World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts

Crunching worms, squeaking voles, drumming ants: how scientists are learning to eavesdrop on the sounds of soil

The business of silence: is there a hidden cost to noise cancelling?

Headphone and earplug sales are booming, but individual efforts to turn down the volume may alter our brains and surrounds in unexpected ways

Music can be reconstructed from human auditory cortex activity using nonlinear decoding models

Researchers successfully reconstructed a recognisable Pink Floyd song from direct neural recordings.

Science explains why shouting into the wind seems futile

People upwind can hear you hollering into a breeze, but it’s hard to hear yourself

What an Oyster Hears - Listening for the sounds of coastal restoration.

Listen to the Sounds of Space - HARP Citizen Science

Data Sonification as a Tool for Climate Action

Preserving the Sunset Editorial Sound Effects Library from the USC Archive

Microphones capture ultrasonic crackles from plants that are water-deprived or injured

Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks—and What It Can Teach Us by Kim Haines-Eitzen

Enduring lessons from the desert soundscapes that shaped the Christian monastic tradition

The Sound Collector (1982)

Studies in Pessimism  (1913)  by Arthur Schopenhauer, translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders "...If you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely lose the value it had as a whole; and an army divided up into small bodies of soldiers, loses all its strength. So a great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand; for its superiority depends upon its power of concentration—of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme, in the same way as a concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light that strike upon it. Noisy interruption is a hindrance to this concentration. That is why distinguished minds have always shown such an extreme dislike to disturbance in any form, as something that breaks in upon and distracts their thoughts. Above all have they been averse to that violent interruption that comes from noise."

Knock Knock: 200 Years of Sound Effects

It’s 200 years since Thomas De Quincey wrote On the Knocking On the Gate in Macbeth, the first serious consideration of the strange and powerful psychological impact of sound effects - sounds which aren’t language or music but still carry a level of meaning which seem to elevate them above our everyday sound world.

To mark the occasion, composer Sarah Angliss meets some of the world’s foremost sound designers to consider the enduring power and ubiquity of the sound effect.

She's accompanied by musician and esoteric researcher Daniel R Wilson and renowned foley artist Ruth Sullivan. In rural Sussex, Sarah tracks down musique concrète experimenter and Pink Floyd collaborator Ron Geesin to hear what happens when sound effects take centre stage. From his studio in California, Star Wars sfx legend Ben Burtt shows Sarah how to make the real sounds of places which have never existed. And in Bristol, natural history sound editor Kate Hopkins reveals the secrets of bringing silent footage of jungles, oceans and savannahs to life.

200 years after De Quincey’s essay, sound effects are refusing to stay on the stage and screen. Philosopher Ophelia Deroy describes the very real impact of sound effects in our everyday lives - from product design to the basics of how perceive the world around us.

Whether we notice them or not, sound effects have created the modern world - so listen up and hear what it’s made of.

The Yellowstone sound library, where you can immerse yourself in the aural landscape of America's first national park.

The files available here were recorded in the park and are in the public domain. They may be downloaded and used without limitation; however, please credit the "National Park Service" where appropriate.

Fox stands accused of playing the Emergency Alert System attention tone to promote an NFL show on dozens of TV channels.