How can everything be captured in simple data like people's exact voice noise? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by cheese_greater@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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If a recording of someones very rare voice is representable by mp4 or whatever, could monkeys typing out code randomly exactly reproduce their exact timbre+tone+overall sound?

I don't get how we can get rocks to think + exactly transcribe reality in the ways they do!

Edit: I don't get how audio can be fossilized/reified into plaintext

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[-] Barack_Embalmer@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Everything about the exact timbre of your voice is captured in the waveform that represents it. To the extent that the sampling rate and bit depth are good enough to mimic your actual voice without introducing digital artefacts (something analogous to a pixelated image) that's all it takes to reproduce any sound with arbitrary precision.

Timbre is the result of having a specific set of frequencies playing simultaneously, that is characteristic of the specific shape and material properties of the object vibrating (be it a guitar string, drum skin, or vocal chords).

As for how multiple frequencies can "exist" simultaneously at a single instant in time, you might want to read up on Fourier's theorem and watch 3Blue1Brown's brilliant series on differential equations that explores Fourier series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY

this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024

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