Reverberation and Delay

Reverberation or reverb is “a prolonged version of a sound” – Oxford dictionary.

When we hear a sound in the real world, we hear it through sound waves travelling through the air, and into our ears.  But there are multiple sound waves per sound, and if you are in a room, then a number of them will bounce off of the walls before they hit your ears.  This causes a reverberation effect to be heard, as multiple sound waves from the same sound hit your ears at different milliseconds, and may even be audible after the source of the sound has stopped.

Using the way that the sound, well, sounds, we are able to guesstimate how big the room is, for example, if we are in a big room, then you may hear more reverberation than if in a small room.  We can also use it to tell us how far away the source of the sound is from us.

Using the clapping hand’s example, because sound waves take time to travel, put simply delay is the time in between when the source of the sound is created and when it hits your ears.  So if you are in a big room, and at the opposite end some poor sod accidentally falls into a drum kit, you may see the kerfuffle a small amount of time before you actually hear the raucous.

 

References

https://www.sxsevents.co.uk/about/resource-hub/explanatory-articles/sound-delay-explained