#And this highly sampled voltage signal which is now represented as 1s and 0s can be written onto a cd or played directly from a computer

[crowley1990]

Five years of physics at university level and I still don’t understand electricity, electromagnetism and analog or digital sound recording or amplification

#I’m like okay so the human voice makes sound the usual way. Vibrations in the air. Get that. Get how it’s produced how it’s transmitted and #how it is heard by humans. Fine. Then you’re saying they speak into a microphone and those vibrations are converted into varying voltages #and that signal travels through a cable to a sound desk and then travels through another cable to the speakers #Where the voltage signal is converted back into a vibrating thing which is pushing the air and is making sound as we know it #And somehow after all that electricity we’ve now got a faithful reproduction of that human voice but louder now #And then you tell me. You do the first part. But then the signal is sent to a computer and is sampled at a very high rate and the voltages #are converted into 1s and 0s (which are actually also voltages but they’re just binary signals. Like a voltage of 0 or 5mv. That kind of th #And this highly sampled voltage signal which is now represented as 1s and 0s can be written onto a cd or played directly from a computer #And somehow we get that human voice back #I DONT UNDERSTAND IT #how is voltage a sound 😭 #And then there’s also magnetic tapes and vinyl records. Which again I get but also it’s coming back to recreating those voltage signals. #Either by a needle moving up and down over spinning grooves #Or something with magnetic tape I don’t know how tapes are actually read #But electricity. I don’t get it. #And with all this I have to worry about electromagnetic fields and impedance and interference because they’re real electrical signals and #come with all the electromag physics of that!