16MT2004 PRINCIPLES OF AUDIO ENGINEERING

Basics of Sound
Definition
➢Sound is a physical phenomenon consisting of minute
vibrations that travel through a medium, such as air, and are
sensed by the human ear.
➢Sounds may be perceived as pleasant or unpleasant.
➢Sound begins with the vibration of an object, such as a table
that is pounded or a string that is plucked.
➢The vibrations are transmitted to our ears by a medium, which
is usually air
➢As a result of the vibrations, our eardrums start vibrating too,
and impulses, or signals, are transmitted to the brain. There the
impulses are selected, organized, and interpreted.
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➢ Sound waves are a series of longitudinal or compression waves that
move through air or other materials. However, sound doesn't travel
through vacuums.
➢ Sound is about 4 times faster in liquids than in solids. It is also
faster in higher temperatures than in lower temperatures.
➢ The substance of a medium that sound goes through is the main
cause for it to slow down/get faster.
➢ For example, if you set up two drums, one of them facing a steel
wall and the other facing nothing but air, the sound of the drum
facing the steel wall will be MUCH faster than the one facing
nothing.

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Compression and Rarefaction

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➢ When a slinky is jerked to and forth, two phenomena take place
simultaneously. First, the coils come closer to each other while; on
the other hand; some of the adjacent coils go farther from each
other.
➢ The action when coils come closer is called compression and when
coils go farther from each other is called rarefaction
➢ When compression takes place in the medium, the density and
pressure of the medium increase. When rarefaction takes place in
the medium, density and pressure of the medium decrease. Thus,
compression is called the region of high density and pressure.
Rarefaction is called the region of low density and pressure.

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Characteristics of Sound
• Frequency/Pitch
• Amplitude/Loudness
• Spectrum/Timbre
• Duration
• Envelope
• Location

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Frequency/Pitch
➢Frequency refers to how often something happens -- or in our case, the
number of periodic, compression-rarefaction cycles that occur each
second as a sound wave moves through a medium -- and is measured in
Hertz (Hz) or cycles/second.
➢Human hearing lies within the range of 20Hz - 20,000Hz. As we get
older the upper range of our hearing diminishes. Human speech
generally falls in the range from 85 Hz - 1100 Hz.
➢Two frequencies are an octave apart if one of them is exactly twice the
frequency of the other. These frequencies are each one octave higher than
the one before: 100Hz, 200Hz, 400Hz, 800Hz, and 1600Hz.

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➢ A pure sine wave is the only sound that consists of one and only one
frequency. Most musical sounds we hear contain a mix of several
harmonically related frequencies in integer multiple relationships, with
higher frequencies decreasing in amplitude relative to lower
frequencies. These complexes of frequencies are referred to as pitch
and are given names like "middle C" or "the A above middle C".

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➢ The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch height. The lower the
frequency, the lower the pitch height. High pitches are written higher
on the musical staff than low pitches. High notes on the piano are on
the right, and low notes are on the left as you're facing the piano.
➢ The frequency spectrum used in music is a discrete system, where only
a select number of specific frequencies are used. For example, the piano
uses 88 of them from 27.5 Hz to 4186 Hz.

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Relation b/w Frequency &
Wavelength

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Amplitude
➢The amplitude of a sound is a measure of its power and is measured in
decibels. We perceive amplitude as loud and soft. Studies in hearing show
that we perceive sounds at very low and very high frequencies as being
softer than sounds in the middle frequencies, even though they have the
same amplitude.
➢While amplitude is a quantitative, physical measurement, loudness is a
qualitative, perceptual measure of how loud a sound sounds. For example,
a person might scream very far away from you, producing a sound wave of
considerable amplitude, but the wave, as it travels toward you, will
attenuate, and the amplitude, when the wave reaches you, will not be very
large; The sound you hear sounds loud, despite its relatively low amplitude.

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Amplitude And Loudness In Music Notation

➢ The pianoforte is the ancestor of the

modern piano and was invented in
Italy around 1710 by Bartolomeo
Cristofori.
➢ It was the first keyboard instrument
that could play soft (piano) or loud
(forte) depending on the force
applied to the keys, thus its name.
➢ If it had been invented in England we
might know it as the softloud.

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 Clipped Signal No Clipping

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Timbre
➢ Timbre (pronounced TAM-burr) refers to
the tone color of a sound. It's what makes a
piano sound different from a flute or violin.
The timbre of a musical instrument is
determined by its physical construction and
shape. Sounds with different timbres have
different wave shapes. Here are the
waveforms of several different instruments
playing the pitch A440.
➢ Timbre in MIDI is changed by pushing
hardware buttons or sending a MIDI
message called the Patch change command.

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Envelope
➢ The term envelope is used to
describe the shape of a sound
over the life of the note. Does
it start abruptly or gradually?
Does it sustain uniformly?
Does it die away quickly or
slowly?
➢ The envelope of a sound is the
outline of the waveform's
amplitude changing over time
as seen on an oscilloscope or
in sound editing software.
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Phase
➢The time relationship of sound wave to a known time reference
is called the phase of the signal.
➢Phase denotes a particular point in the cycle of a waveform,
measured as an angle in degrees. It is normally not an audible
characteristic of a single wave.
➢Phase is a very important factor in the interaction of one wave
with another, either acoustically or electronically.
➢When waveforms of either the same or differing phases are
combined, they interfere with each other, and their
instantaneous amplitudes are summed to create a new
composite wave.
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Two waves with the same Two identical waves 180 degrees
frequency and phase (in out of phase will completely cancel
phase)will combine to create a each other out in a process called
single sound of greater phase cancellation or destructive
amplitude—this is called interference.
constructive interference.
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