In the process of experimenting with sound design, I gradually realized that digital audio is not a complete reproduction of real sound, but a recording method based on thresholds and trade-offs. Concepts such as bit depth and noise floor led me to understand sound as “the part that is allowed to exist”. Digital audio’s “bit depth” and “sample rate” are essentially mathematical filters that only allow vibrations that fit its quantization ladder to pass through.

This can be linked to media theory (such as Kittler’s “media determinism”): what we hear is never the sound itself, but the part of the medium that allows it to pass through. Just like photography is not the world, but the reaction of film or sensors to light (see “Man with a Movie Camera” in my Sight & Sound module).

You can explore: In our creations, can we actively exploit these “limitations” (e.g., deliberately use low-fidelity, introduce digital clipping) to create a new aesthetic reality that belongs to the digital medium itself?

For example, in some environments where there is no clear source of low frequencies, the low-frequency pads are not designed to simulate reality, but to maintain perceptual integrity. This approach does not follow real cause and effect, but follows perceptual logic, echoing the “rational interpretation” of player behavior by the system in the game. The explosion in space (which should be silent in reality) is to meet the audience’s narrative expectations for “impact”. The subtle sounds deliberately created in ASMR or ambient music speak directly to the subconscious mind, following the logic of emotions and bodies rather than physical logic.

The “immersion” or “credibility” in game research comes from the system responding to player behavior with a self-consistent logic, even if this logic does not hold in reality.

Sounds as feedback systems, such as UI sounds in games (menu selection sounds, “ding” sounds for obtaining items) are pure perceptual logic, they have no source of reality, but they build a sense of immediacy and satisfaction of operation. This is similar to my low-frequency pad: it exists to maintain the integrity of an internal world.

The interactive mixing and Wwise/FMOD engine of modern games liberates sound from “fixed recordings” to “malleable system components”. Sounds change according to the state of the game (health, distance, mood), which in itself is a continuous rationalization process of perception by the system.

Excellent sound design is not so much about “recording the world” as about designing the listener’s cognitive path. Sound designers are not real-world recorders, but architects of perceiving the world. We use the threshold of media, the laws of cognition, and the logic of the system to construct a kind of “experiential reality”. This reality is not attached to the physical, but to the coherence of experience and the effectiveness of emotions.