The Sound Blog

Author: TheSoundBlog

  • How the Centre Court roof changes the sound at Wimbledon

    How the roof of the Centre Court at Wimbledon changes a thwack to a thwock as the racket hits the ball

  • How weather affects sound at Glastonbury

    How weather affects the sound at festivals like Glastonbury

  • Youtube experiment for Glastonbury

    What makes a geat mobile recording, we’re trying to find out using YouTube clips from Glastonbury.

  • Can the noise of a football crowd boil eggs?

    Can a football crowd cook an egg: only with vuvuzelas.

  • Why is the sound of the vuvuzela so annoying

    There are newspaper reports today that the  vuvuzelas might be banned because their drone is annoying viewers of the World Cup. Why is the noise so annoying? The trumpets are incredibly loud (there have been reports of concern about hearing damage).  Studies on noise annoyance show that louder sounds are more annoying. We are all…

  • I Am Sitting in Chislehurst Caves

    A strange demonstration of resonance explained: “I am sitting in a room”” by Alvin Lucier

  • What makes a water feature sound good?

    I was refilling the pond in my garden (it got damaged by ice) and noticed the huge range of sounds that I could make. Moving the hose around so the refilling water hit the rocks instead of the pond surface, changing the height of the hose or turn the water flow up or down, all…

  • Sound Tourism

    I’ve been working on a Travel Guide to Sound; a website that suggests places to visit because they sound interesting or have wierd and wonderful acoustics. Browse a normal travel book and you’ll read detailed descriptions of wonderful places to visit and enjoyable experiences to have. Modern lives are dominated by what we see, and…

  • The snow crunch

    I was walking in snowy Manchester yesterday and was astonished by how loud the crunching underfoot was. The snow has been on the ground for a couple of days, and the compacted snow on the pavements seems to have reached the optimal consistency for making loud crunching sounds. Why does snow make a crunching sound…

  • Igloo acoustics

    Manchester has completely ground to a halt with heavy snowfall. Yesterday, my children and their friends built an impressive igloo from compacted snow bricks. I crawled into it this morning and was struck by the sound of my voice inside. Normally in a small room your voice gets enhanced by the sound bouncing around the…