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The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

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Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#11

Post by ur-whale »

aksss wrote: post #3

tl;dr: analyzing the sound of a balloon popping in Hagia Sophia, they made an audio filter using techniques and understanding of sound in space that only became available in last 10 years. Cappella Romana made an album called Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia using this filter to recreate the experience of listening to Christian chants in that space. It's available on Spotify, headphones probably best.

So it's like they sent a dirac spike in the real thing and managed to capture the full response? If so, very neat!

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#12

Post by rosybox »

mudil wrote: post #7

I just finished reading "Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West" by Raymond Ibrahim, and it's a devastating account, and an eye popping book, of Islam's spread through Christian lands. 85% of what used to be Christian was conquered by jihad, all of north Africa, all Middle East, all Anatolia, and all the way to Vienna and Spain. Millions died, raped, enslaved, and forcefully converte…

I'm not sure HN is the venue for you to begin your race war or make whatever point you're trying to go for here.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#13

Post by frandroid »

jacobjr23 wrote: post #10
screamingmunch wrote: post #6

Sad that we don't really consider acoustics when building our modern structures/dwellings these days.

We do when building halls/stadiums/opera houses/temples/places where acoustics matter.

I think Parent suggests that acoustics matter more than just in spaces for explicit sound consumption.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#14

Post by dang »

mudil wrote: post #7

I just finished reading "Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West" by Raymond Ibrahim, and it's a devastating account, and an eye popping book, of Islam's spread through Christian lands. 85% of what used to be Christian was conquered by jihad, all of north Africa, all Middle East, all Anatolia, and all the way to Vienna and Spain. Millions died, raped, enslaved, and forcefully converte…

Your comments have been using HN primarily for ideological and political and (now) religious battle. That's not what HN is for, and as the site guidelines explain, we ban accounts that do that. We have to, because we can't have both flamewar and curious conversation, the same way you can't have both a forest fire and a good hike.

If you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and comment only in the intended spirit, we'd be grateful. I don't want to ban you, but we've been asking you about this for years now.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#15

Post by jcims »

frandroid wrote: post #13
jacobjr23 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do when building halls/stadiums/opera houses/temples/places where acoustics matter.

I think Parent suggests that acoustics matter more than just in spaces for explicit sound consumption.

Yes like open office plans.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#16

Post by wl »

derwiki wrote: post #9
praptak wrote: post #8

Digital reverb algorithms are a huge and interesting area. One can recreate the acoustics of a venue from recordings of a balloon pop or a pistol shot. One can also create physically impossible reverbs, where the echoes precede the actual sound or get louder instead of fading.

Could you point me to more info/examples on physically impossible reverbs?

Convolutional reverb means you convolve the impulse response of a system with a "dry" input signal to get your output. If the impulse response has any content before t=0, that content will cause a sound in your input signal to have an effect on the output before it happens. "Acausal" is the jargon.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#17

Post by rwultsch »

rosybox wrote: post #12
mudil wrote: post #7

I just finished reading "Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West" by Raymond Ibrahim, and it's a devastating account, and an eye popping book, of Islam's spread through Christian lands. 85% of what used to be Christian was conquered by jihad, all of north Africa, all Middle East, all Anatolia, and all the way to Vienna and Spain. Millions died, raped, enslaved, and forcefully converte…

I'm not sure HN is the venue for you to begin your race war or make whatever point you're trying to go for here.

The Hagia Sophia was the site of a significant massacre when it was forcibly converted from a church to a mosque.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#18

Post by wl »

aksss wrote: post #3

tl;dr: analyzing the sound of a balloon popping in Hagia Sophia, they made an audio filter using techniques and understanding of sound in space that only became available in last 10 years. Cappella Romana made an album called Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia using this filter to recreate the experience of listening to Christian chants in that space. It's available on Spotify, headphones probably best.

> they made an audio filter using techniques and understanding of sound in space that only became available in last 10 years.

This is an old technique. The idea of convolving the impulse response of a system with an input to yield the output is the basis of LTI systems theory. And while convolution isn't the most computationally light operation in the world, computers have been up to the task of practically performing such operations on audio signals for at least 20 years.

There's been some more recent work about more efficiently and accurately measuring the impulse responses of a space, but given they're using balloon pops, they're not using that work.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#19

Post by beloch »

The next step (that will probably never happen) would be to refurnish the Hagia Sophia, as it would have been before it was plundered in the fourth crusade, and seat an audience in it, as if for a mass. Then pop another balloon. All those extra furnishings and bodies would have had a significant impact on how the space sounded. The plastered over mosaics might also create a noticeable effect that would need to be compensated for. Even with the impressive work of Abel and Pentcheva we still have something that would likely sound empty and strangely hollow to people familiar with the Hagia Sophia when it was serving as a church.

Re: The sound of the Hagia Sophia, more than 500 years ago

#20

Post by ceejayoz »

rwultsch wrote: post #17
rosybox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure HN is the venue for you to begin your race war or make whatever point you're trying to go for here.

The Hagia Sophia was the site of a significant massacre when it was forcibly converted from a church to a mosque.

Unless the blood from that massacre changed the acoustics of the space, it's still not enormously relevant to the article.
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