The
ability to identify patterns in sound is, at its core, what allows life forms
to communicate with each other. Humans in particular have developed many highly
complex ways to exchange information. But sometimes, the patterns can be
difficult to distinguish. The ambience of the world obscures them; “In a lo-fi
soundscape, individual acoustic signals are obscured in an overdense population
of sounds.” (Schaefer 43) When I hear this, I think of myself standing in Navy
Pier in Chicago. I hear flashes of sound around me: a camera taking a picture,
people conversing in a foreign language, the scream of a child on the swings.
But they’re all faint. No single sound comes into the foreground.
Meanwhile,
hi-fi soundscapes are different entirely. The background ambience is low and in
the distance, allowing individual sounds to take center stage. Schaefer says, “The
country is more hi-fi than the city,” (Schaefer 43) meaning that the lower
population of individual sounds allows you to focus on one with little
interference.
I
picture a beach in South Carolina, where my family went on vacation two years
ago. Early in the morning, before anyone else would come, I liked to go and sit
there. I would just close my eyes and listen to the breaking waves, hearing the
faint chirp of seagulls in the distance. It was incredibly peaceful. When I
think of hi-fi sound, that is what comes to mind.
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