I was asked a puzzling question/thought experiment:
Given the source of a sound in a wide open field so acoustics do not play a role, is it possible for a sound to be louder as you move away from it.
My answer was instinctively no. As you move away from sound it dissipates, so it should not be louder.
The response is that, if there is another, weaker source of sound closer to you, then by walking away the source closer to you will lose strength and the source farther will "shine" through better.
This doesn't feel right to me. Surely when you move away from the sound, the farther one dissipates as well as the nearer one? Is this potentially because of the inverse square law?
edit: This question probably applies in a similar way to light. Not quite sure what the right tags should be for this
Best Answer
No, but it can sound like it.
If there are two sounds that have similar frequencies, we will only hear the loudest one (this phenomenon is used to help compress music files). This is caused auditory masking. Now, if you have a loud sound far away, and a less loud sound close to you, the one close to you will sound louder, and will mask the farther away one. If you move away from both of them, then because of the inverse square law the near sound will get softer faster than the far-away one, so the far-away sound will no longer be masked. This may sound to you like the farther-away sound is getting louder as you move away from it. (Even though it isn't in reality.)