What Does Sound Look Like?

This video, via NPR, looks at the question “What Does Sound Look Like?”

Using a clever photographic technique, Schlieren Flow Visualization, you can actually ‘see’ sound waves as they travel through air.

6 thoughts on “What Does Sound Look Like?

  1. That’s a good presentation. It reminded me of Bernie Krause’s earning of a degree in hydroacoustics. If you have at least some grounding in science, wave shapes and flow under modulation should be all but subliminal in synthesis. That’s part of how I became a better programmer. It leads to an intuition vaguely similar to Bob Moog’s. His creativity manifested itself in his design nuance; it wasn’t all just about the slew and the hertz. Keep this video in mind. Its basically as important as having a solid grip on where your LFOs are going. It’ll help you to paint a better audio picture.

  2. thank for this post, it’ll help with my explanation of sound to my children. i keep telling them that sound starts kinetically and that is the movement/ displacement of air. this will actively show them that energy doesn’t dissipate, but merely changes form… entropy will be a different lesson altogether. i have always been able to visualize it, but it’s hard to get other people, especially kids and teens to visualize it in their mind’s eye.

    thanks again synthhead, you are always an enlightening read.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *