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joshwcomeau / waveforms

An interactive, explorable explanation about the peculiar magic of sound waves.
https://waveforms.surge.sh
MIT License
1.43k stars 53 forks source link

not all "side effects " are harmonics #4

Open jefftrevino opened 6 years ago

jefftrevino commented 6 years ago

The text implies that additional frequency components in a spectrum will always be integer multiples of a fundamental. This conflates the important notion of partials -- spectral components that may or may not be integer multiples of a fundamental, as in non-harmonic spectra like bell sounds -- with the notion of harmonics, spectral components that bear an integer-multiple relationship to a fundamental frequency.

codymikol commented 6 years ago

+1

joshwcomeau commented 6 years ago

Hm, is there copy in the text that you're thinking of specifically? Unless I've missed something, the discussion is exclusively about the harmonics of a few specific waveforms.

Maybe it'd be beneficial to have a note about how there are other kinds of sounds that don't follow the same rules, but I kinda already gave one (about white noise). It's not clear to me how to add clarify around this subject without introducing a new topic, and there's already so many topics introduced... I've received some feedback that it can be a little overwhelming, and so I'm trying to strike a balance between accuracy and accessibility.

That said, if there's specific copy that is misleading, please do let me know! Happy to make clarifying changes like that.