Audio Quiz 1

Studio

control room (console

Home Studios

usually built for the convenience of an artist or producer

Who invented the Tin Cylinder

phonograph

Who invented the gramophone?

Emile Berliner in 1887

Acoustic Era

1877-1925

Electrical Era

1925-45 Microphones and amps helped balance the levels before and during the recording process

Magnetic Era

1945-1975

Jack Mullin

Discovered the modern magnetic tape recorder in Germany after WWII and gave it to Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby

invested 50k in AMPEX

Les Paul

Les Paul

Les Paul also

created Multitrack tape through experimentation

Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band

was recorded on 4 tracks with constant bouncing

Digital Era

digital encoding led to new ways of recording

Four things on the back of the computer?

ILOCK

By the 90s studios began using

ADAT or recording digitally to S-VHS tapes or DAWS

DAWs

an integrated computer-based

Pro Tools Artist Kit

Records up to 32 audio

Pro Tools Studio Kit

comes with plugin bundles

Pro Tools Flex

Flex- can record 2048 audio tracks

sound

periodic variations in atmospheric pressure called sound pressure waves

What is sound comprised of

compressions(push) and rarefactions(pull) as the vibrations move in and out of their normal resting state creating chain rection as it moves through a medium

properties of sound waves

frequency

Amplitude

how loud or soft that sound wave is

Frequency

The number of cycles per second.

What type of frequencies have longer wave lengths

Low Frequencies

The average level of a waveform

Root Mean Square

Velocity is

the speed of sound

Wavelength

can be measured by V/Frequency

100 Hz is 100 cycles per second

is 100 cycles per second

Phase

is the location or point within a sound wave cycle

Polarity

the function of positive or negative state in relation to the original wave

phase shift occurs when

two identical waveforms lag in time with each other. Two identical waves add 3db

Out-of-phase waveforms

cancel each other out

Sound Pressure Level (SPL)

the deviation from the normal atmospheric pressure given by a sound wave. Measured in Pascals

How do we hear sound?

Sound waves hit your ear and vibrate your ear drum. The tiny bones in your middle ear are connected to the eardrum

Overexposure to sound can cause

hearing loss by destroying the tiny hairs in your inner ear

Conductive hearing loss

beyond my control like allergies colds wax buildup

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

permanent loss of hearing due to damage the inner ear

temporary threshold shift

a temporary hearing loss after being exposed to loud noise that affects the functioning of the inner ear

permanent threshold shift

permanent increase in a hearing threshold as a result of exposure to noise

tinnitus

ringing in the ears

Congress created OSHA in

1970

NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) says you can expose at

85 dB for 8 hours

sound intensity

how loud something sounds to you is not the same as the actual intensity of that sound. Every 10 dB increase in SPL the intensity rises by a factor of 10

Loudness

In general when measuring loudness

Humans have peak ear sensitivity at

2k Hz and 5k Hz

Psychoacoustics

A recording may vary in frequency balance greatly when mixed at loud volumes and played back at softer volumes. Loudness can also affect our perception of pitch -i.e. Walking in a room and feeling louder as u approach the wall cause of the refelctions

Acoustic Isolation

This prevents external noises from transmitting into the studio environment through the air

symmetry

is optimal when creating a studio. centered around the listeners position

Analog-to-Digitial Conversion

Using binary number system

Sampling

the number of measurements that are taken periodically over the course of a second

44.1hz =

sample time of 1/44

Nyquist Theorem

In order to get the desired frequency bandwidth to be faithfully encoded in the digital domain

Alias Tones

sometimes appear in the digital signal causing distortion (f5-f= alas tone: so 40k-30k=10k alias)

Quantization

this represents the amplitude component of the digital sampling processConverted to binary numbers the resulting word is used to encode the original voltage level with a high degree of accuracy

bit depth

The number of bits of information in each individual sample captured. The bit depth relates closely to the signal t noise ratio or available dynamic range of a digital medium

Storage for 16bit/48khz

11.4 MB

Work Clock

A main console that controls and times all other devices

Audio Interface

this is where A/D conversion happens. In labs