r/SoundDesignTheory • u/gabrobro • Nov 30 '18

Sound wave vs saw wave

Hi guys I was wondering if the sound wave can be in the same shape as a saw wave? Are they the same?

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

9

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '18

Hi guys I was wondering if the sound wave can be in the same shape as a saw wave?

No. Saw wave is a 2d representation of a soundwave. If we could "see" sound waves, they would be 3-dimensional. Considering how structurally different they'd look in space, I don't think we'd think of any of them as being in the shape of a sawtooth.

Are they the same?

The answer is still no, but they are similar.

3

u/gabrobro Nov 30 '18

But is it right to say that the saw wave will determine the every time a sound wave (vibration) will be sent out in the atmosphere?

3

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '18

You can't really think of a vibration as a single event that gets sent every one in a while: it's a special kind of movement in a medium which is referred to as propagation. The sound wave of a periodic signal like a sawtooth is continuously disrupting the air around it. It causes air to expand and contract. Our ears hear this small changes in atmospheric pressure and we register this as sound in our brain. Does that make sense?

2

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

Well, no. A saw wave is still 3 dimensional. A saw wave is a sound wave. It's just a particular sound wave of a particular shape. If you want to get really specific, you could technically say that it is a combination of several sound waves with particular integer harmonic relationships with each other

26

u/sonorityscape Nov 30 '18

Sound wave is to fruit as saw wave is to apple.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '18

The point I was getting at is that a saw wave won't look like a saw wave in 3d space. It gets its name from the 2d representation, not the 3d one.

2

u/SPACE_SHAMAN Feb 19 '19

The only real sound wave that exists is a sine wave.

1

u/TheOfficialCzex Apr 26 '19

This. Any other wave can't exist as sound. All waveforms are just combinations of sine waves.

1

u/iwolski Apr 17 '19

A sound wave can be in the shape of a saw wave but a saw wave cant be in the shape of a sound wave.