The secret of ancient acoustics fascinated people from ages.
The mystery of the sound of a torn paper reaching the last row and still be heard.
And all those beautiful geometrical structures in stone with the symmetry and monumental size.
This is mysterious.
I was asked by my wife, now 20 years ago: Could you compress the sound of our kids’ lullabies
with high quality?
And I realized that I did not know the measure of subjective quality.
The second thing I realized was that I had read the book of the Roman engineer, Vitruvius,
where he described the structure, sizes and proportions of the theatre, bearing the sense
of optimality and the goal of having the most pleasurable condition of hearing the musical
performances.
In other parts, between other proportions and devices, he mentions adjusting the catapult
depending on the sound balance between strings throwing a missile directly to the aim.
The point is, he is browsing through the different domains of life where technique or technology
is relevant. And I thought, maybe what he says about music and acoustic is relevant also
for our times, our music, and our DSP technology.