AUDIO STUDIES WEEK 2 WHAT IS AUDIO?

In these first 2 weeks the focus is around getting definitions and differences sorted out: physical vs. psychophysical sound, listening vs. hearing, analogue vs. digital etc. This week’s audio studies class delved into almost Einsteinian regions of wave vs. particle natures, where the analogue audio signal is represented as a continuous stream of audio information while the digital signal manifests itself as a series of discrete, numerically represented “bits” of data, replayed at such speed that the ear cannot detect the individual sounds. It’s interesting that the ear is more discerning in determining individual events than the eye, as per the example Christian gave of video/ film. I believe the frame rate of film is something like 24 frames per second and I wonder what music would sound like if we captured the sound at a rate of 24 times per second and played it back. Is that how it works? Is that what the “bit rate” in Pro-tools refers to? If so, I think the rate was around 44.1 kHz, ie: 44,100 samples per second?
We also looked at hardware and software and mucked around with unpatched hardware in the lab. My philosophy on software is: just do it. Usually, once you get your hands on the mouse and are surrounded by a bunch of people with various degrees of experience in the application, things become clear fairly quickly. Today’s piccy is my audio studies doodle, I’ll try to include something more relevant next time.