Honest question I cannot wrap my mind around. How the hell does this work?
In: Physics
Start by just humming at a low pitch. Then increase the pitch? What do you notice? The higher the pitch, the faster the vibration. Now turn that vibration into 1s and 0s. The 0s represent the space between the vibrations. The less 0s between each 1, the higher the pitch. That is what frequency is in a nutshell.
There are two other aspects of sound that turn the hum of your vocal chords into words, amplitude and modulation.
The amplitude is how “tall” each 1 is. Or in other words, the amount of voltage it has. I can change the amplitude of my voice without changing the pitch, and likewise, a signal can have more or less voltage per pulse without changing the frequency of the pulses.
Modulation is what your mouth does to the vibration as it passes through it. If you grin while humming it will make more of an EEE sound or if you purse your lips it will make more of and OOO sound, and so on. Modulating a signal is a bit trickier to eli5 but I’ll try. It is another wave that travels along with the “carrier wave.” The carrier wave has the information about the frequency and amplitude, and the signal modulation basically travels on top of it and “shapes” the carrier wave into little packets of data that are smoother, or sharper depending on the sound that is being transmitted.
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