The Numbers Behind The Noise

Lucy Lynch speaks with Marion Marincat, founder of Sownd Affects, about the data, neuroscience and lived experience behind audio‑inclusive design. Together they reveal why noise is more than an annoyance and how rethinking acoustics can transform wellbeing, productivity and inclusion in the spaces we use every day.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hi, so welcome back. I'm Lucy Lynch, and this is the Omni a Digital Podcast, where we explore the people, the ideas, reshaping how organizations think, build and behave. And so a question for our audience first Have you ever had to leave a restaurant early, avoid a workspace, or walk into a room and then instantly tense without knowing the reason why? Because there are problems that we can see and measure, and then there are ones that we feel, nuances that shape our behaviours long before we have the language for them. And sound is one of those invisible forces. It shapes our nervous system, our comfort, and our sense of belonging. And so, yet for decades, the built environment has treated sound as an afterthought, a compliance tip box, if you will, and not a human experience. And today we're speaking with the founder of an amazing organization who decided that that wasn't good enough and wanted to make a difference. Someone who I've known for many years and who saw the gap between meeting the standard and meeting human needs and building a new kind of certification to close it. So, this is a conversation about behaviour, inclusion, design, and the courage to solve a problem that the world really needs to know more about and to have it normalized. And this is the story of sound effects. And today's guest speaker embodies this philosophy beautifully. And welcome to Marion Marion Kat.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Hi Lucy, thank you for that uh amazing intro. You obviously know me too well. I know the story too well.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yes, absolutely. So, you are the founder of Sound Effects. Uh, like I said, that we've worked together for many years with the previous company and done lots of very interesting things, all centred around sound. So, Sound Effects is the organisation behind the world's first audio-inclusive certification for the built environment, which I know that you're working very steadily and hard, and lots of long days and nights ahead of you to kind of get that completed. You've partnered with leading researchers, challenged long-held kind of industry assumptions, and created a framework that measures not just decibels but human experience, which is what I'm really excited about. So, your mission, really, in a nutshell, is really simple but also radical. So, to make sound a core part of inclusive design and to help organizations create spaces where people can think, connect, and thrive. So, what a wonderful place to be in, Marianne. And I'm going to go straight into it and ask you about how your background and lived experience shaped the creation of sound effects.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Sure, of course. Um well, there are two parts of my background. There's the me before I became profoundly deaf, and then there's the me after that. And so the me before, um, I uh I've always had an attraction for building businesses. It was more out of need. Um, and so by the time I was 25, I started uh a dozen companies in different industries, most of them failed. So um I'm pretty proud of that actually. But but the ones that succeeded were very close to the built environment. Uh so we um uh with my partners, we built a construction company, uh, so we were heavily involved in building projects in commercial and residential. But I was uh trained as an architect in high school, I never practiced, um, but that was uh kind of my journey set for me when I was when I was young. Um, but I always loved music, so I was um semi-professional dancer actually in my teens, and then that transpired into starting a couple of nightclubs, and uh so I was always super social in an environment where you know you have 20, 30 people around and try and have conversations with them, and then um went into insurance brokerage. So by by the time I got to 26, I I was in real estate in various industries, and then almost overnight I experienced this profound hearing loss in both ears and tinnitus, which is not ringing constantly here. Uh so that's when things shifted. And um, and I guess I'm trying to make a long story short, but um when when I started wearing hearing devices, which was inevitable, uh, and now I'm wearing implants in both ears, um everything became incredibly loud. So these things amplify all the poorly designed spaces uh and and the noise that is in the background, and somehow we managed to filter it out for someone who's wearing hearing devices, um, would would make you noise sensitive, as we call it. So uh so that's when my my career shifted towards the hearing and wellness space. And um I started an audiology company right after I was uh launching a large-scale biogas plant. So I was involved in complex projects in the UK in the in the built environment space. Uh, but starting an audiology business seemed like I'm there solving the problem that I was facing, which is that as a young social guy in his late 20s, um, all of a sudden your social abilities and everything is taken away from you because you're wearing hearing devices or you can't hear properly. And I was really frustrated, very annoyed. So I thought that by building a cool brand in audiology, uh, I will help solve that problem. And all I did was to expose myself to speaking to hundreds of people about their hearing challenges. And the common thread was that everyone hated noise. And uh and so looking at that, I thought, well, this is interesting because I'm relating to this, uh, and I sort of took it as it's a me problem. But when I saw this uh recurring um uh issue, I thought I'd look into it. So I decided to sell my stake in that business, which was fantastic. We have clinics all over London and um expanded into a wider network. But I wanted to solve the problem of noise pollution in the built environment, which was a massive uh chunk to buy it out of. Um, but it started as a research project, so that's where the whole story with sound effects began, really.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Amazing! That's that's so cool, and I think you know, very much like you know, that I didn't know that about you being a semi-professional dancer, so I've learned something new today, and I thought I knew you pretty well. So, yeah, I'll have to watch your moves on the dance floor uh one day. And I think that whole thing of you being very creative and you know, very in tune with, you know, I guess just and and and like any young person, right? Wanting to be part of the community, wanting to go out with your friends and be sociable and and just feel like you you you have every right as everyone else to be able to go in and be part of of community, and yet there are barriers that just kind of block your entry. And I know that I have done some you know talks with older people who are in their 70s, 80s that have got activist and hearing loss, and they also love to dance and love to go to listen to music, but feel like the the doors are closed and that they can't enter those environments because, like you said, like it affects their their hearing aids, and it's and it's such a shame. And and you know, so uh this is why I'm I'm I'm such an advocate of sound effects and and trying to help, you know, where I can. And I think you know that that that thing about uh we talk about certification, we'll get into that in a second, but about um compliance that that doesn't guarantee comfort, right? And uh what did you see in real spaces that made you challenge the industry's assumptions then? Because I know that you gave me an analogy the other day about um talking about food waste, or we're talking about this, and we're talking about that, but sound is like kind of like just left to one side. Do you want to just maybe explore that a little bit for our audience?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Well, we tend to design for the eyes and less for the ears, and it makes sense. We're such an still an Instagram society, aren't we? We love to see things that look beautiful, and and so sound is somewhere down the list in terms of designing for it, and it's not very well understood by everyone. So if you speak to acoustic consultants, you you would understand, but you have to really get your head around the science and the way these numbers come about, and they explain to you in reverberation times in terms that don't really mean much for people. So then it's harder to design for the years because of that. Now, there are standards that are widely known and globally recognized, but sound comes somewhere down the list and it's only coming at certain points and it's optional. And so we end up with these spaces that look beautiful but are inaccessible for most people. And actually, the numbers are staggering around how many people are impacted by noise and what the impact is on productivity, well-being. So it's not just an accessibility play uh we discovered, which actually gives us a much stronger position to be in. Um but that's the main problem. It's we're designing for visual impact and less uh for uh how a space feels from a sound point of view.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Okay, and so the scale of the issue is enormous, right? As you've kind of uncovered over these years of research. So let's zoom out for a minute and think about this is not just one founder's insight, right? It's about a systematic, you know, blind spot in the in the built environment. So why do you think sound has been overlooked for so long? Like you've just mentioned about Instagram and that we're just you know greedy with our eyes, and it's just got to kind of like look cool, look great, you know, for a second, and then we just scroll on through and we we kind of forget about all the other things. But what's the biggest misconception that organizations have about acoustics and human comfort? You're talking about uh productivity for for a second there and well-being. So maybe that's a tie-in with that.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

