sound is tough.

Graham: Yeah let’s start there. Protecting your tanks from sound is one of the, it’s ultimately close to impossible …

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: … for the budget that we have with the float tanks in it, right? So it’s really like how do you get it down to the level of sound where you’re disturbing the least amount of floaters is kinda the problem that we’re dealing with.

Ashkahn: It’s more just like new things pop up too. It’s really … and they’re hard to trace. Like you hear noises and you’re in the float tank and you’re hearing them and you’re like “what is that noise?”, but you have to … there’s so many things it could be. It could be from inside the float room. It could be some component in the float tank. It could be from outside somewhere, it’s only temporary.

Graham: You can just be making it up in your head.

Ashkahn: Making it up, yeah! We’ve had a customer come out and be like I don’t understand there was just like horses clomping throughout parts of my float and I was like I don’t think so.

Graham: Like looking around.

Ashkahn: Yeah, people have sworn they’ve heard voices but I was just in the lobby by myself for the entire time they were floating.

Graham: And sometimes you get in when it’s … our night floats.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: It’s the middle of the night. The shops next to us are closed.

Ashkahn: Exactly there’s definitely none, unless there’s like people on our roof having a conversation or something. But it’s tricky. It’s tricky to problem solve because you know, if you hear it while you’re in there, which is kind of like best case scenario. Now you’re not even hearing it from a customer, you’re actually in the float tank. You hear a noise. You get out. It’s still really hard to track down, you know? You can’t go to your employees, you’re like at 1:43 what was that, you don’t know what time it was. They don’t know what time it was. So many things could have happened, like it’s really hard to tell what certain noises are.

Graham: Yeah so I guess let’s take it to two extreme levels, right? Which is you can have the tank itself and the experience inside the float tank completely silent and people can still complain about noise because they just heard something or their joints were cracking or it was something that either came from their own head or their own body and they didn’t realize it.

Ashkahn: Right, right. So there’s nothing you can do about that.

Graham: Right and then the flip side we’ve brought in customers and let them know, you know, hey pay us $20 bucks and we’ll get you in for a float, but we’re going to be banging and making construction noises out here and stuff like that and kinda just snuck people in for emergency floats when they wanted in. And people have gotten out and we’ve between so noisy, obviously just hitting things against the floor and they get out and they’re like “it was fine. Didn’t care, had a great float.”

Ashkahn: I guess that’s another interesting variable in this is that noise bothers people to very different degrees.

Graham: Exactly, yeah.

Ashkahn: Like some people, and this goes for kinda all the disturbances in the float, like I personally like noise. Doesn’t really bother me that much. Doesn’t really take me out of it. I can kind a sink right back into it.

Graham: And noise seriously bothers me and like I just tune into it so we’re on very opposite sides.

Ashkahn: Uh huh.

Graham: … of the noise spectrum specifically.

Ashkahn: If I see a small light leak I can’t stop focusing on it. Like I cannot have any tiny bit of light anywhere in the float tank or otherwise it’s super distracting to me and it like grounds me and it bothers me my whole float.

Graham: I don’t care. I could be in like broad daylight in an open pool and I’d be totally fine. I could just like get in the float zone.

Ashkahn: So yeah, that’s a part of it. Your different customers are gonna care a lot more or less or just be able to like hear things better than other people. Like some people can hear certain things …

Graham: What?

Ashkahn: .. and there’s certain noises that I feel like are a little bit more common culprits in float tanks in terms of mechanical float tank noises that I hear happening sometimes. Speakers, the transducer speakers can sometimes have something going on. A little feedback, something happening in them that makes them have a little bit of noise and sometimes in float tanks its only noticeable if you really get your ear like close to the wall of the float tank where that speaker is.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: That’s one thing I’ve heard.

Graham: Heaters.

Ashkahn: Heaters.

Graham: Heaters could be another one.

Ashkahn: Heaters making noise.

Graham: Sometimes even just the heaters buzzing when they’re on or even the heaters flipping between an on and an off state …

Ashkahn: Will click.

Graham: … that little, yeah, that transition can give you a little click there.

Ashkahn: And then something in your plumbing. If it’s not water tight. If there’s some amount of air coming in that can lead to noises in all sorts of different ways. If there’s little extra air you might hear some splashing. You might hear like little air bubbles. You might hear …

Graham: Which sounds a lot like a dripping.

Ashkahn: Yeah a tiny knock.

Graham: If you hear someone complaining about drips in your float tank, not on their face or anything, but just like a dripping sound. That might actually be like a tiny pinhole leak in your plumbing and it’s actually air bubbles going up and not a drop coming down, which was interesting to discover.

Ashkahn: And this with noises is interesting, in terms of actually disrupting floaters because sometimes it’s really only if your head’s in a certain spot in the float tank. So you could have nine out of 10 floaters just be in a float tank while it’s making that noise and have no idea and the 10th floater just happened to be like in the wrong spot and they hear this dripping noise for, you know, 20 minutes or 30 straight minutes until they kinda drift to another area.

Graham: Yeah and also hard because I feel like people are more forgiving if they just randomly have a good float. Regardless of noise.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: It’s kinda like sleeping next to a partner in bed and if you can’t get to sleep and they’re like rolling over and tossing and turning a little bit in their sleep. It feels like they’re keeping you awake. Even though that has absolutely nothing to do with it, right? They’re probably tossing and turning the exact same amount they usually do, but you’re already awake and so you’re just like looking for something to blame for the fact that you can’t get to sleep. I feel like that’s people in floats sometimes. Like maybe their float is as noisy as it usually is, but they’re not slipping into the zone, and so the noise that time really bothers them just as a byproduct of them not being able to get to the relaxation they wanted.

