I have never really fully understood how a speaker vibrating air molecules which then in turn vibrate the membrane in your ear works. How can a speaker make multiple sounds at the exact same time if its based on movement of a physical object?
In: Physics
There is only one sound. As you said yourself, sound is caused by vibrating air molecules, or we can say air pressure. At any given location and moment there is only 1 air pressure. So, all of the different sources of vibrations that we interpret as sounds all vibrate the same air. We can consider the different sources together or apart because waves are added just like other numbers. So, is it 3 or 1 + 2? Yes. Is it a song, or is it a singer and a guitar? Yes. Both. Think of waves on the surface of a pond. We can see separate waves caused by a bird there or a water drop here, but there is only 1 pond and the water surface is only 1 shape. (Each little spot on the surface can be higher or lower. All of them contribute to the overall shape.) The entire pond is a single wave that is made up of individual waves from different sources.
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