Sound and the Computer

I often take for granted hearing sound, and being able to go onto a computer or the internet and being able to hear a recording. In addition, going to a website and being able to read information and download files, such as recordings, is something that I have rarely considered. These are tasks that I just expect to be available and I have taken them for granted. However, after reading the articles “worldwidewaveforms,” “Multimedia Basics: Understanding Text,” and “Multimedia Basics: Understanding Sound,” I have come to realize that even though in the end the tasks are fairly common, the process to produce the information and media is far more complex than I had ever imagined. I did not realize how involved it is and how many options there are when creating sound files or recordings and then to put them on the internet.

Although, more complex than anticipated, it was interesting to learn what is involved in the sound production process and the many ways that sound can be put onto the internet. Learning about these processes helped me to better appreciate the sound and internet resources available to me, as well as to consider the implications that these processes have on education. I thought that it was interesting to learn how mathematical the sound process can be, and how precise creating digital audio is. In addition, I thought that it was intriguing to learn how humans perceive sound and how that impacts how sound is recorded and transmitted. It is mind boggling how quickly information is gathered, encoded and decoded to produce the sounds and recordings that we hear. In addition to gaining a better understanding of how sound is created, recorded, and then reproduced, I thought that it was beneficial to learn about the different quality levels of sound recordings and the reasons for different levels of sound recordings. I have heard the terms 8-bit and 16-bit sound quality, but I never really knew what they meant. Learning how they affect the quality of recording was interesting because now I can utilize that information to create recordings that have higher quality, or if I would like to disseminate recordings to students over the internet, how I can alter the file size to make the recordings more accessible to the students.

Being able to share information, such as recordings, with students is an extremely important endeavor. In addition, the goal is to provide students with the best possible audio quality available; however, after studying the readings, I realized that sometimes in order to make recordings more accessible, particularly on the internet, sometimes quality has to be slightly compromised in order to create a smaller file size which can be put on the internet and more easily accessed by all people. Although, there are many ways to present recordings to students, one great way to make recordings available to students is through the internet. That is why it is import to discover how to put sound files on the internet. I thought that it was interesting to learn how audio files can be compressed to meet these needs. With the ability to convert and compress audio files, a teacher can make a greater amount of material available to students. Therefore, students may be able to hear recordings of their performances or have audio available on the internet to help them practice. I also thought that it was valuable to learn about the various ways that audio could be put onto a webpage, such as a file to download, or by embedding the audio into a webpage. This can help create websites that a teacher can use to provide examples for students or just for a webpage to showcase the music program to parents and the community.

In addition, it was interesting to learn how text is created and used, and much like audio, it was far more complex than I anticipated. However, with the text options available, a teacher can also work to create files and websites that can be used to display the audio for a class. After reading the articles, I realized how involved creating a task that I had come to think of as fairly simple really is. This helps me to better appreciate the ingenuity involved in technology, but also to realize how to make better choices in regards to audio recordings and files when I want to create examples. In addition, I was able to see how the background information about sound could be utilized to help more information be accessible to students.