- #1
Zane_C
- 4
- 0
Hello everyone , after spending many hours watching youtube videos, reading wikipedia articles and other related material, I came to the conclusion that my best hope at understanding this is to have an explanation personally explained to me, and I trust this is the right place to ask for help. I've recently been playing around with sound synthesizers, and have since been puzzled by waveforms with jagged edges, such as square, rectangular, or sawtooth. I'll further address my question below, and I give my sincere thanks to anyone who responds.
What I know:
I'm aware that a sound wave does not literally travel through the air looking like a square, rectangle, sawtooth, or whatever the waveform is for that matter. Sound waves travel as longitudinal waves, and what is described as the 'waveform' is actually a function of the intensity of air pressure graphed against time. I am comfortable with the workings of a speaker, so when I say 'speaker' I'm only addressing the movement of the diaphragm.
Why I'm confused:
I'm confused because I don't understand how the maximum pressure of a sound wave can be instantly achieved, then sustained for a desired time, and then instantly dropped back to the original pressure. For any sound wave, wouldn't there always be a gradient leading up to the maximum, as well as a gradient when dropping back to the minimum? I thought maybe it's just very steep (<90 degrees) and therefore can appear as a square.
(here is an animation of a longitudinal wave pulse to help you visualize)
How would the diaphragm of a speaker sustain that top section of a square wave? I thought perhaps the diaphragm would have to be expanding outwards for the duration of the entire sustaining time.
I'm convinced that I'm over thinking this and will probably just embarrass myself, and for simplicity sake, I hope that's the case...
One attempt I made to explain these waveforms is that square/rectangular/sawtooth waves are a sinusoidal wave enveloped in such a shape, or multiple sinusoidal waves superimposed on each other. In which case the resulting wave wouldn't be perfectly shaped, unless some troughs/peaks canceled each other out. But wouldn't this require more than one speaker to create the multiple sinusoidal waves that superimpose each other? Clearly it doesn't work this way, because an earphone with only one diaphragm can produce seemingly every sound imaginable.
It will mean so much to me if someone can give me a satisfactory response, I can't listen to music anymore with this thought on my mind XD.
Thanks again for taking the time to read! Very much appreciated. :thumbs:
What I know:
I'm aware that a sound wave does not literally travel through the air looking like a square, rectangle, sawtooth, or whatever the waveform is for that matter. Sound waves travel as longitudinal waves, and what is described as the 'waveform' is actually a function of the intensity of air pressure graphed against time. I am comfortable with the workings of a speaker, so when I say 'speaker' I'm only addressing the movement of the diaphragm.
Why I'm confused:
I'm confused because I don't understand how the maximum pressure of a sound wave can be instantly achieved, then sustained for a desired time, and then instantly dropped back to the original pressure. For any sound wave, wouldn't there always be a gradient leading up to the maximum, as well as a gradient when dropping back to the minimum? I thought maybe it's just very steep (<90 degrees) and therefore can appear as a square.
(here is an animation of a longitudinal wave pulse to help you visualize)
How would the diaphragm of a speaker sustain that top section of a square wave? I thought perhaps the diaphragm would have to be expanding outwards for the duration of the entire sustaining time.
I'm convinced that I'm over thinking this and will probably just embarrass myself, and for simplicity sake, I hope that's the case...
One attempt I made to explain these waveforms is that square/rectangular/sawtooth waves are a sinusoidal wave enveloped in such a shape, or multiple sinusoidal waves superimposed on each other. In which case the resulting wave wouldn't be perfectly shaped, unless some troughs/peaks canceled each other out. But wouldn't this require more than one speaker to create the multiple sinusoidal waves that superimpose each other? Clearly it doesn't work this way, because an earphone with only one diaphragm can produce seemingly every sound imaginable.
It will mean so much to me if someone can give me a satisfactory response, I can't listen to music anymore with this thought on my mind XD.
Thanks again for taking the time to read! Very much appreciated. :thumbs: