091 - The Miracle of Sound

TPA contributor Brian Maddox discusses the nature of sound, how it relates to audio, and the importance of “getting it right at the source”.

Written by Brian Maddox

I’ve spent a lot of time recently pondering over the “Science of Sound”. Principally, what is sound? How is it created? How is it transmitted? How is it received? And perhaps most importantly: how do we make any sense of what is received?

These questions are far too reaching to even begin to tackle in many years of study, much less a simple blog post. So, I’ll make no attempt at that! But we should discuss what I call the “Miracle of Sound” and spend a few minutes just trying to get our heads around what this unimaginably complex thing actually is.

Sound at its most fundamental level is an extraordinary medium of communication. We see it used in this way on a daily basis, but I’d like to take a minute to just think about how much information can be contained in the smallest and simplest sounds. Yes, I’m talking about words, but I’m also talking about sounds that occur in our natural world.

Think about how much information is contained in a single bird chirp. If we are properly educated we can determine the species of bird, it’s location, and even what kind of message it is sending. The sound of wind in a tree can tell us if it is large or small, or if it is a leafy tree or perhaps an evergreen. We can even often determine the season based on whether we hear the sound of leaves or not. Even manmade things have distinctive, readily identifiable sounds — any car nut can quickly tell the difference between a Ferrari engine and an American V8 just by the unique sound each engine makes.

“Sound is one of the primary ways that humans connect with their surroundings and with each other.”

Sound is also a remarkable means of connection, which we see in nature. For example. many bird calls are based on the need to find a mate. In fact, a huge amount of nature sounds aren’t just based on communication, they are imperative for nature to make the connections that it requires in order to survive and thrive. In short, without this natural connection through sound, our world would not and could not exist in the way that it does.

Of course, we also know and understand that sound is one of the primary ways that humans connect with their surroundings and with each other. Sound orients us to the place we are. Many of us love nothing more than taking a walk in the woods and listening to all the sounds that nature makes as it goes about doing its nature things.

And sound is also a powerful means of connection between humans — not just in words, but also in inflections and all those little “human sounds” that say so much without words at all. I think we’ve all heard a baby communicate in a universal language that anyone within earshot can understand, and they certainly have no need for words to get their point across.

Sound is also a powerful means of sharing emotion. This can be just within the natural world. I’ve got three cats and I can assure you that they are able to share their emotions with each other through the use of various sounds. Of course, those same cats can share those emotions with us humans as well. Obviously we humans spend an enormous amount of our time connecting on an emotional level, and while our other senses certainly contribute to our emotional response to each other, sound carries a weight that is particularly powerful.

“I’ve got three cats and I can assure you that they are able to share their emotions with each other through the use of various sounds.”

Now, let’s think about everything I just said as it relates to Music. Obviously music communicates, either explicitly through words, or implicitly through tone or melody. Music also connects — we bond over a shared love of a particular style, or we better understand one another just based on what bands we like and don’t like. Our taste in music can often tell someone more about us than just about anything else. And then clearly music has the power to elicit emotions in ways that almost nothing else can. There’s a reason why it’s called “the universal language”.

If you’ve read this far I’m guessing you’re someone who is intensely interested in the field of audio. I’m also guessing that you’re wondering when I’m going to get to the point! Well, here goes…

We can all agree that sound is an amazingly complex and powerful thing. But here’s where it gets difficult for those of us who call ourselves “sound engineers”: turns out most of us don’t actually work with sound at all. We work with audio.

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Before we all lose our heads, let me explain my terms. I’m using “sound” as a shorthand word for acoustical energy moving through the air. And I’m using the word “audio” as a shorthand for electrical energy that we capture and manipulate with all of our various fun tools and toys.

So, we don’t actually work with sound at all, at least most of the time. No, we “capture” this impossibly complex thing (sound), convert it to an electrical copy (audio), and then we manipulate that audio in various ways and convert it back to sound.

“We must always remember that our audience isn’t listening to audio. They’re listening to sound.”

It’s the equivalent of taking the Mona Lisa, making an electronic copy of it, and then attempting to take that electronic copy and somehow recreate the Mona Lisa — oil paints and brush strokes and canvas and all. Sure, we can make a really high quality digital print of it, on really fancy paper. We could even try to 3D print the paints with brush strokes and apply it all to a canvas. But I think we’d all agree that it wouldn’t fool anyone. It might look amazing. It might even look “better” depending on your definition of the word. But no one would think it was the original.

So, how does this relate to us on an everyday basis as we’re in the trenches trying to capture and duplicate this sound as best we can? Keeping everything we’ve discussed in mind, it becomes more obvious why experienced sound engineers will continually emphasize “getting it right at the source”. That means, of course, making sure the guitar is in tune. But it also means paying very close attention to where we place microphones so that we capture the sound that is actually be produced. 

Much like our Mona Lisa example, if you were taking a picture of the painting in order to reproduce it, you’d pay very close attention to the position of your camera and the nature of your lighting because if those are wrong, nothing you do to try to “fix it” later is going to be enough.

The second part of this that hits on a very practical level is paying attention to how we as humans hear what we hear. As technicians, we tend to get very focused on the manipulation of the audio in order to make it sound “cool” or whatever. But we must always remember that our audience isn’t listening to audio. They’re listening to sound.

And they’re looking for that sound to communicate, to facilitate connection, and to elicit emotion. That’s our end goal, and we must always keep that goal in the forefront of our minds, even when we’re looking out on how cool our parallel compression scheme is working on that Sousaphone.

So I say all of that to say this: sound is an equation with an almost infinite number of variables, all interrelated to one another. That’s what makes it so amazingly powerful and yet so frustratingly difficult at the same time. Spending time practicing our craft and exploring all the different ways that we can manipulate our tools is critical to our success. But if we’re trying to recreate the Mona Lisa we want to use the best inks, and learn to use our printers and computers in as skillful was as we can. But we should also occasionally step back and just look at the Mona Lisa and really try to appreciate the beauty of what it is we’re trying to recreate.