Fun fact: what that audio guy was describing is called “room tone” and correct it’s used for both patching and as a base sitting under all the other audio elements for the mix (music, dialogue, sound FX) and is a common practice after a on location shoot is wrapped to have the whole set “hold for tone”.
The reasoning being it captures the 3D soundscape of the ambient noise in the space and how those noises bounce off surfaces and people that our ears definitely notice when it’s missing like your post says! The reverb of a small office room and a gym would have very different room tones for example. And an absolute void in audio is extremely distressing and it’s why you almost never have absolute 0dB in a sound mix unless intentional.
This is also why all online meeting tools and teleconference systems also have a background tone. It tells you that you’re still connected, you’re live.
Woah this is my screenshot
that’s crazy
It’s neat how much the image has degraded
Edit: original image
xkcd 1683
Title text: “If you can read this, congratulations—the archive you’re using still knows about the mouseover textâ€!
Close but the whole thing needs to be a progression of screen grab of phone cam shot of desktop monitor with full moire interference lines
Fun fact: what that audio guy was describing is called “room tone” and correct it’s used for both patching and as a base sitting under all the other audio elements for the mix (music, dialogue, sound FX) and is a common practice after a on location shoot is wrapped to have the whole set “hold for tone”.
The reasoning being it captures the 3D soundscape of the ambient noise in the space and how those noises bounce off surfaces and people that our ears definitely notice when it’s missing like your post says! The reverb of a small office room and a gym would have very different room tones for example. And an absolute void in audio is extremely distressing and it’s why you almost never have absolute 0dB in a sound mix unless intentional.
Source: work in professional production
This is also why all online meeting tools and teleconference systems also have a background tone. It tells you that you’re still connected, you’re live.