Noise from music venue is bleeding into neighboring sound studio

Co-owner Susan Tomko and manager Jim Shearer stand outside the Essanay sound studio on Goose Island with The Salt Shed music venue about 200 feet behind them across the North Branch of the Chicago River. (Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times)

To record sound for a television commercial, you need silence — zero background noise.

But the owners of a sound studio on Goose Island say that’s exactly what their mics have been picking up ever since The Salt Shed, a new music venue on the site of the old Morton Salt facility, began hosting outdoor concerts this summer about 200 feet across the North Branch of the Chicago River from them.