Sound Quality

1-21 Figure 1-14.—Sound waves spread in all directions. Sound intensity and loudness are often mistakenly interpreted as having the same meaning. Although they are related, they are not the same. Sound INTENSITY is a measure of the sound energy of a wave. LOUDNESS, on the other hand, is the sensation the intensity (and sometimes frequency) the sound wave produces on the ear. Increasing the intensity causes an increase in loudness but not in a direct proportion. For instance, doubling the loudness of a sound requires about a tenfold increase in the intensity of the sound. Sound Quality Most sounds, including musical notes, are not pure tones. They are a mixture of different frequencies (tones). A tuning fork, when struck, produces a pure tone of a specific frequency. This pure tone is produced by regular vibrations of the source (tines of the tuning fork). On the other hand, scraping your fingernails across a blackboard only creates noise, because the vibrations are irregular. Each individual pipe of a pipe organ is similar to a tuning fork, and each pipe produces a tone of a specific frequency. But sounding two or more pipes at the same time produces a complex waveform. A tone that closely imitates any of the vowel sounds can be produced by selecting the proper pipes and sounding them at the same time. Figure 1-15 illustrates the combining of two pure tones to make a COMPLEX WAVE. Figure 1-15.—Combination of tones. The QUALITY of a sound depends on the complexity of its sound waves, such as the waves shown in tone C of figure 1-15. Almost all sounds (musical and vocal included) have complicated (complex)