Sound

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 The Power of Sound

• How we use the power of sound can make the difference

between an ordinary multimedia presentation and a
professionally spectacular one
• Misuse of sound  can wreck the project

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 The Power of Sound

• When something vibrates in the air by moving back and

forth, it creates waves of pressure
• These waves spread, and when they reach our eardrums, we
experience the vibrations as sound

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 The Power of Sound

• Acoustics: The branch of physics that studies sound

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 The Power of Sound

• Sound pressure levels (loudness or volume)

 measured in decibels (dB)
• Decibel measurement  ratio between a chosen reference
point on a logarithmic scale

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 Digital Audio

• Digital audio is created when we represent the characteristics

of a sound wave using numbers
• Source:
• Microphone
• Synthesizer
• Existing recordings
• Live radio & TV broadcasts
• CD & DVD

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 Digital Audio

• Digitized sound  sampled sound

• Every nth fraction of a second, a sample of sound is taken and
stored as digital information in bits and bytes

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 Digital Audio

• The quality of digital recording depends on:

• How often the samples are taken
 Sampling rate or frequency, measured in kilohertz or
thousands of samples per second
• How many numbers are used to represent the value of
each sample
 Bit depth, sample size, resolution, or dynamic range

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 Digital Audio

• Sampling rates most often used in multimedia:

• 44.1 kHz (CD-quality)
• 22.05 kHz
• 11.025 kHz

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 Digital Audio

• Sampling sizes:
• 8 bits  256 equal units to describe sound in slice of time
• 16 bits  65,536 equal units to describe sound in slice of
time

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 Digital Audio

• Slices of analog waveforms are sampled at various frequencies

• Each discrete sample is stored as 8 bits, 16 bits (or more) of
data

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 Digital Audio

• The value of each sample is rounded off to the nearest

integer (quantization)
• Quantization can produce an unwanted background hissing
noise

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 Digital Audio

• If the amplitude is greater than the intervals available,

clipping of the top and bottom of the wave occurs
• Clipping may severely distort the sound

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 Digital Audio

• Digital audio  device independent

• The audio quality is based on the quality of recording, not
the device on which end user will play the audio

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 Making Digital Audio Files

• Plug a microphone into the microphone jack of computer

• If we want to digitize archived analog source materials, plug
the “Line-Out” or “Headphone” jack of the device into the
“Line-In” or microphone jack on computer
• Use audio digitizing software such as Audacity

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 Making Digital Audio Files

• Audacity

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 Making Digital Audio Files

• Two crucial aspects of preparing digital audio files:

• Balancing the need for sound quality against file size
 Higher quality means larger files
 Requiring longer download times on the Internet &
more storage on CD or DVD
• Setting proper recording levels to get a good, clean
recording

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 File Size

Monophonic recording:
sampling rate x duration of recording in seconds x (bit resolution / 8) x 1

Stereo recording:
sampling rate x duration of recording in seconds x (bit resolution / 8) x 2

sampling rate: kHz or thousand samples per second

resolution: bits per sample

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 File Size

10-second mono recording at 22.05 kHz, 8-bit resolution:

22050 x 10 x 8 / 8 x 1 = 220,500 bytes

10-second stereo recording at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit resolution:

44100 x 10 x 16 / 8 x 2 = 1,764,000 bytes

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 MIDI Audio

• MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface):

An instruction-based system for creating music

• MIDI data is not digitized sound; it is a shorthand

representation of music stored in numeric form

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 MIDI Audio

• Digital audio  recording

• MIDI  score

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 MIDI Audio

• A MIDI file is a list of time-stamp commands that are

recordings of musical actions (eg: the pressing down of a
piano key)
• When sent to a MIDI playback device, this results in sound
• A small, concise MIDI message can cause a complex sound
• MIDI files tend to be significantly smaller than equivalent
digitized waveform files

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 MIDI Audio

• To make MIDI scores, we need:

• Notation software
• Sequencer software
• Sound synthesizer (typically built into the software of
multimedia players in most computers and many handheld
devices)
• MIDI keyboard

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 MIDI Audio

• Notation software (Sibelius)

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 MIDI Audio

• Sequencer software (Pro Tools)

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 MIDI Audio

• MIDI software creates data about each note as it is played on

a MIDI keyboard (or another MIDI device)
• Examples:
• Which note
• How much pressure was used on the keyboard to play the note
• How long it was sustained
• How long it takes for the note to fade away
• When played back through a MIDI device, allows the note to
be reproduced exactly

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 MIDI Audio

• The quality of the playback depends upon the end user’s

MIDI device rather than the recording  device dependent

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 MIDI Audio

• An advantage of structured data such as MIDI  easily edit

the data

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 MIDI vs Digital Audio

MIDI’s advantages:
• MIDI files are much more compact than digital audio files
(200-1000 times smaller than CD-quality digital audio files)
 MIDI files don’t take up as much memory, disk space, or
bandwidth
 Embedded in web pages load and play more quickly than
digital audio

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 MIDI vs Digital Audio

MIDI’s advantages:
• In some cases, if the MIDI sound source is high quality, MIDI
files may sound better than digital audio
• The length of a MIDI file can be changed (by varying its
tempo) without changing the pitch of the music or degrading
the audio quality
• MIDI files can generally be converted to musical notation and
vice versa

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 MIDI vs Digital Audio

MIDI’s disadvantages:
• Because MIDI data does not represent sound but musical
instruments
 we can be certain that playback will be accurate only if the
MIDI playback device is identical to the device used for
production

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 MIDI vs Digital Audio

MIDI’s disadvantages:
• MIDI cannot easily be used to play back spoken dialog,
although expensive and technically tricky digital samplers are
available

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 Adding Sound to Multimedia Project

1. Determine the file formats that are compatible with

multimedia authoring software and the delivery medium
(for file storage & bandwidth capacity)
2. Determine the sound playback capabilities (codecs and plug-
ins) that the end user’s system offers
3. Decide what kind of sound is needed (such as background
music, special sound effects, and spoken dialog). Decide
where these audio events will occur in the flow of project
4. Decide where and when to use digital audio or MIDI

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 Adding Sound to Multimedia Project

5. Acquire source material by creating it from scratch or

purchasing it
6. Edit the sounds to fit the project
7. Test the sounds to be sure they are timed properly with the
project’s images. This may involve repeating steps 1 through
4 until everything is in sync

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 Assignment

• Record any sound or music! Give the effect using audio

digitizing software!
• Create a simple MIDI audio file!

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