eli5 – How does an audio signal accurately reproduce complex sounds?

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Tried to search, didn’t really find what I was looking for.

Whether vinyl, cassette, mp3 etc – how am I able to discern multiple different instruments in music perfectly clear from a single audio signal? How does a single groove in an LP allow me to hear a baseline and full drum kit and vocals clearly? I can understand one at a time but?

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The sound that we hear comes from pressure waves that are pressing on our eardrums. At any one time, there is only one pressure on the eardrum.

Recording devices use a microphone to measure that pressure and then record it onto some medium. The playback device takes that record at reproduces the pressures the hit the microphone during the recording.

It’s *way* more complicated in theory, as recording and playback devices are imperfect, different instruments are record separately, etc.

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