There is there are several parts to it. So, first of all, it's very difficult for someone to enter a space and articulate that their discomfort is due to how the space is designed for sound and the acoustics. We we don't talk like that. We just leave the space because it doesn't feel good, or we say this is noisy, we normalized it. We say, you know, restaurants are noisy, and they just are, and there's nothing we can do about it. So um there are several factors that brought noise into hospitality, uh, so uh much noise in the hospitality industry, and and that's um it started with the chef in New York, where he brought the rock music he was listening to and was getting inspired by in the kitchen. He brought it out in the front of the house. And so that turned into uh a trend. And for many years there were research papers almost supporting the idea that uh you know you want to have loud music in and buzzy environments because people drink faster, they consume more, and then they leave. Now, what happened in the last 10 years or so that reversed. So now we're seeing a drop in expenditure above certain levels of noise, which is sits at the conversation level. So as soon as you can't have a decent conversation, it turns out the uh appetite for sitting and spending drops significantly. So then when when we look at the way things are being designed, there's this focus on the visuals because architects and interior designers are trained in visual design mostly. Um and increasingly architects are coming to terms with the fact that actually sound has an important part to play. However, because the acoustics are coming as a uh a cost in the project design and it's optional, it's very easy to just cross it off the list. So when you look at the numbers then and you see that actually about 60% of the population is impacted by noise, and I can break that down, uh you then no longer have just the annoyance problem. It's kind of a significant issue uh causing a lot of uh cost in productivity. So about 40 billion in the UK alone every year in productivity because of noise. And then noise is number one complaint in the workspace, and it sits above complaints about service or food quality in the hospitality industry. So clearly there's an issue, but then that's not almost transferred into well, what the issue is is the design of the space. Okay, let's solve that problem. There's a massive gap between these two because the architect doesn't see the issue when they design the interior designer either, and the customer doesn't know what problem they have with the other restaurant that they design or if they have a chain. So uh, and the same applies in in the workspace, you know, bare spaces, co-working environments where you have concrete ceilings and um and the sound bounces everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yeah, and I I know, you know, I don't, I'm fortunate not to have hearing loss, but I know that I get affected and I couldn't really put my finger on it, you know. But since working with you more close closely with sound effects, you know, I've went and met a client in a in a in a restaurant, and you know, I said, look, we're just gonna have to leave because it was a a nightmare because it was a concrete floor, the table, the chairs were metal, the waitress was scraping them along the floor when she was cleaning the table, and it was like you know, chalk down the blackboard, and I was literally like in such discomfort to hear it, or you could literally hear every single spoon drop and whatever. So that that that that just normal chaotic noise of running a restaurant in a busy service was was so debilitating, like I couldn't hear the person who was just literally you know across the table. And it was really just uncomfortable. Um, and and I thought, wow, this is this is pretty scary. But the building looked great, right? Aesthetically, it was all you know, really kind of like Uber and whatever, but it was just not built for people to engage, right? And have a regular conversation over coffee, just just wasn't so that thaw thought wasn't there, and that's kind of like this invisible problem, right? And if you don't know like um how to measure it and and all that thing, then you're not going to guess put time, effort, resources, you know, commercial, you know, kind of like backing into it. Um, let's talk about the certification then how it works and why it matters, because I think that's really important for our viewers to learn more about.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Well, we didn't plan to build a certification, let's put it that way. Okay. And um we just um uh and I actually for the past eight years or so, I just led the whole thing with a with a research question, how do we solve the problem? And we ended up seeing that there's a mix of elements required to really make a space to be guaranteed not to get noisy even if it gets busy. And uh it seemed impossible at the beginning because you have the physical space, then you have people generating sound, you know, you have some people who speak really loud, others uh are quieter, but you also have music in the background. Someone can just turn the music up, and so you design the space, but and so we looked at all these variables and we started we started piloting, so we started designing for it, and uh you know, we monitored noise levels, we uh measured the acoustics of the space, then we cross-referenced that with the staff's experience and then the customers' experience when they come in, when they leave. Um, we did then a full analysis before and after designing the space, and we went back to you know, gathering data, so it's all data uh linked, right? And after several years of of RD, last year um we received a grant from the arts council to uh upgrade several grassroots music venues in Hackney. And so we you introduced us actually to Oscar Acoustics at the time, and with Ben we we looked at the spaces and we said, okay, well, let's upgrade them based on the RD that I was exposed to, and and see where that gets us to. Uh, so we went through the same process that I described, but these are very complex spaces. So, you know, you have live music, there's a bar, one of the spaces is a retail shop by day and a live music bar by night. So, how do you design for that without making it sound like a library, right? So we don't want to turn spaces into quiet, boring environments. Um, so we went through this whole process, but we commissioned the um ISVR Southampton, so the Institute of Sound and Vibration at Southampton, to help us go through this process of measurement, cross-reference it to with existing standards, and then see if we need to change anything. And spaces are generally not designed for uh people who have hearing preferences and this difference, not necessarily in how you hear, because you might not have a hearing problem, but you have an auditory processing uh challenge, which is not necessarily diagnosed, and it might not never ever be because it's just the the way the brain works. Um, but spaces are not designed for that, and all these standards are sort of orotypical, uh focused, which is actually a very small chunk of the population. So when someone designs something for an average user, who is the average user when you have 60% of people being impacted by by that? So um as we went through that process several months, we then realized that um this is actually worthy of potentially creating a standard of our own. So we looked at existing standards because the process of creating a standard with BSI takes 18 months and probably more. So we had all the data, we had everything we needed. So we set up a few focus groups with architects, designers, and people that specify solutions in the built environment. And then with a mix of noise-sensitive people, and we sat down for five hours with each group, um, and and that's where the certification was quite obvious that it's needed. Although people are fed up with certifications and they're they're finding it very difficult to trust them. So that's why um it's a live certification, it's not a stamp, and then we're off. Uh I think with technology improvements, we can make a live certification um uh you know available for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

