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I wish they'd gone into more detail about how they generated those sounds. It's not just sine waves, obviously, and there's also a stereo component there.

teddyh 2y ago
Probably “whatever sounds cool”.
floatrock 2y ago
Agree. A visualization (or in this case a "sound-alization"?) is just some mapping of an abstract data set into a form more convenient for our evolved senses. Without understanding the nature of the mapping, you don't really know if you're gaining some insight into the underlying process or just looking at (listening to) a cheap clickbait chartjunk. From the youtube video description: > Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences used data from ESA’s Swarm mission, along with other sources, to create a sounded visualisation of the Laschamp event. They mapped the movement of Earth’s magnetic field lines during the event and created a stereo sound version which is what you can hear in the video. The soundscape was made using recordings of natural noises like wood creaking and rocks falling, blending them into familiar and strange, almost alien-like, sounds. The process of transforming the sounds with data is similar to composing music from a score. So it sounds like this one is more interpretative and meant for popular engagement rather than scientific insight. There's probably some scientific insight to be had, but the level of depth is probably on the order of the accompanying usatoday pop-news text.
richbell 2y ago
I'm reminded of "Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data" by Tantacrul. https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk
dylan604 2y ago
"The soundscape incorporates natural sounds such as creaking wood, falling rocks and other sounds which were then blended together in an "alien-like" sounds." I was thoroughly disappointed with that. Why not use synthesizers, guitars, drums to just make shit up at that point? There have been some very interesting things done with taking frequencies way too high for human hearing, but just scaling them all down in proportion to a range humans can hear. Even turning the signals from Voyagers crossing the heliopause makes for interesting sounds. To me, what they've done here is some artsy thing which is fine, but I was hoping to be more sciency.

teddyh 2y ago

Probably “whatever sounds cool”.

floatrock 2y ago

Agree. A visualization (or in this case a "sound-alization"?) is just some mapping of an abstract data set into a form more convenient for our evolved senses. Without understanding the nature of the mapping, you don't really know if you're gaining some insight into the underlying process or just looking at (listening to) a cheap clickbait chartjunk. From the youtube video description: > Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences used data from ESA’s Swarm mission, along with other sources, to create a sounded visualisation of the Laschamp event. They mapped the movement of Earth’s magnetic field lines during the event and created a stereo sound version which is what you can hear in the video. The soundscape was made using recordings of natural noises like wood creaking and rocks falling, blending them into familiar and strange, almost alien-like, sounds. The process of transforming the sounds with data is similar to composing music from a score. So it sounds like this one is more interpretative and meant for popular engagement rather than scientific insight. There's probably some scientific insight to be had, but the level of depth is probably on the order of the accompanying usatoday pop-news text.

richbell 2y ago

I'm reminded of "Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data" by Tantacrul. https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk

dylan604 2y ago

"The soundscape incorporates natural sounds such as creaking wood, falling rocks and other sounds which were then blended together in an "alien-like" sounds." I was thoroughly disappointed with that. Why not use synthesizers, guitars, drums to just make shit up at that point? There have been some very interesting things done with taking frequencies way too high for human hearing, but just scaling them all down in proportion to a range humans can hear. Even turning the signals from Voyagers crossing the heliopause makes for interesting sounds. To me, what they've done here is some artsy thing which is fine, but I was hoping to be more sciency.