Audio as Data
Sound Is a Waveform
8 min+70 XPStep 1/10
One wiggling line
Sound is moving air. A microphone diaphragm rides the pressure waves and writes down a single number — how far it's been pushed — tens of thousands of times per second. The result is a waveform: one axis of time, one axis of pressure.
Zoom into any recording — a voice, a piano, traffic — and it's always the same object: a wiggling line. Everything else in this track is about giving that line a structure models can exploit.
analogy
Think of a seismograph for air: one pen tracing pressure up and down. Your ear canal does the same job for your eardrum.