We conduct our daily lives against a soundtrack of incessant background noise . But the nature of that haphazardness is changing in the digital old age . And legal designing — the style we engineer recorded sound recording — is changing with it .
Geoff Martin is a “ tonmeister ” for Bang & Olufsen , a global designer of audio and telecasting equipment . Just what is a tonmeister anyway ? According to Martin , it ’s “ a recording engineer and a record manufacturer rolled into one . ” It ’s a fair rarefied profession : Tonmeisters first emerged in Germany in the sixties , and the only fashion to become one is to study under one .
As tonmeister for Bang & Olufsen , Martin has helped the company design cutting - border loudspeakers and sound systems . But his job these days is to front to the hereafter and fancy what variety of audio product customers will demand in 10 years and beyond .
To do this , he recover clues in studying how our acoustic environment is changing — how the digital environs is alter our relationship to sound and randomness .
The Difference Between Sound and Noise
auditory sensation and noise are not synonymous ; noise is broadly defined as unwanted sound , according to Martin , like an hearable hiss in a transcription . Sometimes it cite to sounds whose waveformscarry no utilitarian info , like radio static . ( wireless waving are used to send information — for instance , your favorite vocal — by altering the pattern of the wave to encode that entropy . Static is the deficiency of a pattern ; it ’s a completely random signal . )
For audio locomotive engineer , noisecomes in many colors , depending on its uniquespectral fingerprint : white-hot , pinkish , red , reddish blue , blue , even black , although to the untrained ear it will just vocalize like atmospherics . Every sound has such a fingerprint showing all the different frequencies that make up that sound . ( Most sounds are a complicated mix of mechanically skillful palpitation at lots of different frequencies . )
Noise can be a tonmeister ’s near friend . To essay aspeaker ’s acoustic design , Martin use so - called “ pinkish noise . ” It ’s interchangeable to white-hot noise — that snowy static when you ca n’t get any reception on your TV — in that it contains every frequency within the range of human hearing ( 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz ) . But unlike white noise , it ’s not altogether random . It polish off a sweet spot between overly rigid rules of order and utter bedlam , and its patterns can be seen in heartbeat , DNA , traffic stream , most electronic devices , and of course , melodic melodies .
That ’s why pinkish randomness is idealistic for testing prototypes . “ It has the same spiritual substance as music , ” said Martin . “ It just give us a more quotable behavior [ i.e. , less magnetic variation ] for the loudspeaker than if we used Marilyn Manson or Brittany Spears . ”
But interference is an annoyance for most of us . Much like clear pollution is earn star gaze well - nigh impossible in all but a few key locations , “ It ’s hard to get to a shoes where all you’re able to try are natural sound anymore , ” said Martin . “ Even if you go to the midsection of the woods , you ’re bound to hear a jet flying overhead .
Walk into a innovative building and the first thing you ’re probable to hear — if you ’re paying attention — is the hum of the lighting or the air conditioning system . It ’s always at the same frequency : 60 Hz in North America , and a slenderly lower 50 Hz in Europe , tantamount to a B categorical note — the paint of forward-looking life .
In fact , Martin cites a Vancouver composer who only create composition in the headstone of B - flat for this understanding . “ When the reverb dies down , the [ music ] blend with the strait of the Coke machine in the lobby , ” he said .
Now the nature of that ubiquitous background noise is changing . “ We ’re getting this fuzz between what we remember is veridical and what is actually real , ” say Martin . “ The entire acoustic arena is designed for us ; it ’s not inadvertent anymore . ”
That acoustical arena includes scads of artificially design speech sound , cautiously tailored to match what multitude expect to get wind . That includes everything from the sound of your hair dryer , or ring tone on your iPhone ( and the clicking sound it reach when you unlock it ) , to the audio of your car ’s exhaust system . Think all car door sound the same when you slam them keep out ? call back again . Car manufacturers go to bang-up botheration to qualify those sound into whatever is most pleasing to the ear .
The Future of Recorded Music
How we heed to music is also exchange . As recently as 10 - 15 year ago , most people still take heed to music over loudspeaker system most of the prison term . These sidereal day everyone sports earbuds to take calls or listen to music on their smart devices , and dissonance - strike down phone are all the passion ( peculiarly for frequent flyers ) . In fact , Martin said that racket - cancel headphones will soon be so undecomposed that you could stand in the center of Times Square wearing them , and not hear anything except the tune you ’re playing .
That contrivance comes at a cost : memorialise music is n’t optimally designed for headphones . Think about what happens when you watch a big - screen picture on a smaller television receiver screen : you miss a lot of the original detail . The same matter happens acoustically when you hear to euphony design to be played back on a speaker unit over earbuds or headphone .
The big question for Martin ( and for B&O ) is whether this shift will eventually influence how recordings are made . rather of record with conventional microphones , perhaps the industry will shift to microphones contained within something that mimics the acoustic of the human point . But then what happens if you attempt to represent such a recording back on a loudspeaker , or a high - end surround sound system ? Martin tell it would be exchangeable to watching a TV show on a large sieve : It just looks trashy .
“ If you have a recording made for earphone , and you encounter it over a loudspeaker system , you ’re live on to fall behind a lot in the translation , ” Martin said . “ We ’re not there yet , but I can easily see this becoming the average as more and more people survive with a dyad of headphones on their forefront . ”
20kHzis a new web log exploring how technology , science , and culture influence music .
Images viaShutterstock ; photo of Martin viaBang & Olufsen
Bang & OlufsenScience
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