{ "schemaVersion": "v1", "slug": "the-cosmic-microwave-background-noise", "title": "The Cosmic Microwave Background Noise", "kind": "solo", "listenUrl": "https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovemusicmore/episodes/The-Cosmic-Microwave-Background-Noise-e3h59dh", "contentStartSec": 54.53, "publishedAt": "2026-10-14", "source": { "provider": "whisper", "model": "faster-whisper:base", "normalizedSchema": "v1", "transcribedAt": "2026-06-09T10:21:01.970Z" }, "paragraphs": [ { "startSec": 54.53, "endSec": 83.07, "text": "What's good, everybody welcome back to Love Music More.One of the things I've been thinking a lot about is cutting through the noise.What is signal?What is noise?And the deeper I press on that, the more I recognize everything is noise.It's almost a miracle that signal even exists.I was talking with somebody who makes microphones, builds microphones.We're talking about the noise floor." }, { "startSec": 83.07, "endSec": 110.94, "text": "And just as you heard right then, there's no such thing as silence.This microphone has a little bit of noise.There's air moving in a quiet room, electronics humming.Your body makes noise.There's these things called anechoic chambers, where you can go in and they are the mostacoustically pure space.They're used for testing things like microphones or really specific devices, where you wantto have no background noise." }, { "startSec": 110.94, "endSec": 144.41, "text": "When you put a human into a space like that, they tend to hallucinate, they hear theirbodily organs and it freaks them out.It's very unnatural, it's like being in a vacuum.And beyond that, there's even background radiation from the big bang.Have you seen the snow on a television screen, like old school TV, that noise, that snow?Part of it is radiation from the big bang itself." }, { "startSec": 144.41, "endSec": 169.65, "text": "Let's talk about all the other different types of noise, including like, what is whitenoise, pink noise, brown noise?What's even up with that?I know that a lot of people fall asleep to it, or fall asleep to a fan.You know, drown out the sounds that might be outside their window.For example, somebody is building a fence outside of mine.Hopefully you can't hear that." }, { "startSec": 169.65, "endSec": 193.93, "text": "But if you can, it might just be a nice little bit of brown noise peaking through the window.So white noise is flat power per hertz.So it is essentially full spectrum noise, all frequencies, all the way down.It sounds really bright to us because our human hearing, the way that we're built, isnot flat." }, { "startSec": 193.93, "endSec": 221.85, "text": "So when you have flat power across all of the frequencies, and you have a shift in theway that we perceive sound, it sounds bright.So let's talk the opposite.We can start to take that white noise, which is the full spectrum, and modify it, andthen we give it different color names.I don't really know why, but let's talk about pink noise.Pink noise is negative 3 dB per octave." }, { "startSec": 221.85, "endSec": 245.09, "text": "So you're taking that white noise, and you're instead equaling out the energy per octavethat is coming at you.That cancels out and makes it feel less bright, less annoying, like white noise can feel,and it matches a lot more about how we humans hear.And so for that reason, a lot of speakers are tuned using pink noise." }, { "startSec": 245.09, "endSec": 272.69, "text": "If you ever walk into a concert venue, and the sound person is doing their stuff, you'regoing to hear all sorts of different noise, like, you know, on blast coming through thesespeakers.It can be a little scary.But that is actually, before the sound check, is the sound engineer checking the waythat their speaker set up, which is controlled, typically, if they're touring with the speakers," }, { "startSec": 272.69, "endSec": 296.65, "text": "versus the room, which is uncontrolled and different every day.And then you want to tune these together so that your speakers are behaving in the waythat you want them to in a different environment.And that's how you kind of, like, maybe you've seen an audio engineer with a spectral gramor some fun little waves and peaks, like a visualizer." }, { "startSec": 296.65, "endSec": 318.49, "text": "They do the same thing where they're able to try to visualize what is this room actuallybehavior, behave like, what are the peaks and valleys that you want to compensate fordigitally so that you get really good sound.This is part of the reason why sound in concert sounds a lot better nowadays than it usedto, even like 15 years ago, because the tools are crazy." }, { "startSec": 318.49, "endSec": 340.55, "text": "You're able to really, really tune in some of my guests really like the Steven Slate headphones.And what those do is they apply similar concepts of like tuning a space and they make it sothat your headphones feel like you're listening to a speaker, a different type of speakerand different types of