can every sound be considered as a remix of a sine wave? why?

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can every sound be considered as a remix of a sine wave? why?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

ELI5.

To give you an analogy, think about positive whole numbers, 1,2,3…. It is possible to construct every positive whole number by adding 1’s. So 1 = 1, 2 = 1+1, 3 = 1+1+1…

This is similar to the idea that any sound which, for simplicity, are vibrations can be broken down into sums of a “fundamental” vibrations represented by the sine wave. This is actually not STRICTLY true unless one allows for infinite sums. But for the purposes of analyzing and reproducing sound, ie in the real world of making “stuff”, it is a good enough idea with which to work with and say is “true”. The reason engineers and scientists like to do this is, mathematically speaking, working with sums of sine functions is fairly easy. As long as one is willing to do the computation, by adding more and more sine waves, it is possible to get arbitrarily close to any sound wave.

(The above is pretty hand-wavy. There are pretty specific mathematical and physical requirements that make it possible to make this claim.)

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