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Phoenix-Anima23 t1_iy5adff wrote

Reply to comment by Prophetarier in Headphone wizardry by SupOrSalad

Not really, it produces the sum of various sound waves added up together. It's just one sound wave

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WoodenSporkAudio t1_iy5e08x wrote

so when the cone is moving at 80hz while also vibrating at 2kHz on and off, it's not making more than one sound? The source is two sounds, and it plays both by playing them by making only one sound at the same time from one driver... it's to be considered only one sound? Semantics is weird.

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tummo t1_iy5fatz wrote

I think to take this any further you'd need a technical definition of what "a sound" is

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farmyardcat t1_iy6i5an wrote

The mark of any quality meme is that it leads to disagreement about the definitions of basic nouns that compose reality

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Beor_TheOld t1_iycoqx6 wrote

You can’t describe reality in words because it isn’t words, it’s rings bell

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Marathalayan t1_iy8a1br wrote

How can one thing vibrate 2000 times and second and 80 times a second at the same time ? Answer is it does not.

Try superpositioning two waves of 80hz and 2000hz and then you get a pattern of vibration which doesn’t look like 80 and 2000 but it’s a pattern which is the resultant of 80 and 2000. At some parts it’s added I amplitude (at time periods both parts are in the positive cycle and is present in the same time slice. Read superposition to undertand exactly the way in which how this pattern is formed.

Then this pattern of vibration reaches your ear where again different haircells deflect differently as they have different thresholds to produce an auditory signal.

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WoodenSporkAudio t1_iybh2ts wrote

it vibrates quickly while also oscillating slower. back and forth at 80 times per second while going smaller quicker back and forth motions while riding the bigger slower wave... Of course it is a mashup of the two, but it makes two tones, even if it is one combined output at the transducer. It's all in the semantics of how you want to approach and define these things, really.

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SupOrSalad OP t1_iy5sabv wrote

Disregard my original comment, I misread the comment above, and mine is a poor and incorrect explanation>!Yeah it all combines together through the fourier transform. The movement of the driver is a sum of its frequencies, and even if the driver seems to be moving up and down in a simple pattern, it is doing that as a result of the different frequencies all adding together. Your ear is able to take that sound and through a reverse of the same fourier transform equation, each individual frequency is separated and heard individually!<

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20EYES t1_iy5vip2 wrote

That's not exactly what a Fourier transform means but you are on the right track for sure.

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SupOrSalad OP t1_iy5ykpb wrote

Thanks. I know it's a math equation that I really don't understand. Hoping to learn as much as possible, but yeah my understanding is definitely limited

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20EYES t1_iy62k8y wrote

If you are curious, I highly recommend these 2 videos. The first one gives a high-level explanation and the second one dives in a bit deeper. You absolutely do not need to fully understand the math to understand the concept in general btw.

https://youtu.be/nmgFG7PUHfo

https://youtu.be/spUNpyF58BY

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SupOrSalad OP t1_iy62xv9 wrote

Will definitely when I get off work. Thanks

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SupOrSalad OP t1_iy6z48m wrote

Watched them now. Really informative and actually enjoyable to watch. Thanks for sharing that!

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nutyo t1_iy5j0pl wrote

It doesn't matter how many upvotes this gets it is wrong. A single driver absolutely does produce multiple frequencies or sound waves at once. It is just that at any single point in time the sound pressure it is producing is a summation of those frequencies.

EDIT. My first sentence was too harsh.

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Phoenix-Anima23 t1_iy5jvy8 wrote

How I see it is like in an instrument. Do you think of the sound it produces as 1 sound or multiple sounds that ultimately add up to what you hear?

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nutyo t1_iy5lba3 wrote

You could absolutely say that the summation of all the frequencies a driver produces is also a soundwave. It would just be irregular and ever changing.

And a driver is far more capable than a single instrument seeing as it could reproduce an entire orchestra, choir and band's worth of sounds all at once. The sound it is producing is a summation of all the sounds it is producing and our experience of listening to it is definitely better described as multiple sounds as your brain can easily pick apart a violin and a drum playing and the same time.

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20EYES t1_iy5vp43 wrote

This is really semantics. IMO it produces multiple frequencies but not multiple waveforms.

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Turtvaiz t1_iy5tmzd wrote

So is two speakers playing different sounds at once. It gets summed up physically just the same

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