THE SOUND WALL

Craziest thing ever.  Yesterday, I heard the loud, deep sound of someone crashing a drum.  Closing my eyes, I heard the sound of the drum echo off a wall, the faint rumbles still audible seconds after the drum was struck.  

Moments later, again:  BOOOOM.  Again, the echoes.  My eyes closed, the echos seemed hollow... like I was standing in an empty concrete building.

Then, opening my eyes, I was disoriented by the sight of bright, blue skies.  Outlines of skyscrapers reached up above me.  Wait -- what?  What happened to the wall that had just been encircling me?

What it was, what the 'echo' I was hearing -- that I thought was the sound of a drum echoing off of a distant wall -- was resonance, or, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, "the intensification and enriching of a musical tone by supplementary vibration".  In short: somehow, placement of the speakers around me managed to give the drum sound "supplementary vibration".  And they managed to do it in a way that made me feel like it was echoing in a room.

As I stood there, in the middle of Pritzker Pavilion, noontime on a Tuesday, I wondered how in the world someone could figure out how to place speakers in a way to create this incredible sensation.  As I chatted with a "Sound Docent", he pointed at a gentleman in the middle of the pavilion listening, motionless, with his arms folded.  "He designed this, you should talk to him," the docent told me.

I walked over, eager to learn more about how someone could create "walls" with sound.  As I got closer, the gentleman uncrossed his arms, looked up... and walked away, leaving the pavilion.  My question was left unanswered.... resonating in my head.

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