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Questions tagged [audio]

For questions asking about the creation of or propagation of sound. Questions about how creatures or beings vocalize should use the [vocalizations] tag. Questions about music should use the [music] tag.

20 votes
3 answers
6k views

If someone were to teleport from sea level. How loud would the collapse of the resulting human-sized atmospheric void be?

Would it be loud enough to hear and is there any risk of dangerously loud sound waves being generated if the object being teleported is large enough?
Adam Kabbeke's user avatar
  • 1,973
15 votes
4 answers
2k views

Would this underground city be noticed by seismologists?

The setting is current day Los Angeles... except for the goblin city that exists beneath it. Its chambers range from about 500-2000ft underground and has a population of several thousand. A lot of ...
Nosajimiki's user avatar
  • 97.5k
15 votes
1 answer
207 views

Music Dragonfly via Perforations in Wings

Info I'm designing a prehistoric-dragonfly that has little holes or perforations in its wings. When the wind flows through them, they make music (the viability of flying with these wings will be ...
FoxElemental's user avatar
  • 3,246
14 votes
1 answer
441 views

Planet-wide vocalizations: is there a natural limit preventing it?

Premise I recently recalled when the Chelyabinsk meteor crashed overhead in 2013. The pressure wave was immense. The infrasounds, as recorded by nuclear missile detectors, appeared to traverse the ...
Arash Howaida's user avatar
11 votes
7 answers
3k views

Underwater acoustic muffling/dampening and sonar evasion. Is a stealth torpedo possible?

So I have various factions with submarines and surface ships battling it out for control over various underwater resources. One of the rarer and more lethal weapons is a "stealth torpedo". It ...
Nathanael Williams's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
2k views

How close to the Sun would you have to be to hear it?

Taken from this fascinating answer: The Sun is immensely loud. The surface generates thousands to tens of thousands of watts of sound power for every square meter. That's something like 10x to ...
Jimmery's user avatar
  • 6,081
10 votes
3 answers
4k views

How thick must granite walls be to isolate monks?

Part of a monastic order's lifestyle involves a ring of twelve cells — one per month of the 372-day year, each with a certain spiritual function. A single tunnel outfitted as an acoustic anechoic ...
KEY_ABRADE's user avatar
  • 13.1k
10 votes
4 answers
2k views

Are there animal teeth that make alien sounds?

There's this old trope where an alien being has a name that "can't be pronounced by the human tongue", but no one (afaik) has ever done the work to make that scientifically possible. Now, I'...
Carduus's user avatar
  • 2,252
10 votes
8 answers
711 views

Pre-electrical fast long-distance communication using Acoustic Mirrors

It takes a lot of work, but it can be done. The Mongol Yam, a horse-based mail system, is probably the best example that has been done before. But after visiting the local science museum recently, I ...
GoingFTL's user avatar
  • 783
10 votes
1 answer
251 views

Dissipating sonic booms

Alastair Reynolds is a contemporary sci-fi writer whose works often demonstrate a strong grip on science as it presently stands. Recently, I picked up his book On The Steel Breeze for a quick re-read ...
BMF's user avatar
  • 6,798
9 votes
2 answers
564 views

How do I determine the physical size of a quartz crystal of a given shape and vibrational mode needed to approximate a specific resonant frequency?

So, one of my D&D characters has a cut/relief-carved quartz crystal amulet (medallion shaped) that's both an arcane focus (crystal) and a holy symbol (amulet), and I thought it would be a good ...
Shalvenay's user avatar
  • 11.3k
8 votes
3 answers
265 views

How can our boss play his theme song in (almost) any environment?

So. our boss is kinda... nuts. His current pet project is to create a device that can play his theme song whenever his location is revealed to someone within a 50 meter radius. Naturally, he ...
Mephistopheles's user avatar
7 votes
8 answers
4k views

Is it possible for an airplane on the sky to play a sound so loud it could be heard 50km away?

I have a story where one side of a war takes advantage of psychological warfare, where a plane on an altitude of 60k ft or 15.2km has massive speakers to play horrifying, disturbing sounds recorded ...
Titanium Steel's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
203 views

What noise would a nuclear gas turbine make? [closed]

At the core of the powerpacks of the upcoming generation of powered exoskeletons are dusty plasma fission fragment reactors, in which nanoparticles of nuclear fuel inside a vacuum undergo a fission ...
KEY_ABRADE's user avatar
  • 13.1k
6 votes
3 answers
447 views

Biologically what kind of feet would make the least amount of noise?

I'm designing creatures on my made up planet where animals evolved exceptional hearing and I'm wondering what kind of feet they might evolve to produce the least amount of sound when walking to avoid ...
Venik Hue's user avatar
  • 1,212

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