One of the biggest complaints diners have about any restaurant is that it's too loud. John Paluska knows a little bit about controlling noise levels. The sound engineer and former manager for the band Phish found a way to control the noise in his Berkeley, Calif. restaurant, Comal.

Teaming up with Meyer Sound, an audio engineering company, he placed 123 speakers, a few highly sensitive microphones, a digital processor and sound absorption materials to make conversational noise cancel itself out. The sound equipment is able to pick up noises through the microphones and feed it to a computer that processes and emits it when commanded.

Paluska's command center is an app on his iPad, which allows him to set different sound reverberations for different areas of the building. For example, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that he likes to distribute less sound to the dining area than the bar to create a more intimate experience.  

The cost for installing a feature like this ranges between $10,000 to $100,000. To keep the sound-proofing from making the restaurant look like a recording studio, it was disguised as art, with one painter even using the material as a canvas.