QUESTION · ARCHIVE

How much does a talker's distance to the wall behind them matter compared to the wall behind the mic? Which side would you treat first?

ASKED BY · Paul Walhus · AUSTIN, TEXAS · 19 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:30:07

THE PANEL'S ANSWER
Courtney

The wall behind you is further away and causes longer delay reflections with more acoustic energy; prioritize dampening it first, then treat the wall behind the mic. Break up parallel walls to kill standing waves.

John

John takes the opposite approach: your body absorbs sound behind you, so prioritizing the wall in front is better; use diffusion behind you to prevent waves hitting the mic. Both perspectives agree to treat both sides.

Summarised by AI from what the panel said. Watch the moment for the full answer.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

From the transcript.

Machine-transcribed, so it may contain errors. Every timestamp opens the episode at that second.

29:42and all that sort of stuff. All right, Courtney, what do we got next? Another one from Paul Valhus in Austin, Texas. He says, how much does a talker's distance to the wall behind them matter compared to the wall behind the mic? Which side would you treat first? Go ahead, Courtney. Well, it depends on whether you're at the bottom of the pool or in a room. So if you're in a room, sound travels much

30:07faster through water than it does through air. Remember, sound travels is about 1,100 feet per second. So the furthest away wall, I would say treat first, which is the one behind you, because for two reasons. One is it's further away and it's going to have more delay bouncing back into the microphone. And since it's facing the pattern of the microphone where you are, it's facing the

30:31same direction you are, it's going to have its echo is going to be louder than the sound reflecting off the wall behind the microphone, assuming you have a directional microphone like a cardioid, something that rejects sound from behind it. And the main thing you want to do is break up at least one of the walls, if you don't want to put sound absorbing material on the wall behind you because

30:53it's in the shot, for example, you know, at least cover up any parallel walls to that wall to kill the standing waves because standing waves will accentuate or elongate the delay time over a much longer period of time as the sound bounces back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. So you want to break up at least one of those walls to kill the standing waves.

31:18but I'd say if you're not worried about how it looks, put heavy dampening on the wall furthest behind you, and then dampen the wall that is behind the microphone or in front of you, especially if it's much closer to you. It'll have a much shorter decay tone. And Guy? Or sorry, Guy, John. Yeah, I'm opposite of that school's thought. I think your body is typically between you and the wall behind you,

31:47so you have some natural absorption going on and killing those early reflections, I think, probably has some additional benefit of just not letting it disperse around the room and maybe have some diffusion behind you so you can make sure those waves are not hitting your microphone. But I think either way, you should be treating both sides of the room and doing your best to control the space that you live in

32:09that you want to produce media shows from. Thanks. All right, let's move to the next question, Courtney. Next one comes in from Jerry Hoyle in Wesley Chapel, North Carolina. What's everyone paying for AI plans? Yes, I stole this question from Guy. guy yeah so this one didn't get answered yesterday i was just curious because i was better to give up grok bots but then uh craig showed some cool stuff with mcp yesterday and

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT →
MENTIONED IN THE ANSWER
standing waves→early reflections→cardioid→
ASKED BEFORE

Similar questions
from other episodes.

About the same products and topics, most related first.

19 SEP 2026How much does a talker's distance to the wall behind them matter compared to the wall behind the mic? Which wall should you treat first?CoreVideo Pro Zoom App Uses GPU-Native Encoding · 30:0326 SEP 2026Just for some quick recordings for PR and general announcements, I'd like to use this mic on my iPhone Pro Max 17 so the audio was nice and clear. Thoughts?Office Hours | Saturday | September 26, 2026 · 46:5723 SEP 2026What's the most popular Lewitt mic?LEWITT LW6: Wireless Headphones for Audio Professionals · 1:5516 SEP 2026If you had to teach audio to a video person in one hour, what's the order? Gain staging, mic distance, room, then everything else. What do you cut?Office Hours | Wednesday | September 16, 2026 · 3:5809 SEP 2026For a talking head desk setup where the mic must stay out of frame, what beats a short shotgun mic like the Sennheiser MKE 624? Is that the wrong tool and should I hide a lav instead?LUFS Bar — Free Mac Menu Bar Loudness Meter · 41:28
ALSO IN THIS EPISODE

28 more questions
from CoreVideo Pro Zoom App Uses GPU-Native Encoding | Vertical.

The whole episode →
▶ 00:00:03I hear you've been working on some production related tools. Do you have anything you can share with the class this morning?▶ 00:03:28Is this app living inside of OBS, or is this accessible within it, or is it outside?▶ 00:04:19How do you get Zoom sources into OBS, and where does OBS come into play with this app?▶ 00:05:02Is that a performance meter of some kind in the buttons at the bottom of the toolbar?▶ 00:05:48Do you have individual telemetry for the participants that are joining, like can you see their frame rate and the resolution that they're sending when they've joined?▶ 00:06:14If you've got someone that's joined the meeting and their audio is fluctuating a lot, if you as the engineer want to remotely turn their audio up or down, is there any way to do that on a per-user basis?▶ 00:08:06Are you charging for these apps, or is Core Video Pro still in alpha?▶ 00:09:15What can you speak to the differences in terms of the video performance, the engine, the graphic subsystems like on a Windows PC versus Mac—are you running OpenGL on a GPU? Is it GPU driven on the Mac as well?▶ 00:10:48Can you live stream from this app? What about recording? Where does it go from there?▶ 00:11:37How does the routing work for ISO recording and output options?▶ 00:12:25What record options and settings are available for per-camera bit rate control?▶ 00:13:13Are there plans for remote control surfaces like iPad apps or web interfaces?▶ 00:13:33Have you heard anything about the new Zoom talkback feature in the API that allows you to have a comms solution?▶ 00:15:24What's a low budget and high budget underwater video and audio setup?▶ 00:18:24Can you recommend additional resources for underwater video and audio?▶ 00:20:19What's your AI project of the week—anything to share?▶ 00:22:57How do you start a big project like Show Hub—do you write a spec doc outside of the AI tool or upload it as a product requirements doc?▶ 00:26:32What's your current AI project related to searching and indexing Office Hours content?▶ 00:32:41What's everyone paying for AI plans?▶ 00:34:57What's the relationship between Cursor and X/Elon's companies, and what models does Cursor offer?▶ 00:37:53Can you describe your personal and work AI spending and platforms?▶ 00:39:30How do you think about AI plan costs relative to the value and time savings they provide?▶ 00:40:50Can you describe your experience building production tools with AI using MCP and cloud instances?▶ 00:42:16How has AI enabled rapid clip generation and highlight creation for Office Hours content?▶ 00:52:52The iPhone 18 Pro has variable aperture—what can't the iPhone still do that Apple needs to add next?▶ 00:53:15What is the optical zoom and sensor size on the iPhone 18 Pro, and how much does computational photography still play a role?▶ 00:56:04Did Samsung have a phone camera with editing capability years ago, and how does that compare to iPhone features?▶ 00:57:45What role did the Newton's patents play in iPhone development and Apple's survival?