I know that at concerts when a large crowd cheers loudly it’s heard more as a distorted roar but i’m curious as to why this happens. I’ve been to concerts where it’s a scream (eg when taylor swift came on stage) but I still heard it as a loud, overpowering roar and crackle. Why does this happen?
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Go up to a piano and play a bunch of random notes. It sounds discordant. Because when a group of people shout they aren’t emitting a perfect note – everyone’s voice is different and the pitch of their shout creates dissonance. With louder sounds your ear can also experience sound distortion which means you’re less able to discern pitch correctly.
Several reasons:
Sounds at a distance have poorly defined transients, so sound blurry. When you have lots of people cheering, you really only hear a mush of sustained sounds. The sheer number of people also makes the sound very complex and confusing to the ear, so it might appear more like a roar.
Lower frequencies travel further than higher ones so the overall tone is lower. Men’s voices are generally lower and louder too which contributes. If the crowd is all girls and young women then the tone is a lot higher.
The thousands of different sounds people make all at the same time become indistinct unless something is keeping them together like a beat or a tune – in which case it becomes more distinct.
Nearly all sounds you ever hear are from complex, rapid changes of the air pressure in your ear. These air vibrations are actually dense combinations of pure, simple tones. Instruments and voices which you would say are producing a single “note” are just producing simple, sustained combos of pure tones, with certain tones being especially loud.
Sounds that are more like hissing or roaring are much more random combinations of all possible pitches at once; there’s nothing sustained, nothing for your brain to latch onto and follow. Concert crowds produce this kind of noise, which is made worse by echoes and the relatively slow speed of sound (distant sounds arrive later than near ones, so there’s inevitably overlap).
Crackle is a form of distortion I associate more with excessively loud sound going through microphones and loudspeakers. I never hear it in real life.
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