#18: Software Engineer Drew Shapiro—Understanding the Technology of Sound (Part 2)

Exploring Kodawari

This episode is Part 2 of our conversation with software engineer Drew Shapiro. If you stumbled into this episode before hearing Part 1, I recommend going one episode back and listening to that one first...it will be kind of hard to connect the dots of where we land in this episode without hearing Part 1 first.

In this part, we continue to analyze the magic (aka science) of how sound technology works. We continue the meta journey of how my voice is reaching your ears, and talk about how digital compression works. We even played a few examples to demonstrate compression, including playing the Bach violin solo of our intro at different bit rates to hear the effect that removing data has on music.

Enjoy!

**This episode contains video which you can watch on our Youtube Channel**

Timestamps (Clickable on website):

• [03:15] Sampling and sending information in packets
• [07:15] Continuing the podcast journey of how our voices reach your ears
• [12:22] A wav file becoming an mp3 and a side by side comparison to show what frequency removal does to sound
• [17:05] Our Bach violin partita intro music side by side at different compression levels
• [28:15] How our ears pick up sound
• [30:53] How you download a podcast and convert the digital information back to analog sound waves
• [33:30] A summary of the podcast journey from our voices to your ears
• [37:30] "Perfect is the enemy of good enough" —Balancing the quest for perfect sound with pragmatism
• [41:32] Closing thoughts

Links Discussed:

• Veritasium anechoic chamber
• Barbershop pole visual illusion
• Shepard Tone audio illusion
• Can You Trust Your Ears? (Audio Illusions)
• Do You Hear "Yanny" or "Laurel"? (SOLVED with SCIENCE)
• Electron microscope slow-motion video of vinyl LP
• The Truth About Vinyl - Vinyl vs. Digital

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