Like for example when I’m listening to an orchestra I can hear a clarinet and a violin quite distinctly from one another, but they’re both sounds vibrating through the same air. Logically, shouldn’t one air only be able to carry one frequency (Vibrate in only one way)? How does the air contain so many frequencies simultaneously?
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You can run more than one frequency through a medium basically. They interfere but our brains can sort it out to an extent. If you wanted to you can break those individual frequencies out again from the original weird signal. I believe the operation is a Fourier transform in mathematics but it’s not incredibly important for you to know this. Basically when two frequencies come together they make a weirdly shaped frequency and we have different cells that respond at different frequencies. So one part of our hearing picks up one frequency and fires signals, and another part picks up a second frequency and fires its own signals. There are also different ways that waves can transmit information (by modulating frequency or phase) and these things can produce the timbre you hear in various instruments. Their different signals do not interfere with one another enough that your brain can’t untangle the signals. It is possible to do so though, you might have trouble when two violins play at the same time telling which one is playing which notes if you can’t see them.
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