Exploring 3-D Sound with Adam Gopnik
In his latest story for the New Yorker, staff writer Adam Gopnik explores the science behind the human experience of music. It all started when Gopnik realized a profound difference in the way he and...
View ArticleExploring 100,000 Years Of Human Noise
This week on Soundcheck, we want to know how you block out noise in your day-to-day life. But a recent BBC 4 radio series, Noise: A Human History, examined how noise has shaped civilization for the...
View ArticleMaterials and Sound
Tape recorders can be used in the field of education in many different ways. A ninth grader, Dennis, describes his science project: how different materials absorb different sounds. "Mary had A Little...
View ArticleHigh Fidelity
At the high-fi show the question of fidelity came to mind. Years ago, reproduction quality was poor. The 1920's radios didn't have good sound. Quality and fidelity have improved. Fidelity is defined as...
View ArticleThe Sound Around Us
The concept of the press release started with newspapers. A press release: The National Endowment for the Arts grants Fordham University Communication Center a grant to study the sound environment of a...
View ArticleFolk Sounds
Folk Festivals are doing well, but folk sounds can not always be performed. Some folk sounds are from many years ago: 1914 car horn, the 3rd Ave. "L", melting ice from an ice-box dripping into a pan,...
View ArticleIs It Live or Is It Memorex?
Producer Jeff Lunden examines how acousticians play with sound, on CDs and in the concert hall.
View ArticleLondon Traffic Remixed
Can the city become a symphony? That's what London-based sound designer Mark McKeague asks. After learning that electric cars have engine noise added for safety reasons — otherwise they would be...
View ArticleThe Culture Gabfest: Don't Look Down Edition
Slate critics Julia Turner, Dana Stevens and June Thomas discuss the 2012 Sight and Sound list of the top 50 films of all time, the dance drama Bunheads, and Jerry Seinfeld's new web series, "Comedians...
View ArticleEars don't lie
We humans are visual creatures. But maybe we should reconsider."Eyes lie," says auditory neuroscientist Seth Horowitz. "But the ears don't."Horowitz's field of study -- how sound rattles around in our...
View ArticlePlease Explain: Hearing and Sound
For this week’s Please Explain, we’ll find out how we process all the sounds we hear every day—from the hum of the heater to the wail of sirens to music to speech—and how it shapes our brains and...
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Who Does A Better Wave? Sports Fans Or Hippos?
Professor William Barklow was on vacation when this happened. He was in Tanzania sitting on a river bank gazing about, when all of a sudden a hippopotamus pushed its head out of the river right in...
View ArticleWhat It's Like To Drop 150,000 Feet Straight Down
If I say "meet me 28 miles from here," that doesn't seem very far, right? You could take a taxi, a bus; if pushed you might even make it on a bike.But what if the 28 miles is not on a road or a...
View ArticleNoise: The Defining Sounds From Human History
History is visual: You can see a photo from a century ago, visit a room filled with artifacts, and even gaze at paintings in an ancient cave where humans stood 30,000 ago.But what would it sound like...
View ArticleThe Power of Music
Sure, music can move us, but it can also save our lives, transform people into a legends, and even knock down walls (maybe). This hour, we explore some of the outer edges of the power of music by...
View ArticleWeekend Special: Name That Sound!
December 21, 2013 —Dan Quinn, fluid dynamics grad student and sometime video artist at Princeton, also has ears. And his ears, like yours, regularly pick up familiar sounds. The question is, if someone...
View ArticleCoping with NYC's Noise
Arline Bronzaft, environmental psychologist on the board of GrowNYC, talks about the effects of noise and offers practical advice for dealing with it. Alan Fierstein, an acoustic consultant and the...
View ArticleExploring New York's Past Through Sound
Emily Thompson, historian at Princeton University and the author of Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933, talks about her study of sound...
View ArticleHave We Found the Line Between Sound and Noise?
A quiet moment in New Orleans has very little white noise. If you are on the streets of the French Quarter you can hear traffic, layered on dixieland, dancing, street life and the boisterous sounds of...
View ArticlePlease Explain: The Science of Sound
Acoustical engineer Trevor Cox, author of The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World, discusses acoustics, how sound works, and his hunt for the world’s strangest sounds.Leave your...
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