Sound: production, capture and reproduction.

Review1.

Science Book of Sound

Neil Ardley

This book is address to kids; it would be the type of book for lay
audience because explains explicitly what Sound is, it describes it as a
‘’kind of energy that flows though the air in indivisible waves that are
capture by our ears’’. Then explains how theses vibrations are capture
by our eardrums and change to nerve pulses in our brains. This book
explains the characteristics of sound with examples, games and
activities like making your own radio receiver. By reading simple
definitions and applying theory in the projects described, it becomes
easy to understand concepts of sound waves like: pitch, hertz, sound
propagation, recording, ultrasound, radio waves and musical scales.

Review 2.

Digital Audio work station.

Colby Leider

This is an academic book that consists of 10 chapters. It introduces

sound definition clearer. For instance, not only it describes sound
waves propagated in air but it makes comments extensively about
how waves can be produces by water. In fact, to produce sound waves
it only requires an impact of two solids against one another and
against the air. Aristotle, Boethius and Pierre Gassendi and
especially Isaac Newton in 1686 contributed to what now it’s our
definition of sound waves: “alternating waves of high and low
pressure that upon hitting our ears cause our brain to invoke some
kind of auditory sensation using one or several of various neural
mechanism”. So, the sound can’t only be heard because of our years,
and can be propagated in any medium, some more effective than
others but it can’t be propagated in a vacuum this is why outer space
is completely silent. On the other hand soundwaves can only be seen
on computer spectrums and by a property known as
sonoluminescence in the presence of pulsating sound waves when tiny
gas bubbles of certain chemical composition lights up. To study sound
we have to study the characteristics of waves in general, this book
makes and introduction to the physics of sound. Including the types of
waves that exists and how we convert that acoustic energy (waves)
into mechanical energy (pulses) and then converted to digital audio
(bits)by 4 stages: filter analyzer, sampling, quantizing and coding.
Because of this technology we can record sound, process sound, edit
sound and reproduce sound. It’s so cool that we don’t need to record
sound to produce it; we can make codes to create information of
waves and send them to the speaker.

Review 3.

How Does a Speaker Work?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lUSkD31CRw

After encoding vibrations of sound waves in a computer, the way to reproduce

sound is by a speaker. So, after the computer sends information about wave’s
sound by the amplifier to the speaker, we can hear sound because the air
particles are moved by vibrations of a cone that makes up specific frequencies.

To modify the type sound the waves frequency is arrange and to increase or
decrease volume we modify the waves amplitude. To produce these waves a
speaker has to have something like a diaphragm (cone) with a suspension that
allows it to move. The suspension is attached to the drivers metal frame, called
the basket. Then, the narrow end of the cone is connected to the voice coil
which is attached to the basket by a ring of flexible material (spider) that helps
to hold the coil in position but lets it move back and forth. This is how the
vibrations are made.