People find birdsong relaxing and reassuring because over thousands of years, they have learnt when the birds sing, they are safe; it's when birds stop singing that people need to worry.

Sound affects us physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally all the time. The sound around us is affecting us even though we're not conscious of it.

A sonic logo on its own isn't going to do very much. We get frustrated with smaller brands who come to us and say, 'We need a bing-bong'. You just can't encapsulate a brand for £500 in a three-second sound. It doesn't work.

There's a little bit of protocol in the real world which is quite important. If you speak to me, we understand that we've entered into a social contract. But sound that you haven't given permission to receive is noise, and generally unwelcome.

We spend all our time teaching reading and writing. We spend absolutely no time at all, in most schools, teaching either speaking or, more importantly still, listening.

It's an interesting door opening, this use of sonic signalling - using sound to alert us in a more subtle way than a beep.

If you're surrounded by noise all the time, it has a pretty bad effect on the spirit.

You are one-third as productive in open-plan offices as in quiet rooms. I have a tip for you: if you work in spaces like that, carry headphones with you, with a soothing sound like birdsong. Put them on, and your productivity goes back up to triple what it would be.

Some of my best friends are architects. And they definitely do have ears. But I think sometimes they don't use them when they're designing buildings.

If you put music on top of noise, it's like putting icing on top of mud; it might look like a cake, but it doesn't taste like one.

You can detect a hostile listening or a bored listening or a tired listening or an excited and engaged listening.

We're designing environments that make us crazy. And it's not just our quality of life which suffers. It's our health, our social behavior, and our productivity as well.

Music is the most powerful sound there is, often inappropriately deployed. It's powerful for two reasons: you recognize it fast, and you associate it very powerfully.

Your ears are always on - you have no ear lids. They work even when you sleep.

The trouble with listening is that so much of what we hear is noise, surrounding us all the time.

I'm totally obsessed with sound. It's my life.

There's a lot of research now showing that noise, and the lack of quiet working space, is one of the biggest issues for all office workers.

Men tend to listen in what I call a reductive way, which is to say for a point, for a solution. You know, we like to have a problem and solve it. Bang. Thank you very much. On to the next thing.

We move through soundscapes all the time, and most of them are accidental - a by-product. Most retail soundscapes are accidental, incongruent with the brands, and mostly hostile.

We have the capacity for about 1.6 human conversations, so if you're listening to one conversation particularly, you're only left with 0.6 for your inner voice that helps you write.

It's dangerous to generalise about sound because many of its effects work through association. These can be universal: we all instinctively associate any sudden, unexpected noise with danger and react with a release of fight/flight hormones, while most people find sounds like gentle rainfall or birdsong calming and reassuring.

Music is designed to be listened to, so it's calling for attention all the time, syphoning off our very limited auditory bandwidth and elbowing aside our ability to listen to the voice in our head we need when we're doing mental work.

I've heard many reports of police attending scenes of domestic violence where they've had to turn off music and televisions and radios. Noise tends to drive us a bit crazy.

In the U.K., architects train for five years, and they spend one day on sound.

We all like to look good. However, this basic human desire can often get in the way of our listening and our speaking. This tendency often evinces itself in two simple words: 'I know.' But if I know everything, what can I learn? Absolutely nothing.

The need to be right can arise from a fear of being disrespected. Or it may come out of the fear of being seen as we really are: as flawed human beings who are perfectly imperfect and full of contradictions and confusions.

While interrupting is not always wrong, it should never become a habit.

You or I never buy an Intel product explicitly, and yet their sonic logo is far better known and more powerful than its visual equivalent. It's probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Conscious listening is very largely overlooked in the mainstream of education. It's such an important skill in life. And yet we expect children to pick it up from home or from peers informally.

We experience every space in five senses, so it's strange that architects design just for the eyes.

Sound in a space affects us profoundly. It changes our heart rate, breathing, hormone secretion, brain waves. It affects our emotions and our cognition.

People often mistake our mission at The Sound Agency for a crusade for silence, but actually, silence is in many ways just as bad as too much noise.

Most people think it's a linear relationship: I speak, you listen. Actually, it's a circle, because the way you listen affects how I speak, and the way I speak affects the way you listen.

If you want to be listened to, the first step is to listen well yourself.

You can't truly listen to someone and do anything else at the same time.

Music is made to be listened to, so you immediately have an issue where you're playing it in the background like wallpaper. Music doesn't want to behave like that.

Retailers don't think about why they have music. There are a number of issues. It can be very powerful in the right place, where it is played appropriately.

Without our natural soundscape, we are making ourselves tired, stressed, and frightened all at the same time.

By starting to pay attention to our natural soundscapes, businesses can reduce staff turnover, increase productivity, and increase profits.

Most of us walk around with our ears switched off because so much noise is unpleasant.

Unlike so many other sounds, there's no maximum exposure to birdsong.

Sound changes moods, yet most of the sound around us is unplanned.

I have visited a number of boutique hotels where you feel there is a little bit of self-indulgence going on.

If we teach our children how to listen properly to the world - and especially to each other - they will understand the consequences of their own sound and be far more responsible in making it.

Noise is the number one problem in modern offices. A big part of addressing this issue is making sure unwanted sound from adjacent spaces doesn't intrude or interfere.

It's time architects start designing for our ears as well as our eyes.

When you hear a child's voice, it will have that immediate effect of putting you in mind of looking after children.

Someone else's paper is fascinating until you buy it yourself. Then it loses its appeal, and you have to pass it on to someone else to reinvigorate it.

This devaluing of listening is handed down from generation to generation. There are many children who don't have the experience of being listened to by their parents.

If we're not listened to, then that doesn't create a desire inside us to listen to others. Societally, we don't value it.