Hi; With special thanks to Tim and David, I have read and assembled a list of audio explanation sites. Tim and David gave me enough context so that when I read (or re-read) the information at these sites, things began to make sense. I have copied the list of sites I have used for anyone else who might be as befuddled as I was. I have tried to put them into some logical order. On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 10:55 -0500, William Case wrote: > Hi; > > I have avoided sound technology most of my life. I have a 'tin ear' and > most music just sounds to me like somebody talking in an annoying voice. > However, recent problems with alsa mixer and/or pulseaudio has convinced > me that the time has come to spend some time learning the rudiments of > sound technology. So ... > > > I have googled, searched Wikipedia, read the PulseAudio documentation as > well as Gnome Help. It all still leaves me befuddled -- either too > simple or two technical. Once I try to throw in the concept of various > 'codecs' I am lost. > ______________________________________ Sound (& Music) Creation and Perception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_cortex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_acoustics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_(music) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmic ___________________________________ Computer Sound - Acquiring, transferring, storing, altering and broadcasting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_cards http://computer.howstuffworks.com/sound-card5.htm http://www.pctechguide.com/44SoundCards.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALSA_(Linux) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codecs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_codecs_and_containers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GStreamer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totem_(media_player) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_audio_software Musical Instrument Digital Interface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI On Wikipedia, I recommend checking "See also", "References" and "External Links" at the bottom of each page to find further and deeper explanations. The main breakthrough for me was being shown that ALSA was a driver for the sound card (chip) hardware, while PulseAudio was a server program, in much the same way that 'ati' or 'nv' are video card drivers and X windows is a window graphics server. All other sound programs, codecs etc. are, at heart, just libraries used by either ALSA or PulseAudio. It is best to take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio flowchart a few screens down as recommended by David Timms just to get a visual road map before starting in reading. You will notice that the first 11 URL's I cite are for people like me who have 'tin ears' and only have a secondary interest in sound as it relates to music. As a side note, all my life I had distinguished music as having only three characteristics; loud or soft, high or low; and, pleasant or annoying. It seems that I wasn't as far off the mark as I thought I was. I will, from hereon, try to pick up on and understand some of the more basic musical nuances I hear. Thanks all. -- Regards Bill Fedora 10, Gnome 2.24.2 Evo.2.24.2, Emacs 22.2.1 -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
