Din and bear it?

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Restaurant diners -- when they can make themselves heard above the blaring music from a chef's iPod playlist, the clatters and shouts from an open kitchen, and the roar of the cocktail drinkers in an adjacent lounge -- are talking about restaurant noise these days more than the food. And the sound of that is finally reaching management ears.

To address higher than anticipated noise levels -- and diner complaints -- the new Los Angeles brasserie Comme Ça has put carpets under tables, and Pizzeria Mozza has installed acoustic panels on its high walls. But don't look for either popular restaurant to change its ethos, or radically alter those noise levels.

Although restaurant designers, acoustics experts, industry professionals and restaurant owners agree that noise is increasingly a problem, the solution is not as simple as issuing a call for silence.

How loud a restaurant is -- or isn't -- has to do with the quality of noise as well as the quantity. The challenge is not necessarily to quiet a restaurant but to successfully manage its sound level, and, in the process, allow the ambient noise to be a complementary part of the mood communicated by the food, the chef, the location, the entire dining experience.

In the sedate beige dining temples of decades past, this wasn't really an issue. Chefs in white toques did their work largely behind closed doors; diners ate in respectful, if slightly bored, silence. But these days restaurateurs want "high energy," and night-on-the-towners want a "scene." Translation: Both want the noise and bustle that we have come to associate with good fun -- and good business.

Maybe that's because, accurately or not, we now often associate quiet restaurants with empty restaurants.

But the ideal noise level at a particular restaurant isn't just about the decibel count. It's about the combined effect of those decibels with all the other factors that contribute to how the restaurant sounds. There's a texture to that sound, a way it operates in a given space: Call it the art of noise.

All in the acoustics

AT 9 p.m on a recent Monday, over moules frites and duck with spaetzle, Tony Hoover of the Westlake Village acoustic consulting firm McKay Conant Hoover Inc. measures Comme Ça's noise level as he describes how the sound is working in the room.

Is it loud? Absolutely. "But the acoustics are about right for this crowd," Hoover says. In fact, he says, one of the first things he tries to gauge is the mood of the diners -- whether they seem happy, if he can hear people asking their companions or servers to repeat what they just said.

"Sona and Comme Ça are vastly different restaurants," says chef-owner David Myers, comparing his new place with his first, the stately (and quiet) Sona. "There's a very different energy. I notice it the most when I'm running back and forth between the two: I go to Sona to relax. Comme Ça is about a fun, high energy environment, and with that goes volume, noise. A brasserie is not where you go for a business deal."

Current design trends have upped noise levels. Architects now favor loft-like spaces, exposed ceilings and hard surfaces. Chefs and restaurateurs like open kitchens, busy bar scenes, hip rock music.

"Restaurants are loud because there's nothing in them that absorbs sound," says Martin Newson, whose acoustics firm Newson Brown Acoustics consulted on Wolfgang Puck's Beverly Hills restaurant Cut and Joachim Splichal's Patina in downtown Los Angeles.

"There's nothing apart from the tablecloth and maybe a little bit of carpet that absorbs any noise," Newson says. "You go into the Pacific Dining Car, it's great acoustically, but that's really not where people want to get a $12 mojito."

Loud restaurants, Hoover says, "tend to be more exciting, they turn tables over faster, they sell more drinks." But quiet restaurants often aren't as quiet as people think they are.

In Huntington Beach, a block away from the darkening surf, Izakaya Zero is packed with diners on a recent Thursday night. The long booths are filled with couples and families with children and contemporary music plays continuously in the background.

The atmosphere is beachy and casual, with a consistent level of chatter and laughter that matches the sociability of the small-plates pub food. An izakaya is a Japanese tavern, not a Zen palace, and the vibe fits. So does the sound level.

"The noise determines the quality of the experience," says co-owner David Lee, who designed the space, which had previously housed the Red Pearl Kitchen.

"Red Pearl was loud," Lee says, so he put in a dropped ceiling, added fabric wall panels, installed center dividers. Sushi chefs work behind the open sushi bar; behind them, soft white curtains block the kitchen's interior. Because of these acoustic features, the restaurant's noise level is muted, permitting easy conversation around a table.

That Lee is owner and designer might have helped the process. Acoustics experts say that when restaurants don't put in acoustic treatments, it's either for aesthetic reasons or budget concerns.