Understanding Audio Information and Media

Audio Information and Media (Part 1)

• Audio is sound, especially when recorded, transmitted, or reproduced.
• Audio media is media communication using audio or recordings to deliver and transfer information through sound.

Types and Categories of Audio Information

• Radio Broadcasts can be live or recorded audio sent through radio waves to reach many listeners.
• Music involves vocal or instrumental sounds combined to create beauty, harmony, and emotional expression.
• Sound recordings capture interviews, meetings, or any sound from the environment.
• Sound clips/effects are artificially reproduced sounds used to create an effect in a dramatic presentation, like a storm or door sound.
• Audio podcasts are digital audio or video files/recordings, often part of a series, that can be downloaded from a website to a media player or computer.

Ways to Store Audio Information

• Tape: Magnetic tape used to record sound.
• CD (Compact Disc): A plastic, circular medium for recording, storing, and playing back audio, video, and computer data.
• USB (flash) Drive: An external flash drive, small enough to carry on a key ring, used with any computer via a USB port.
• Memory Card (Flash Memory/Storage Card): A small storage medium for data like text, pictures, audio, and video, used on small, portable, or remote computing devices.
• Computer Hard Drive: Secondary storage devices used to store audio files.
• Internet/Cloud: Websites or file repositories for retrieving audio files, stored in a datacenter full of servers connected to the internet.

Audio File Formats

• MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) is a common format for consumer audio, a standard for digital audio compression when transferring and playing back music on most digital audio players.
• M4A/AAC (MPEG4 Audio/Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression, designed to be the MP3 successor, generally achieving better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.
• WAV is a Microsoft audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs, becoming a standard file format for game sounds.
• WMA (Windows Media Audio) is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft and used with Windows Media Player.

Unit of Sound

• Decibel (dB): A unit of sound measurement for noise.
• Hertz (Hz): A unit of sound frequency.
• Phon is the unit of subjective loudness.

Characteristics and Purposes of Sound

• Volume is the intensity of a sound.
• Tone is the audible characteristic of a sound.
• Pitch is how high or low a sound is.
• Loudness refers to the magnitude of the sound heard.
• Sound gives information or instruction.
• Sound provides feedback.
• Sound personalizes or customizes.

Elements of Sound Design

• Dialogue: Speech, conversation, voice-over.
• Sound Effects: Any sound other than music or dialogue.
• Music: Vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined to produce beauty of form, harmony, and emotional expression.
• Silence: Absence of audio or sounds.

Principles of Sound Design

• Technique of combining different elements or objects.
• Pace: Time control, editing, and ordering of events in linear, non-linear, or multi-linear fashion.
• Mixing: The combination, balance, and control of multiple sound elements.
• Transitions: How you move from one segment or element to another.
  • SEGUE – one element stops, the next begins (“cut" in film)
  • Cross-fade – one element fades out, the next fades in, and they overlap on the way.
  • V-fade - first element fades to inaudible before the second element begins
  • Fade to black is a Vfade with some silence between elements effect
• Stereo Imaging: Using left and right channels for depth.

Hearing vs. Listening

• Hearing is the act of perceiving sound by the ear.
• Listening requires concentration so that your brain processes meaning from words and sentences, leading to learning.