Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound in Science and Inquiry

Sep 28, 2014 David Rubenstein rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: physics, travel

Trevor Cox is an acoustic engineer, and his hobby seems to be to go around the world, looking (and listening) for locations of interesting sounds and sound effects. While the average person might not find it engaging, as a scientist with acoustics background, and as a composer, I found much of the book to be fascinating.

The first chapter is about finding reverberant locations--places where the reverberations from sounds last a long time. I learned that the optimum reverberation time for a concer Trevor Cox is an acoustic engineer, and his hobby seems to be to go around the world, looking (and listening) for locations of interesting sounds and sound effects. While the average person might not find it engaging, as a scientist with acoustics background, and as a composer, I found much of the book to be fascinating.

The first chapter is about finding reverberant locations--places where the reverberations from sounds last a long time. I learned that the optimum reverberation time for a concert hall is 1.9 seconds. Large Gothic cathedrals have much longer reverberation times, which helps to explain some aspects of the character of church music during the medieval, renaissance, and baroque periods. Reverberation time is measured by recording the aftermath of a pistol shot or a bursting balloon--some type of loud, impulsive sound. The most reverberant location turns out to be an emptied underground oil reservoir in England. The pores in the concrete walls are plugged up with oil, so there is very little loss of acoustic energy.

Another chapter of the book describes the sounds made by certain animals. The book tries to illuminate why some cricket sounds are annoying, while others are soothing. Likewise, some bird songs are annoying, while others are soothing. Recordings of the loudest individual animal, the blue whale, are sometimes masked by the even louder noises produced by multitudes of snapping shrimp. But the communications between whales are hindered by the ever-increasing background noise level of ships.

Trevor Cox also investigates what might be one of the quietest places on earth--or at least, in England--deep in a forest. Far quieter are the anechoic chambers that are used for testing the acoustics of devices like loudspeakers. And, Cox investigates the acoustic properties of whispering chambers. These are rooms and environments where a soft whisper is heard from a far distance, and seem to challenge one's intuition that sound diminishes with distance.

While I was fascinated by all of the chapters, I suspect that the average reader might not be equally intrigued. The reason is that it is difficult to describe sounds with words. I would suggest that a future publication of the book include a CD with recordings--the author makes it clear that he made recordings of all of these sonic wonders. Alternatively, an audiobook filled with recordings of the sounds would be wonderful. ...more

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May 22, 2014 Kathy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-non-fiction, x-feb-14-thru-jan-15

Listen! That's a message this book shouts most eloquently. Thanks to the author, I now listen better; and having explored the wonders he lays before the reader, I - who never heard of "acoustician" or sound ecology - appreciate those sonic wonders he has investigated. ...more

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