Practice Mute Soundcheck

[Kontrabasstuba]

Hello everyone,
here is my practice mute soundcheck video for F-tuba.
I played with Voigt Brass and Schlipfinger mutes, a total of three.
What do you think? Which one fits best?

[the elephant]

It may have been mic placement, but all three had an alarming amount of contact noise when hitting the bell upon insertion. The Voigt sounded like metal on metal — CLANK!

Are these padded at all? My mutes make zero sound when inserted or removed.

Again, as far as "practice" mutes, this may have been due to mic placement, but all seemed to be nearly as loud as the open tuba, not offering the nearly silent muting of other instruments' practice mutes. These three sounded more like very bad straight mutes than actual practice mutes for use in a quiet hotel. A practice mute should properly make the instrument nearly silent so that it is inaudible in the next room. The person in the next room would be calling the front desk very quickly after I started playing with one of these mutes.

Again, I realize that your unmuted reference at the beginning probably sounds so much like the muted examples due to compression applied by YouTube, so none of my observations are likely valid.

Despite this—based on this recording—the Mnozil collapsable mute by Schilpfinger seemed to have the most accurate scale, response, and evenness of tone. It also seemed to MUTE the sound the most out of these three.

I am very curious what YOU thought, Daniel. Please tell us how much these actually cut the amount of sound and which one you felt the best about while playing.

[Kontrabasstuba]

It may have been mic placement, but all three had an alarming amount of contact noise when hitting the bell upon insertion. The Voigt sounded like metal on metal — CLANK!

Are these padded at all? My mutes make zero sound when inserted or removed.

Again, as far as "practice" mutes, this may have been due to mic placement, but all seemed to be nearly as loud as the open tuba, not offering the nearly silent muting of other instruments' practice mutes. These three sounded more like very bad straight mutes than actual practice mutes for use in a quiet hotel. A practice mute should properly make the instrument nearly silent so that it is inaudible in the next room. The person in the next room would be calling the front desk very quickly after I started playing with one of these mutes.

Again, I realize that your unmuted reference at the beginning probably sounds so much like the muted examples due to compression applied by YouTube, so none of my observations are likely valid.

Despite this—based on this recording—the Mnozil collapsable mute by Schilpfinger seemed to have the most accurate scale, response, and evenness of tone. It also seemed to MUTE the sound the most out of these three.

I am very curious what YOU thought, Daniel. Please tell us how much these actually cut the amount of sound and which one you felt the best about while playing.

Thank you.
All mutes are padded. But not enough...

My opinion is, there is no good practice mute. All of them has huge tuning issues...
The best one is the Voigt. The Schlipfinger his horrible.
Hope a company will work on a good one!

[the elephant]

Thanks, Daniel!

[sdloveless]

I realize that your unmuted reference at the beginning probably sounds so much like the muted examples due to compression applied by YouTube...

You're absolutely right. My understanding is that YouTube does two types of audio compression. The first is a static volume compression. It basically lowers the overall volume so that the loudest sounds in a video are below some arbitrary threshold. This shouldn't affect the dynamic range. Quieter sounds should sound quieter, etc. I'm not sure if this can be adjusted or turned off.

The second is through a setting called "stable volume". This is dynamic range compression that tries to make your video sound like a pop song. It's on by default but can be switched off. I do not know if it's effects can be adjusted, or if the user is simply stuck with an on/off control. I would suspect this was on for Daniel's video.

Edit: I left out the important bit.

I have a Schlipf practice mute like the third one in the video. Intonation is problematic. It is not silent. However, it does cut the volume by a much wider margin than what is apparent in the video. My wife works from home. The smallest of our 3 bedrooms has been converted into an office for her. It shares a wall with one of the other bedrooms. This room is my daughter's, but she's away at college most of the time. I use it as my office/studio unless she's home. With the mute in the tuba, my wife can hear me playing, but she is still able to have Teams calls without resorting to a headset. She says it's quiet enough that the people on the other end can't hear it at all.

[sdloveless]

OK, I have some numbers. A friend who's a mechanical engineer came over yesterday with a decibel meter. We set up in one of the bedrooms, which is roughly 12' x 13' (~3.5x4 meters). Chairs facing each other, maybe 6 feet apart. The JP179B is a front action tuba, so it was pointed up and to my left, more or less at one of the corners of the room. I know, super scientific, right?

Without the mute, playing how I would for "mf" markings, the meter consistently returned about 90db. With the Schlipf mute inserted, the meter returned about 75db.

A little intartubez searching revealed some plain English descriptions of these sound levels. 90 is about like a lawn mower. 75 is about like a "vacuum cleaner or dishwasher". My impression is that would be a really quiet vacuum cleaner or a really loud dishwasher. I think that's in line with my wife's description of the noise levels when I'm playing with the mute in the room next to where she's working. FWIW.