An Idea About Audio

Hello all,

This post is more of a 'get you thinking' kind of post...

When I was in school at Columbia College Chicago, I had 2 distinctly different professors.  I must first say that I really enjoyed having classes with both of them.

The first professor was extremely smart, a quick thinker, and someone that I really looked up to in the college.  He had a way of taking a complicated situation and making it seem so simple.  We would work on vibration, HVAC, environmental, or architectural acoustics every day.  We would have all the equations and approximations that made everything quantifiable.  He posed to us that regardless of our problem, we would have the tools to solve any problem after school if we just think critically.

The second professor was also a deep thinker, and to be honest, we never really accomplished much in class.  He would get on rants about issues or problems he encountered during his time in acoustics. See, this professor was self taught.  He worked in the field for many years and eventually became very respected and published.  He seemed to teach us that regardless how much we knew, audio and acoustics is as much an art as a science... He did this by taking us to different buildings around Chicago.  We would go to some that were designed with and without the sience of acoustics.  He also taught us that we need to make sure that we enjoy the finest audio to remind ourselves what we are working for.

While both professors seemed to teach primarily different things, they often taught the same ideas with a different world view.

The thought that I wanted to put in your heads as you read this is simple.  What is audio/acoustics? What does it mean to have great sounding audio?  Have you ever heard a concert hall that when you walked in, you felt a sense of awe from the first note played?

I firmly believe that audio and acoustics are as much sience as they are art.  I believe that analysis is important and you need to do the best you can scientifically when considering audio and acoustic design or treatment.  I also think it is important to have a good answer to all of these questions before completely understanding what audio is and what it means to have good acoustics.

Both professors really hammered on one side more than the other.  However, because I had both, I was able to have a very well rounded view of my craft.