Sound is produced by oscillation, e.g., a speaker cone pushing and pulling air back and forth, and, inversely (😄), no oscillation results in silence. To then cancel a sound out, there needs to be a way to cause no oscillation. Specifically, inverting the waveform (rotating it 180°) turns every push into a pull and vice versa. This is known as Destructive Interference, an emergent property of waves, and the same principle behind noise-cancelling headphones. At 0° (no rotation; same waveform playing twice, in sync), the waves reinforce each other instead (i.e., pulling becomes 2x the pull, and pushing becomes 2x the push), causing what is known as Constructive Interference. Together these two properties are known as Wave Interference. Drag the Phase Shift knob to see the original, the copy, and the resulting waveforms. Apply it to hear the effects of it in real time.
Inspired by kyndinfo's articles on Fourier Series and Sound Visualization
Using Plotly for plotting
Pick Audio
Loading audio...
⚠ Lower your volume before playing. Some audio files can be harsh at high volume.