So that's amazing. That's amazing. And your your current In the midst of all of that, and I know that I've been working closely with you going through that process and tearing your hair out a little bit as well. So it's a it's a rigorous, you know, kind of uh challenge, I would think, for want of not a swear word to to use around that. So, you know, good luck with with doing the next part, and I and I'm sure you're going to succeed. And how do you translate translate something as human, as uh as human as a sort of sensory experience into something measurable?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Well, we've I've I've been asked that question a lot, and um and it's it has to be linked to neuroscience and psychoacoustics as much as uh it's linked in the the science of the space itself, which is fixed. So once you design a space with acoustics, uh you can measure it, you can set a very very critical benchmark, and then from there it it goes into well, how people behave and what sound is being generated and technology implemented and so on. So uh we went from having one process to having a pathway for the certification split into three tiers, and each tier is focused on something very specific. So the first one is the physics of the space, where we have a framework that's been signed off by the ISVR Southampton and it's being reviewed actually by RID.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Oh, amazing.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

RID is representing 30% of the UK population, which are sensitive to noise because they have hearing loss, tinnitus, and so on. Um, and so that's the physical part. And once a space has that in like approved and the certification is awarded, then we can move into the next tier, which is more linked to behavior. So that's where we need to monitor noise levels in real time, um, make sure that it's not about danger to hearing, it's more about the impact on the experience. Yeah, so uh sometimes you want to be exposed to um you know a cocktail bar, and you're gonna have that exposure because you want to be there. It's you that's intentional. But once you want to be in the workspace or a pizza place and the noise level exceeds 90 decibels, which is a cocktail space, that's unacceptable. So then that needs to be uh not regulated but monitored.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

So that's the second tier. And the third one is about the experience. So we've seen in the last couple of decades spaces are multidimensional areas of interest. So you can have a hotel of a lobby in a city like London, where you have a co-working environment next to the coffee shop, and then right next to the reception hall, and then you have a lounge at the back. But it's all an open, wide, oh open space, and um the noise just transfers across from one space to the other. So you you have the visual split. Yeah, sound travels if you don't contain it, and and also what you hear travels if you don't have zoning and and divide that. So then the goal tier would would deliver on that with some amazing technologies that allow us to connect to the space. If you have a pair of earbuds with Bluetooth, you'll be able to connect to the environment, uh, just like you connect to Wi-Fi through a Bluetooth module called Aura Pass, which has been launched recently. So all of that makes an environment um incredible from an audio point of view. If you follow the three tiers and you get there, and we're seeing a lot of appetite for it.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

So that's amazing. And I know that I went to one of your grassroots venues, like when you did the the sound effects concerts, um, and so I saw the one that Oscar Acoustics had had had done the treatment of, and I went with some friends who had had suffered like hearing loss as well, and they were a bit you know anxious about going. I said, Oh, let's go to the gig. And they they just had this assumption it's gonna be noisy, it's gonna be packed out, it's gonna be, you know, noisy, sweaty sort of like place, you know. I was like, but come on, we're over 40 now, we're not going to those kind of places, but it's still gonna be fun, but they their first thought was it's gonna be too noisy because to enjoy it, right? And the concert itself were was was was fantastic with the artist, but it was the environment and that kind of like you feel like you're in a warm hug, as not to make it into anything you could write about, but you just felt like you were in the space and you were just part of it, but it wasn't overwhelming, and I think it was it, it was it was really incredible, and you could definitely see the difference. And I know we went to a restaurant the other day, and you could see the part that had been treated and the part that hadn't. There was a very distinct difference. And I went to uh Sunday lunch the other day in Hackney, and they'd put the table was right by the coffee machine, so every time they made a coffee, I couldn't talk to my companion, and I was like, Oh my god, like why would you do that? Right. So there's all sorts of different things that you have to factor in. So yeah, I mean, and London's a buzzy place anyway, right? And very, very noisy, and very that noise pollution is astronomical, right? So, yeah, anything we can do in our environments to take care of your experience as you enter, then it can only be a good thing for our well-being and our mental health. Um, and how do you help clients understand that sound isn't nice to have?

