What is Sound?

Sound is a type of energy made by vibrations. When any object vibrates, it causes movement in the air particles.
These particles bump into the particles close to them, which makes them vibrate too causing them to bump into
more air particles. This movement, called sound waves, keeps going until they run out of energy. If your ear is
within range of the vibrations, you hear the sound.

Picture a stone thrown into a still body of water. The rings of waves expand indefinitely. The same is true with
sound. Irregular repeating sound waves create noise, while regular repeating waves produce musical notes.

When the vibrations are fast, you hear a high note. When the vibrations are slow, it creates a low note. The sound
waves in the diagram show the different frequencies for high and low notes.

Low frequency notes

High frequency notes

What is sound?

People use sound all the time. We rely on sounds to communicate. Unexpected noises may warn us of danger.
The sounds we hear tell us a lot about our surroundings. Many animals also use sound. This is especially true of
animals that live in water. Since only the very top of the ocean receives light from the sun, animals have
difficulty using their eyes to find their way around in deeper waters. Once animals dive, they rely heavily on
their hearing to sense their environment.

If you had to draw a picture of a sound, what would you draw? Maybe something like this?

Or perhaps something like this?

In fact, both of these pictures are right! Sound is a wave, similar to the ripples on a pond or the ocean waves you
might see crashing on a beach. Instead of being a wave on the ocean surface, sound is a wave that travels
through air or water.
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Because waves move, you can think of a sound wave moving through water. Imagine a tiny section of the water
as a particle. This water particle receives a tiny push, then a pull, as sound travels through it. This causes the
water particle to vibrate backward and forward around the spot where it was before the sound wave came
through. This spot is called its equilibrium position. The movement of the water particle is called vibration.

The water that sound travels through is called a medium. A medium can be anything - a liquid (such as water), a
solid (such as the seafloor), or a gas (such as air). Did you know that sound cannot exist if it doesn't have
something to travel through? For example, sound cannot travel through outer space because it is a vacuum that
contains nothing to carry sound.

A sound wave is called a compressional or longitudinal wave. This is a picture of a longitudinal wave. The
particles in a longitudinal wave move parallel to the direction in which the wave is traveling.

As you can see, there are places where the particles are squashed together (compressed) and places where the
particles have been pulled apart (expanded). The places where the particles are compressed are regions of high
pressure. The places where the particles are pulled apart are regions of low pressure. What is pressure? Have
you ever gotten a cut and had someone say to you, "Put pressure on that cut to help stop the bleeding?" They
were asking you to put your hand over your cut and squeeze or compress it. A sound wave alternately
compresses and expands whatever medium it is traveling through.

Water waves on the ocean surface are called transverse waves because the particles move up-and-down as the
wave moves left-and-right. The particles in a transverse wave move perpendicular to the direction in which the
wave is traveling. You can see this below in the picture of a pond. If a rock is thrown into the pond, it creates a
wave. The water moves up-and-down while the wave moves away from where the rock landed. That is called a
transverse wave.

Physics of sound

Spherical compression waves

9. The matter that supports the sound is called the medium. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum.

The perception of sound in any organism is limited to a certain range of frequencies. For humans, hearing is normally
limited to frequencies between about 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz (20 kHz),[3] although these limits are not definite. The upper
limit generally decreases with age. Other species have a different range of hearing. For example, dogs can perceive
vibrations higher than 20 kHz, but are deaf to anything below 40 Hz. As a signal perceived by one of the major senses,
sound is used by many species for detecting danger, navigation, predation, and communication. Earth's atmosphere,
water, and virtually any physical phenomenon, such as fire, rain, wind, surf, or earthquake, produces (and is
characterized by) its unique sounds. Many species, such as frogs, birds, marine and terrestrial mammals, have also
developed special organs to produce sound. In some species, these produce song and speech. Furthermore, humans
have developed culture and technology (such as music, telephone and radio) that allows them to generate, record,
transmit, and broadcast sound. The scientific study of human sound perception is known as psychoacoustics.
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Analogue signals work by transmitting sounds and pictures as continuously varying waves.

Digital information is sent as computerized pulse of information coded as 1s and 0s.

Audio is a more technical term, referring to sound coming from a recording, transmission or
electronic device.

Sound is a more generic word and can be caused by any source.

Sound is created or generated through the vibration of matter, which sets air molecules in
motion in a series of compressions and rarefactions.
- Half of a sound wave is made up of the compression of the medium and the other half is
the decompression or rarefaction of the medium.
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- Sound needs an atmosphere to be heard (air, water, wood), it cannot be heard in a

vacuum.
- For sound to exist there must be a receiver that perceives it as sound (person or
microphone)

Characteristics of Sound Waves

- Amplitude is the volume or loudness of sound
- Frequency is the pitch of the sound wave, or the number of times that the sound wave
recycles
- Each sound normally goes through four specific stages
o Attack
o Decay
o Sustain
o Release
- Two types of sound
o Direct sound is the main sound that is heard directly from the sound originating
element
o Reflected sound is sound that has been adjusted before it reaches the receiver or
the sound (often causes echo or reverberation)
- Sound often adjusts to the location where the sound is being created
o Penetration is the ability of sound to transmit through a surface
o Absorption - sound dissipates within a surface
o Reflection - sound bounces off cleanly off a smooth and even surface
o Diffusion - sound breaks up on an irregular surface

Decibel Levels of Common Sounds

Sound intensities are typically measured in decibels (dB). A decibel is defined as 10 times the logarithm of the
power ratio (power ratio is the ratio of the intensity of the sound to the intensity of an arbitrary standard point.)
Normally a change of 1 dB is the smallest volume change detectable by the human ear.
Sound intensity is also defined in terms of energy (ergs) transmitted per second over a 1 square centimeter
surface. This energy is proportional to the velocity of propagation of the sound.

Decibels Degree Sound Source

(dB)

225 Deafening 12" Cannon @ 12' in front and below

195 Deafening Saturn rocket

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180 Deafening Aircraft at take-off

160 Deafening Ram jet

150 Deafening Turbo jet

140 Deafening Artillery fire

130 Deafening Threshold of pain, decibels at or above 130 cause immediate ear damage. Hydraulic
press, pneumatic rock drill

120 Deafening Riveter, chipper, thunder, diesel engine room, fireworks display

110 Deafening Punch press, close to a train, ball mill

100 Very Passing truck, home lawn mower, car horn @ 5 meters, wood saw, boiler factory
Loud

90 Very Decibels at or above 90 regularly cause ear damage. Noisy factory, truck without
Loud muffler

80 Loud Noisy office, electric shaver, alarm clock, police whistle

70 Loud Average radio, normal street noise

60 Moderate Conversational speech

50 Moderate Normal office noise, quiet stream

45 Moderate To awaken a sleeping person

40 Faint Average residence, normal private office

30 Faint Recording studio, quiet conversation

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20 Very Faint Whisper, empty theater, ticking of watch

10 Very Faint Threshold of good hearing

0 Threshold of excellent youthful hearing

TRANSITION FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL BROADCASTING

The principles of digital broadcasting
- Digitization allows video, audio and text information to be compressed for more
efficient transmission
- Digital media put more control in the hands of the consumers than older analog media
do
- Greater media choice and easy access for consumers is the driving force of digital
convergence

Simply put, digital recording and digital signal transmission are better and more efficient that
analog. They are faster, easier and give you more for less. In the electronic media industry, the
transition from analog to digital has gone in different paces.
- In acquisition and production, the transition is almost complete
- In distribution, the transition has lagged behind.
Compression makes digital broadcasting possible. Compression is necessary for efficient
coding of video data in video file formats to facilitate distribution of such video signals in a
more efficient manner
- Compression is a conversion of data to a format that requires fewer bits, usually
performed so that the data can be stored or transmitted more efficiently.
- The most popular compression format used in digital broadcasting is the MPEG or
Motion Picture Experts Group.
- MPEG 1 is the initial video and audio compression standard and is used for VHS quality
compression and also MP3 Compression for Audio
- MPEG 2 & 3 is a compression standard for broadcast quality television and is used for
DVDs and over the air ATSC, including HDTV, Digital Cable and Digital Satellite
Broadcasting
- MPEG 4 is the compression standard used for streaming video, internet delivered video
and Wireless Application Procedure (WAP) video.
- MPEG 7 is used for video and audio search content