Making Sound

1. Sound moves through what medium? Sound moves through air.
2. Briefly describe how a microphone works, in particular what does it gather and what does it produce? A microphone has a small membrane that vibrates with a mechanism that transletes movements of the membrane into electrical signals. The acoustic waves are turned into electrical waves by the microphone. Basically microphone goes from sound to electrcity.
3. What unit is used to measure sample size? Sample size in the number of digits in the digital representation of each sample. It is measured in Bits. (Bits are how the computer stores your information in) The sample size is how often a computer takes a sample of the audio.
4. What unit is used to measure sampling rate? Sample rate is basically the rate at which the samples are captured or played back. They are measured in Hertz (Hz).
5.   How does sound quality vary with sample size and sample rate? The sound quality will sound best when the sound is closest to its original sound. This is determined by how high the bit depth and sampling rate are. The more the sampling size the better the sound will be. The higher and greater the sampling rate the better the sound will be.
6. What is another name for sample size? Another common name for sample size is sample format.
7. From the above information which offers better quality sound, FM radio or AM radio? FM Radio (98k.bits/s) whilst AM (32kbits/s). FM is better as the higher the bit rate the better.
8. Why not record all sound in extremely high sample sizes and sample rates? This is because it takes up too much memory. It may cause our drives to fill up and slow our email.

Other notes : Bit Rate. Sample rate x sample size=kb/s. The more bits per second the better.