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Well, we have to bake it into the ROI. Um, and so just now we're going through the process with a 20 people office, and we we measured the physics, we discovered a big problem in the space with the um what people would describe as echoey, it's very echoey. So if you have a small office space and two people talk at the other corner, it's just gonna invade your space if you don't have noise cancelling headphones on. So we measured the impact on people and uh when would they come in the office normally? What do they do when they're in the office? What are the busiest days? So we measured the impact of noise on their decision making. And we had 40%, so eight people out of 20 avoided the office because it was too noisy, although they wanted to be in the office, but they felt more productive not being there.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Now, at the same time, we noticed people would be 70% of them would have calls, but 40% of them, which would overlap, would also have focus time. So there are no rules around that. So you can have five calls, and then at the same time, I want to focus. And some people do not want to wear noise counting headphones, they can't stand earplugs. And why should that be normalized? It's like wearing a gas mask when you yeah, I don't wear them, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

And yeah, I yeah, but I kind of think I need to, like, but you shouldn't have to, right? You shouldn't have to, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

No, I mean we we normalized a lot of things that uh are a bit ridiculous if you look at it uh from the right angle. Um and we then so we we measured that, then we made the changes physically, and now we're going through process with them to um measure again their the impact of noise. But everyone already, so I have messages and emails that uh this is amazing, I can't believe it, I don't have to wear my upplugs anymore. That's fantastic. Yeah, but the the founder and the MD of the company was so surprised, and he cares so much about his stuff. He really, really cares. They have all sorts of things to make sure the staff are happy, they've been around for five, six years at least, um, in in the company. So it's a massive impact on productivity, and a productivity loss for a 20-people office could be 60,000 pounds a year for just 30 minutes of distractions from noise a day. That's massive. I mean, it's like one full-time employee that you're paying to never do anything.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, so yeah, that that is that is amazing. It's great that you put it in those sort of measurable terms. And because you know, behind every metric, you know, is a person, right? And you've obviously talked about this this this great employer that really cares about his staff, which it which is amazing. So well done to whoever he is. Um, and behind every sort of design choice, you know, there's a there's a behavioral consequence, right? And I want to explore the that human side of it. So, how does sound affect people with neurodivergency, like PTSD, hearing conditions, or sensory sensory sensitivity? Like we talked about it a little bit, and I know that was there was some um uh statistics, I think it was like one in three, right? Have um some kind of sound sensitivity. Is that is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 31:58

It is correct, but we're about to launch a special report that changes that number from one in three to one in two.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