rooms.It's not just impulse response, it is carving out in the same way that you're tuning with" }, { "startSec": 340.55, "endSec": 367.51, "text": "pink noise, you're able to tune these different audio sources so that your ears perceive themdifferently.And you use noise as like a training signal in order to do this.I personally like going to sleep to brown noise sometimes, feels heavier.That's negative 6 dB per octave, so it's very weighted towards low frequencies.There's more energy in the lows, it's kind of rumbling and smooth." }, { "startSec": 367.51, "endSec": 393.39, "text": "It might be kind of scary if I had a subwoofer though, a lot of times this is just comingoff my phone.And then blue noise, which is brutal, very, very harsh, is the opposite of pink noise,because that's plus 3 dB per octave, so it gets more and more energy as the frequenciesgo up.So it's very bright.It takes what we're feeling with white noise, which reveals the bias that our ears have" }, { "startSec": 393.39, "endSec": 419.19, "text": "towards bright sounds, present sounds, there's a reason why we call it presence, it's tryingto figure out what people are saying, like a lot of what our ears are tuned into areto perceive and understand human language.And so a lot of what we do in music, like think of a really saxophone electric guitar, there'sa reason why some of these instruments that are lead instruments exist in the frequency" }, { "startSec": 419.19, "endSec": 440.11, "text": "ranges, and with the timbers that they do, oftentimes they're mimicking the human voice.Slide guitar is my favorite example of that.Like Derek Trucks sounds like he's singing on his guitar.He's singing that same logic, the blue noise, brutal, because it is like kind of the sound" }, { "startSec": 440.11, "endSec": 461.51, "text": "of digital destruction, and it pushes that noise into the kind of range that is most aggressive.Oddly enough, this noise spectrum also plays a role in things like image generation and" }, { "startSec": 461.51, "endSec": 487.95, "text": "artificial intelligence, like generative AI, because they use this noise, and then theydecompose from it.So you can have a blank screen, or you can have a screen that is all noise, and then youoptimize towards the image of you start with the noise, it's easier to optimize towardsthat image.Same thing that we're saying with these tuning of speakers and tuning of an acoustic space" }, { "startSec": 487.95, "endSec": 514.55, "text": "is noise can give you a ton of information, and that information allows you to have a jumpingoff point to tune.If you are just going from quote unquote silence, you are starting with a blank slate ratherthan starting with a slate that is maximally filled in.It's almost like painting on a blank canvas, or translucent canvas, like glass versuspainting on a canvas that is completely ink black." }, { "startSec": 514.55, "endSec": 536.91, "text": "Another bains of our existence though as audio engineers is sometimes noise can sneakin in really weird unexpected places, like we were talking about the cosmic microwave backgroundnoise, this absolute physical background signal ringing in your ears.And then there's a sound of electronic devices." }, { "startSec": 536.91, "endSec": 559.67, "text": "So one of the best tips that you can get, if you're going to be a recording engineer,is to think about gain staging.Noise accumulates early on in a signal chain, and so your first gain stage is super supersuper important.So if you think about it like an electric guitar, you want to be getting enough gain out" }, { "startSec": 559.67, "endSec": 587.43, "text": "of that electric guitar right up front, that's part of the reason why humbuckers have lessnoise versus a single coil pickup among other things.But in the same way, like a quiet mic plus a bad preamp going to have a ton of noise,loud mic with a good preamp, you know, you're going to have a ton of signal.So it's all about amplifying that signal early and trying not to lose signal throughoutyour signal chain." }, { "startSec": 587.43, "endSec": 612.27, "text": "So when you plug in a guitar and you plug it into a distortion pedal and an EQ pedal anda boost pedal and a reverb pedal and a delay pedal, you go all the way through, you canlose a lot of signal simply from like a faulty circuit, a loose wire in one of your cables.You didn't turn up the volume knob on one of the things in the middle of your signal chain.And all of that can yield signal loss." }, { "startSec": 612.27, "endSec": 633.59, "text": "And then when you have signal loss, you have to amplify everything so then you bring upthe noise floor.So like I'm saying, that noise is inherent, that noise always exists.But the less signal that you have and the less disciplined you are with your gain stagingof passing signal down like a baton across your entire chain, the more that noise is goingto accumulate." }, { "startSec": 633.59, "endSec": 660.03, "text": "It's part of the reason why older records have vibe