Ashkahn: Well because sometimes people go so deep, like you play the music at the end and it doesn’t even…they don’t hear it.

Graham: On the flip side, exactly.

Ashkahn: Actively pumping noise into the float tank and it’s not even registering.

Graham: I mean, yeah getting to the point we have to pound on the side of the tank and eventually like grab their toe and give a little wiggle in order to wake them up. Right so some people are just deep in it and they do not care.

Ashkahn: And I’d say the other frequent one that people have is traffic noise.

Graham: Mm-hmm.

Ashkahn: Just because big trucks, if you’re near a relatively big street or busy street. If a big truck rolls by it’s a lot of vibration. It’s a different type of noise than perhaps a lot of the soundproofing you’ve done and so that vibration moving through the ground and through your concrete foundation and making its way into a float is not like the most uncommon thing I’ve heard of float centers having to deal with. And that one’s kind of a toss up, you know, maybe sometimes people float and no big trucks drive by and like they won’t even know. Or maybe it’s just very temporary or maybe it happens multiple times during one person’s float and for that particular float it was super annoying and really disrupted that person because …

Graham: Someone’s just revving their motorcycle out in front of the shop, you know?

Ashkahn: That’s happened to us.

Graham: Yeah and you can’t control for it. Yeah how are you supposed to know at 3:20 in the afternoon this guy was just gonna be there for 15 minutes like getting the motorcycle all ready for some reason.

So what was the question again?

Ashkahn: Yeah what are we …

Graham: What are we talking about?

Ashkahn: How much noise bothers people?

Graham: Yeah is there a minimum …

Ashkahn: Is there a minimum …

Graham: And maximum level of sound that affects a float experience.

Ashkahn: So if your question is, “should I soundproof my float tank to a certain decibel level and call that good?”, I’m not sure that’s an easy question to answer.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: I’m not sure there’s like yeah, hit this level and you’re solid. Everyone’s gonna have a perfect float.

Graham: Especially because the difference between airborne vibrational noise and even how you’re protecting against those two things is so difficult.

Ashkahn: And the circumstances of the noise, like would you sit there for a week waiting for every weird thing to happen like around your business to hear what the noise sounds like …

Graham: Or just stage it, yeah. Call your friend with a big truck. Be like hey can you drive around the block like 10 times while I’m in the tank, and your friend with a motorcycle get them to rev it outside, you know? Like one of your drunk friends to come in just yell really loudly.

Ashkahn: Pogo stick around the hallway …

Graham: Yeah I mean, the sad thing is there’s almost no way to make perfect sound proofing. Or again, the amount of trouble you’d have to go to is well beyond the budget that any float center has …

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: … to actually open up. You’re talking about crazy scientific lab levels of …

Ashkahn: Like aniconic chamber.

Graham: Yeah, so given that you’re never gonna be perfect it’s more like compromising on the amount of people you’ll ultimately disturb through not having enough soundproofing because you won’t have enough to make it perfect.

Ashkahn: And you want to soundproof against the most common things, right? You’re focusing on people talking in your space and that noise not getting into people’s floats, because if like you know, people just chatting in your lobby gets in very easily. That’s going to be happening all the time. And ideally if you’re on a busy street you want to invest more in dealing with vibrational noise soundproofing and if you know you have noisy neighbors. So you’re kinda going through your list of what are the big culprits and the float tank stuff, that stuff’s hard to tell. It just pops up and you just have to kind of problem solve it as it pops up. And so that’s just benefited from you floating and noticing those things because a lot of times they’re kinda subtle and your customers might not even tell you about it.

Graham: Yup.

Ashkahn: It also makes it really annoying to float in your own float center. I’d say like half the time I float now I’m like having a good float then I drift to some part of the float tank and I’m like what was that? And then I spend the next 20 minutes of my float like running my ear along the sides of the float tank trying to figure out what the noise is or where it’s coming from.

Graham: Yeah. So float center owners probably the worst at being annoyed by small sounds in a float tank.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: I actually, in fact, recommend that you make deals with other float tank centers near you so you can go float in their tanks and just not have to be concerned about every little noise coming out of your own.

Ashkahn: And what’s the max level of noise? Was that part of the question too?

Graham: Yeah what’s the maximum level of noise that affects a float tank experience?

Ashkahn: I see. I guess that’s kinda the same, minimum maximum.

Graham: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So it’s never gonna be perfect.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Definitely do research into how to properly do soundproofing. You can spend a lot of money on soundproofing a room and not actually have it that much better than just building a regular room, you know? It’s all about the details and making sure that you’re not short circuiting your soundproofing. That nothing’s actually touching the floor or the wall when you’re isolating it from vibration. All kinds of little detail stuff where you make one mistake and all of a sudden you spend an extra $20,000 for almost nothing.

Ashkahn: Mm-hmm.

Graham: So do your research. Know that there’s a lot that goes into this stuff and again, you can have them totally silent and people will still get disturbed so there’s no right level for this. It’s just you do the best you can and ultimately you’re gonna be giving refunds for people complaining about noise and there’s no getting around it. You’re just trying to minimize them.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: So if you have any other questions, definitely go onto floattanksolutions.com/podcast and blast them out to us.

Ashkahn: Yeah we’ll answer them. Just like we answered this one.

Graham: Really well.

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