So uh and it's it's pretty significant if you look at it that way, and it's it's all tracked. Like you can look at consumer surveys and and publications. Uh there is um when when you look at accessibility design and you speak to say 10 consultants addressing 10 different accessibility issues, it's quite difficult for a company to implement all of those, it's just not feasible from a resource point of view, and then it's also unclear which one is actually the solution for for what. And and so it's very difficult to come in and say this solves the problem for everyone in this group. So uh I was very careful with that, and um, and we worked a lot with psychologists to make sure that we're not claiming things that we can't actually deliver on. Yeah, so my focus and our focus on sound effects will always be sound and designing for sound. Now, for a neurodivergent person to go in a space, the sensory overload could be from sound, light, and even crowd, right? So if there are too many people moving too fast around, you you get anxiety. If if the sound is not appropriate, you get anxiety and so on. We're focusing on sound, and then if you look at that and you take all the groups that are impacted by noise, there's this common thread that lies between between all of these groups. So when we're saying, you know, it's audio inclusivity, and that's the solution, that's the solution we're bringing to the world, is for anyone who has a problem with noise and is feeling overwhelmed or can't connect or have anxiety or it triggers, I mean, it triggers quartz and increase in everyone because it's just science in biology. Um, but that's how we would uh address the issue that people who are neurodivergent have. So we would look at sound, and from a sound point of view, if you see a space that has the sound certification, you should be comfortable that the space is not going to be noisy or overwhelming from a sound point of view.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Yeah, because my you know, you know, my daughter's neurodivergent and very sound sensitive as well, but loves fast food. Um, anything beige wants to eat it. What can I do? I've tried everything. Wants to go to fast food retail where yeah, outlet where they do chicken nuggets or won't mention the name of the company, but will not um will order it, but cannot sit inside the place and eat the food because it's too noisy and too overwhelming. And you know you probably frequented on occasion these kind of places, and um and it and it's hectic and it's just like carnage, right? So many people shouting, ordering, waiting, everyone's hungry. There's all this stuff that that's being juggled in this in this space, and and uh you know I feel overwhelmed like going in there and don't even particularly like the food, so I don't know why I have to wait in there, but I do, and because obviously I'm with her. Um, but we have to then take the food out and and eat it somewhere else, and she'd rather it was cold and we get home than then sit there and eat it because she just can't, she can't take that stressful environment, you know, and then it's just like and you can feel it in her body, like when she gets back into the car and go, okay, right, you know, so it and you might only have been in that environment for you know 10 minutes while you're while you're queuing up, waiting, and it has a physical effect on her, you know. Um, and so yeah, I've I it's opened my eyes and ears, uh, I guess, but excuse the pardon uh for this more and more because you know, you you you want to go to places what what what that she can tolerate, you know, so it's become like a personal experience for me too to try and find better places for her to thrive. And she wants to be part of anything that's singing, dancing, music, everything. So I'm I'm hoping that you know sound certification is is the way forward, so that when she's older, her built environments for her will be a lot better, right? And she can thrive. So I guess there's a there's a personal compelling reason for me to be so invested as well. Um, and uh, you know, like looking ahead, so I've just kind of talked about that a little bit, what it what it means for me, but for you as the founder, you know, so if sound effects, you know, uh succeeds at the scale that you're aiming for, the built environment of the future could look very different, which is hopefully what's going to happen. And have you got any ideas, you know, of like what does an audio-inclusive city look like in 10 years' time? So by the time my daughter's in her 20s, what what would that kind of look like for you before we round off?

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Well, I think um I'd love to see uh would you know audio-inclusive uh cities like London is probably going to be tough in the immediate future, but we can definitely see smaller audio-inclusive cities. One of the elements that causes noise are cars, and not necessarily cars because they drive through the city, but the behavior of drivers are are causing a lot of noise, and and then the way we design buildings, uh you know, buildings are hot surface, so we have all this sound bouncing around. Um, so we we need to see more nature and you know uh pedestrian roads and maybe the city center, if it's a pedestrian uh city center, then you can design the city to keep noise out of the residential areas. Um so it's tricky, but I feel like with solar-powered um vehicles and and flying objects and everything we're seeing that's coming our way, um yeah, it's it's probably doable to have less noise and to reverse this uh problem. You know, with noise is the second most environmental health issue after uh after air pollution, if not at the same level. I mean it's classed as second-hand smoking uh as well. So it's quite quite a big one. Uh probably see um a city like that soon. I think Singapore is is is close to being uh an audio-inclusive city. Helsinki as well is classed one of the quietest capitals in Europe, if not the most quiet capital in Europe. So we're uh I'm I'm confident um that this will come up.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

That's amazing. That's amazing. And um has the god like just I would say that that was the last question, and I think of one more, and then I just think has there been a moment that you're most proud of?

SPEAKER_01 40:05

I think there are so many, but but one that is more recent was um getting Oscar Acoustics to be behind what we do. I think that was the moment where I thought, okay, this feels like we're we're on the right path. So it's really, really rewarding to see that. And then from there, of course, it's where everything is taking off now towards architects and designers joining to specify the situation, um, and and everything started from there. So um I would say that would be definitely one of them uh that spring to mind right now.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

So yeah, no, that's that's incredible. And I think you know, if today's conversation has sparked, you know, something if you're rethinking about how your organization, you know, design spaces, if you're curious about what audio inclusive environments like could unlock uh for your people, then explore more of your work at Sound Effects on the website. Because I think solving invisible problems, and the point of you know this season's podcast is all about how we how other people solve their customers' problems, and I think is how we create you know visible change. Um and I think Marianne, I'm just so delighted to have had you here on the show and to watch your journey and be a part of your journey in some small part. And I think as always, you know, we can keep solving the problems that matter. So thank you for listening, and I really appreciate the time that you've spent with me today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Thanks for the invite, it's been uh great, always fun chatting to you about this. So thanks.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Thank you.