All posts by Gary C. Woodward

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Remarkable Features of Sound

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Because we grow up with our senses mostly intact, we naturally take them for granted. We rarely pause to explore how various receptors make connecting to the world possible.

Details about the sensory equipment we carry are fascinating, none more so than sound and hearing. Their obvious importance rests uncomfortably near their precarious fragility. Exploring this subject in The Sonic Imperative over the last few years was not exactly a vacation, but it was an interesting visit to a different geography that is often overlooked. The journey revealed many surprises, including these three:

  1. The speed of sound is relatively slow. We think of breaking “the sound barrier” as the very definition of “fast.” But in the broader perspective of sound physics, our atmosphere puts a considerable drag on the distances a voice, piano or evening thunder can cover. Sound travels through the air at about 1125 feet a second. That’s about three football fields long, or a little more than the length of the long side of one block in Manhattan. When you watch nearby fireworks, they usually come with a delay between the explosions of color and their sounds; the relative delay is obvious. Lightning gives us an the same sense of the huge gap between the speeds of light and sound. Light travels 186,000 miles in the same second that sound covers a few hundred feet. And here’s the interesting point that is also an advantage to humans and other animals. The relative slowness yields what is sometimes called the “shadow” effect in listening. We have two ears  6 or 7 inches apart. That’s enough to give our binaural hearing a chance to hear the difference in the arrival of sound to one side and then to the other: one reason music in a great hall or on a good system is so pleasing. Even if we can’t see them, we can locate instruments or singers in a dimensional “soundstage.”

2. Another unusual feature of hearing is that sound may be the most persistent of all senses. We never shut our ears as we do with our eyes. And although its unfortunate that adults have usually lost some hearing acuity due to age and abuse of hearing receptors, most of us actually start picking up sounds in the womb at about 30 weeks. We hear our mothers before we are born. Equally unusual, there is some evidence to suggest that hearing and its brain functions survive for a short time even after death is pronounced.

3. Home music listeners have to face hard truths about the limits imposed by a listening room. Most domestic spaces are too small to accurately produce low frequency sound energy: the very source of what gives music so much of its punch and presence. The fact is that low frequency sound “waves” require a lot of energy and are long: often longer than the available space. The sound produced by a nice fat bass note produced on a piano or a bass guitar at 40 Hz unfolds fully only in a space of 28 feet or more. No such problem exists for higher notes in the musical scale, which may have waves which are just a few inches in length.

Why is the lower number a problem? A sound wave that does not have sufficient space for its full cycle will distort, a bit like waves that break against a cliff. We obviously can’t see it, but sound energy that has insufficient space to play out as it should results in what I think of as “wads” of faux bass: a lot of boom but not much musical clarity. Sound engineers often call this undefined low-note energy “one-note base:” an indistinct rumble of low frequency wave energy bouncing off walls or ceilings before it has run its course. To a careful listener the effect is “muddy” or “boomy.” One reason we cherish big old spaces like Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral is that its 400-foot length is a perfect acoustic for its two organs and singers. To be sure, we have grown tin ears that accept dead thuds of low frequency sound as base.

It can be a revelation to accurately hear low notes as they are meant to be heard. This is one reason audio in a good movie theater or concert hall is usually going to sound better than audio of the same program reproduced in a 20 by 12-foot living room.  One cure is to listen to music at at a moderate listening level, which is usually handled better by a room of limited size.

These and other interesting facets of sound are explored more fully in a host of books, including—a pitch is coming: The Sonic Imperative: Sound in the Age of Screens.

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Failed States

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Failed states remind us how far some state governments must come to live up to the nation’s constitutional ideals. 

There are parts of the United States that struggle to exercise common sense about would be in the interests of all their residents.  More than a few continue to marginalize racial, income or lifestyle groups. At other times, every citizen is penalized by harmful actions. To be sure, no state is exempt from having some regressive laws. But there are still clear markers of failure within a state:  indicators like high infant mortality rates, high numbers of firearm deaths, minimal Medicaid support, or little additional help to struggling families.

Sometimes it is the state legislature that has its eye on the rear view mirror rather than the road ahead.  At other times progress is blocked by a reactionary governor serving only his or her affluent electors.

In particular cases, sections in the southern tier of the country seem especially hostile to matching the support and services common in other developed societies. America’s own failed states remind us how far we still must come to live up to the nation’s constitutional ideals. It is sobering to note that over the last decade, many other countries have warned their citizens about traveling to the United States, especially due to high levels of crime or gun deaths. Uruguay, Venezuela, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Germany are among them.

Consider recent egregious actions in just Texas and Florida.

Texas has sent a number of representatives to Austin who favor policies that yield high tax rates on the poor, limited access to health care, and restrictive reproductive services for women.  That these hit the most vulnerable residents is hardly acknowledged by official levels.  As the Texas Observer’s Molly Ivins once wrote about the legislature, it “always commits its disservices to the public interest with great style.” Other samples of misplaced Texas bravado include a requirement for public officials to “acknowledge a supreme being,” the policing of school textbooks to focus on musty versions of American history, and widespread acceptance of high levels of income inequality.

Texas policies also tend to pit citizens against each other. Far too many qualify to carry handguns or a rifle in public, often without the requirement of even a permit.  At the same time, a dismaying total of 17 of its members in Congress voted against the usually routine business of certifying a presidential election.  Members like Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert took strange pleasure in a stunning vote to nullify the results.  In a younger America such an ill-considered form of defiance would have been seen as an act of treason.

In a second audacious insult to the rest of the nation, the state formally petitioned the Supreme Court to actually nullify the entire electoral results of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Rarely has stupidity, hubris and arrogance been served up so clearly in an action by officials of any state.

Florida is another case with a growing reputation for fostering dark impulses to undermine the rule of law or scientific best practices. New rules limit the use of drop boxes where voters can deposit absentee ballots. The same draconian law also adds more identification requirements for anyone requesting an absentee ballot.  These restrictions are another form of an old ploy in Jim Crow politics: “paper” a poorer citizen with stringent document regulations in the hope they will stay home during an election.

An alarming inversion of common sense often rules in the Sunshine State. The current governor recently issued an order prohibiting businesses from requiring the use of face masks as protection against the pandemic. Masks are a common tool to control the transmission of contagious illness.  But sound public health standards receded even further in a second action that prohibited cruise lines from requiring vaccines for travelers planning to leave Florida ports. The state’s Alice-in- Wonderland politics has also yielded a twisted logic that permits Florida’s current government to put a thumb on the scales of justice in favor of anyone who injures a protester, as can happen when a hothead driver comes upon a peaceful march. A formally reckless act can now be immunized from civil prosecution.

Every state has laws on the books that could stand a second look. But it is disturbing that the core foundations of a civil society are under constant threat in the fastest-growing population centers of the nation.