Quote Originally Posted by Feanor
... if not in music. Isn't true that supersonic events, (at least), cause impulses? These everts aren't all that uncommon, e.g. base ball hit by a bat, crack of a bull wip, gun shots, some explosions. No wonder these things never sound real except heard live!
The events you describe are composed of primarily symmetrical waveforms. Perhaps not perfect, but I don't know. An impulse is assymetrical. However, this is immaterial. It is possible for some speakers to reproduce assymetrical waveforms with great accuracy.

An assymetrical waveform is one that does not have inversely matching values in it's two 180 degree halves. These can be seperated and looked at as negative and positive sections of the waveform.

Here are two simplified illustrations, represent a waveform with symetry and the same waveform without.

Symmetrical Wave form

+ Pos
.......H..............
.....H...H...........
...H.......H......H.. 0 zero
.............H....H..
................H.....
- Neg


Assymetrical(extreme - for illustration)

+ Pos
......H...............
....H..H.............
..H......HHH....... 0 zero
........................
........................
-Neg

-Chris