Spudbucket wrote:Thanks everyone! I especially liked the link to the diagrams.
Can someone show me some 'sound waves'? I want to see what the sounds actually look like.
How do all the sounds come from one groove? How can high and low notes come from the same thing? When I listen to music I can hear all the things going on at once, if there is only one channel for sound why don't some of the sounds cut out when others come in?
How many factors are there to the grooves, is it just depth or is there additional texture? For example does depth correspond to bass whilst little bumps make other sounds?
I'm finding it hard to articulate what I want to know, I hope you understand!
when your ear hears a sound, or combination of sounds, what is happening is molecules of air are vibrating, the more molecules, the higher the sound pressure. These air molecules hit the timpanic membrane (ear drum). These vibrations are picked up by tiny hairs, and turned into electrical signals that are fed to the brain. The brain has the ability to turn these signals into something meaningful.
When a microphone is used to pickup sound, the same process happens. Molecules of air hit the 'ear drum' in the mic, and this is turned into an electrical signal. So the microphone is reacting to the sound pressure around it, just like the ear. And because it is sound pressure (air molecules), it is a total of all the sounds being picked up, it is not a collection of individual sounds. This combined signal can then be fed to a disc recording lathe, where the signal waveform is transfered to the record. There is one wiggly line (for each channel), one each side of the groove for stereo.
It is our ear/brain that converts the mix into the illusion of individual sounds. A trick like our eyes, which send signals to the brain from the upside down images from our two eyes, turning them into a 3D image, the right way up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDho6HWK ... re=relatedHTH