and interest is there's just a tonof noise inherent because the gain staging isn't as locked in as it is today.And you also don't have digital systems so you can have degradation from passing that batonfrom system to system or, you know, taking that master record, making a vinyl and thendoing a vinyl off of that vinyl, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." }, { "startSec": 660.03, "endSec": 682.99, "text": "You can have signal loss just like if you screenshot something over and over and over again,it ends up losing.It's pixels.Same basic idea here, but you're getting that noise that hiss.However, this is also a cool thing that can be manipulated.So one of the benefits of getting pretty clean audio in is that then you can mangle itand make it worse again, but you're in control." }, { "startSec": 682.99, "endSec": 718.17, "text": "You get to decide how much noise and what kind of noise do I want to add in?Do I want to add in some of that brown noise or pink noise?Do I want to add in a sample of a tape machine or a cassette player?This gear has its own personality.And if you go too far, it really is like you run out of bandwidth.You run out of information.Just like I was saying with that white noise, it's maximal." }, { "startSec": 718.17, "endSec": 745.81, "text": "It's every frequency all at once, boom.So good luck playing on top of it.Good luck sticking that in your mix, but it can be really cool and it can push everythingout of the way if you're doing it like EDM does all the time where there's a big moment.There's a big rise and it's a whole bunch of white noise that fills the entire roomand then poof, it's gone and you're given information again.You're given low end." }, { "startSec": 745.81, "endSec": 774.05, "text": "You're given focus.You're given groove, but white noise can crowd out everything.One other, before we go, one other thing that I want to talk about is when you haveweird signal processing or your guitar amp is not properly grounded.You can get RF interference.You can get like AM radio on your guitar amp." }, { "startSec": 774.05, "endSec": 787.89, "text": "This is happening to me so many times and it's bizarre because sometimes it can be really,really loud and this is one of the biggest pains of the home recorder because weird" }, { "startSec": 788.89, "endSec": 816.17, "text": "stuff happens when your house is not designed to be a recording studio, which it isn't.You want to decouple wires or all of a sudden you'll have something where one wire forsome reason will touch another wire and you'll get a whole bunch of hiss and you're lookingwhere is that hiss coming from and it's literally just you need to jiggle your table.Weird stuff like that." }, { "startSec": 816.17, "endSec": 840.97, "text": "Some of it, you just lean in on because you can't figure it out and that gives vintageauthenticity because that's what they were doing too.But yeah, the absolute worst is when you're getting actual radio pumping into your guitaramp and so every time you stop playing, it's just a whole bunch of talk radio or something.The worst, the worst vibe killer, track killer, don't want to put that on the record." }, { "startSec": 840.97, "endSec": 862.69, "text": "I don't know, it's so hard to make that sound cool.There are moments.There are moments, sure.But it's a lot easier to record something clean and then add in noise later, just likea lot of plugins.Nowadays they've got like noise channels or vintage buttons and one of the number of thingsthat they do is just add in a whole bunch of noise, but it can be very difficult as mix" }, { "startSec": 862.69, "endSec": 891.57, "text": "engineer that accumulates or is not separated in a reasonable controllable way because youthrow some compression and you throw some limiting, maybe you saturate all of the stuffand now all of a sudden that noise is the loudest instrument in the room.So I hope you enjoyed this.I hope I gave you more signal than noise.But it is an interesting thing.It's not necessarily a problem." }, { "startSec": 891.57, "endSec": 921.01, "text": "It just might even just be the natural state of things.There is no such thing as silence and music is emergent from noise and has a very intimaterelationship with noise, but it's entropy versus structure.It's filtering, it's gain staging, it's decisions, it's the cumulative effect of havingall of these wires and all of these ideas and all of these bits of gear." }, { "startSec": 921.01, "endSec": 945.09, "text": "And while yes, there are algorithms that can strip that noise, sometimes that is theultimate vibe killer.So it's just yet another decision to make, yet another tool in the toolkit.If you enjoyed this episode, I'd like to invite you to rate the podcast five stars, shareit with your friends.And if you want to hear some of my noise, go to scoobertdoobert.pizza to check it out.I'll see you all next week." } ], "correctionsApplied": [ { "id": "scubaardubert-url", "count": 1, "note": "Outro URL ASR typo" } ] }