high-fidelity

Learning about the careful and creative forensics that go into reanimating the ancient soundscapes of the deep past—the foley artistry that gives us dinosaurs that honk, quack or tweet rather than roar ferociously, though I’d bet a booming, nerve-scattering chirp could be just as curdling, reminded me that I had once speculated (once is misleading, I think, since it’s not as if it’s something that I know now to be untrue or a patent violation of the laws of physics) that all sounds were somehow preserved, imprinted into the environment and that we detectives weren’t clever enough to puzzle out. I was never sure what this infinite analog media might be of course, but did suspect that on some level that every crash, cry and concerto was caught up in the surrounding molecules, awaiting play back. I suppose knowing the acoustics of noise-maker well enough is an acceptable alternative path for chasing down lost sounds. This sort of scoring sound-effects do as much to reinforce or ruin an image as much as a fluffy Tyrannosaurus rex.