Ask Lemmy

26989 readers

1257 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

How can everything be captured in simple data like people's exact voice noise? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by cheese_greater to c/asklemmy

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If a recording of someones very rare voice is representable by mp4 or whatever, could monkeys typing out code randomly exactly reproduce their exact timbre+tone+overall sound?

I don't get how we can get rocks to think + exactly transcribe reality in the ways they do!

Edit: I don't get how audio can be fossilized/reified into plaintext

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Barack_Embalmer 2 points 4 months ago

Everything about the exact timbre of your voice is captured in the waveform that represents it. To the extent that the sampling rate and bit depth are good enough to mimic your actual voice without introducing digital artefacts (something analogous to a pixelated image) that's all it takes to reproduce any sound with arbitrary precision.

Timbre is the result of having a specific set of frequencies playing simultaneously, that is characteristic of the specific shape and material properties of the object vibrating (be it a guitar string, drum skin, or vocal chords).

As for how multiple frequencies can "exist" simultaneously at a single instant in time, you might want to read up on Fourier's theorem and watch 3Blue1Brown's brilliant series on differential equations that explores Fourier series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY