All sound waves are compressional waves caused by vibrations, but the music from a symphony varies considerably from both a baby’s cry and the whisper of a confidant. All sound waves can be characterized by their speed, by their pitch, by their loudness, and by their quality or timbre.
The Speed of Sound
The speed of sound is fastest in solids (almost 6000 m/s in steel), slower in liquids (almost 1500 m/s in water), and slowest in gases. We normally listen to sounds in air, so we’ll look at the speed of sound in air most carefully. In air, sound travels at:
v = 331 [m/s] + 0.6 [m/s]/[°C] * T [°C]
The part to the right of the “+” sign is the temperature factor. It shows that the speed of sound increases by 0.6 m/s for every temperature increase of 1°C. So, at 0° C, sound travels at 331 m/s (about 740 mph). But at room temperature (about 20°C) sound travels at:
v = 343 [m/s]
It was one of aviation’s greatest accomplishments when Chuck Yeager, on Oct. 14, 1947, flew his X-1 jet at Mach 1.06, exceeding the speed of sound by 6%. Regardless, this is a snail’s pace compared to the speed of light. Sound travels through air at about a million times slower than light, which is the reason why we hear sound echoes but don’t see light echoes. It’s also the reason we see the lightning before we hear the thunder. The lightning-thunder effect is often noticed in big stadiums. If you’re far away from a baseball player who’s up to bat, you can clearly see the ball hit before you hear the crack of the bat. You can consider that the light recording the event reaches your eyes virtually instantly. So if the sound takes half a second more time than the light, you’re half the distance sound travels in one second (165 meters) from the batter. Next time you’re in a thunderstorm use this method to estimate how far away lightning is striking.
The Pitch of Sound
The pitch of sound is the same as the frequency of a sound wave. With no hearing losses or defects, the ear can detect wave frequencies between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. (Sounds below 20 Hz are classified as subsonic; those over 20,000 Hz are ultrasonic). However, many older people, loud concert attendees, and soldiers with live combat experience lose their ability to hear higher frequencies. The good news is that the bulk of most conversation takes place well below 2,000 Hz. The average frequency range of the human voice is 120 Hz to approximately 1,100 Hz (although a baby’s shrill cry is generally 2,000 - 3,000 Hz – which is close to the frequency range of greatest sensitivity). Even telephone frequencies are limited to below 3,400 Hz. But the bad news is that the formation of many consonants is a complex combination of very high frequency pitches. So to the person with high frequency hearing loss, the words key, pee, and tea sound the same. You find people with these hearing losses either lip reading or understanding a conversation by the context as well as the actual recognition of words.
One important concept in music is the octave – a doubling in frequency. For example, 40 Hz is one octave higher than 20 Hz. The ear is sensitive over a frequency range of about 10 octaves: 20 Hz -> 40 Hz -> 80 Hz -> 160 Hz -> 320 Hz -> 640 Hz -> 1,280 Hz -> 2,560 Hz -> 5,120 Hz -> 10,240 Hz -> 20,480 Hz. And within that range it can discriminate between thousands of differences in sound frequency. Below about 1,000 Hz the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) in frequency is about 1 Hz (at the loudness at which most music is played), but this rises sharply beyond 1,000 Hz. At 2,000 the JND is about 2 Hz and at 4,000 Hz the JND is about 10 Hz. (A JND of 1 Hz at 500 Hz means that if you were asked to listen alternately to tones of 500 Hz and 501 Hz, the two could be distinguished as two different frequencies, rather than the same). It is interesting to compare the ear’s frequency perception to that of the eye. From red to violet, the frequency of light less than doubles, meaning that the eye is only sensitive over about one octave, and its ability to discriminate between different colors is only about 125. The ear is truly an amazing receptor, not only its frequency range, but also in its ability to accommodate sounds with vastly different loudness.
The Loudness of Sound
The loudness of sound is related to the amplitude of the sound wave. Most people have some recognition of the decibel (dB) scale. They might be able to tell you that 0 dB is the threshold of hearing and that the sound on the runway next to an accelerating jet is about 140 dB. However, most people don’t realize that the decibel scale is a logarithmic scale. This means that for every increase of 10 dB the sound intensity increases by a factor of ten. So going from 60 dB to 70 dB is a ten-fold increase, and 60 dB to 80 dB is a hundred-fold increase. This is amazing to me. It means that we can hear sound intensities over 14 orders of magnitude. This means that the 140 dB jet on the runway has a loudness of 10^14 times greater than threshold. 10^14 is 100,000,000,000,000 – that’s 100 trillion! It means our ears can measure loudness over a phenomenally large range. Imagine having a measuring cup that could accurately measure both a teaspoon and 100 trillion teaspoons (about 10 billion gallons). The ear is an amazing receptor! However, our perception is skewed a bit. A ten-fold increase in loudness doesn’t sound ten times louder. It may only sound twice as loud. That’s why when cheering competitions are done at school rallies, students are not very excited by the measure of difference in loudness between a freshmen class (95 dB) and a senior class (105 dB). The difference is only 10 dB. It sounds perhaps twice as loud, but it’s really 10 times louder.
The Quality of Sound
The quality of sound or timbre is the subtlest of all its descriptors. A trumpet and a violin could play exactly the same note, with the same pitch and loudness, and if your eyes were closed you could easily distinguish between the two. The difference in the sounds has to do with their quality or timbre. The existence of supplementary tones, combined with the basic tones, doesn’t change the basic pitch, but gives a special “flavor” to the sound being produced. Sound quality is the characteristic that gives the identity to the sound being produced.
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