AUDIO BASICS

FREQUENCY
BY: ANDRS F. REGALADO BUCHELI

Hi Im Andrs F. Regalado
Bcheli from a small town in Colombia called Pasto. This lesson is for week 1 of Introduction To Music Production at Coursera.org. I will teaching about a very important property of sound which is FREQUENCY and i hope you enjoy this lesson even english is not my native language.

 In this lesson we will learn a little bit more about frequency from the point of view of audio engineering and this is the subject that concern to us, but by first we have to review some definitions which are related with physics of sound.

FREQUENCY

(SOME PHYSICAL DEFINITIONS)

Wavelenght ( ) : as you can see in the picture, is the lenght between two points of a wave with the same characteristics (in this case we have two peaks.

FREQUENCY (SOME PHYSICAL DEFINITIONS)

Amplitude (): as you can see in the picture, is the lenght between the maximum or the minimun of a wave and the central point (average of the wave)
Period (): as you can see in the picture, is the elapsed time between two equivalent points of a wave.
Frequency (): is the number of oscillations per unit time (is the number of times a wave repeats.

FREQUENCY
(SOME USEFUL EQUATIONS IN AUDIO ENGINEERING I)

IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICS IN AUDIO ENGINEERING: Knowledge of the physics of sound in the audio devices design (amplifiers, sound effects for electric guitars, etc) is very important and in this section we will see some useful equations related with frequency.

 Wavelenght ()
Period () Frequency () Angular frequency ()

FREQUENCY (SOME USEFUL EQUATIONS IN AUDIO ENGINEERING II)

=
= =

FREQUENCY (SOME USEFUL EQUATIONS IN AUDIO ENGINEERING III)

When we are talking about sound waves, wavelength is related to the frequency by the speed of sound in air. For example at room temperature ~ Speed of sound in the air c = 343 m/s Density of air = , / Relationship between wavelenght and frequency of sound in air: =

 We can use the above equations in some useful calculations in audio engineering:

FREQUENCY

For example if we need to calculate the wavelenght at a frequency of 20 KHz we can use: =

(HOUSE TO EQUATIONS IN AUDIO ENGINEERING )

/ = = . = .

 Audible range of the human ear:

FREQUENCY (SOME USEFUL TIPS ABOUT FREQUENCY IN AUDIO ENGINEERING I)

As we calculate in the previous slide, at a frequency of 20 KHz, which is the same of 20000 Hz, a sound wave have a lenght of 1,7 cm, and that means that at high frequencies, the lenght of a wave is very short.
If we use the same equation, we can calculate the lenght of a wave at 20 Hz and it is 17 meters, and that means that at low frequencies, waves are very long. The previous tips are related with the human hability to localice sound. The average distance between human ears is approximately 22-23 cm. The wavelenght that fits between the ears correspond to a frequency of 1500 Hz.

FREQUENCY (SOME USEFUL TIPS ABOUT FREQUENCY IN AUDIO ENGINEERING II)

Humans determine directionality of sound by two basic methods: ITD (Interaural time difference): For f < 1500 Hz. (Time that takes to time to get one ear and then the other ear). IID (Interaural intensive difference): For f > 1500 Hz. (The brain localice a sound source because the head and the skin absorb sound pressure and a sound is perceived higher intensity in one of the ears)

Using this two properties of human hearing, engineers can create audio illusions as audio 3-D

Why are the transducers different sizes in speaker design?

The small transducer is for high frequency sound radiation and the larger driver is for low frequency sound radiation.

FREQUENCY

(CABINETS AND LOCATION OF LOUDSPEAKERS)

 Some guitar effects as Wah Wah work as an electronic treatment of frequency, using a high pass filter with a variable cutoff frequency to produce its typical sound.

FREQUENCY

(GUITAR EFFECTS)

FREQUENCY
(ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND REFERENCES)

This work is based on some definitions consulted in Wikipedia and in the online coursera course Fundamentals of audio and music engineering: Part 1 Musical Sound & Electronics offered by Rochester University.