If a tree fell in a forest and no one was around...

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Yeah I noticed that too.

It is not just eardrums. The most important part is the analysis done by the brain. Otherwise, it is just vibrations and vibrations and yet more vibrations.

However, I will say the same thing as at the beginning: no answer will be more true than the other, because it is just a debate of definition. If there were two unambiguously distinct words for sound as a wave and sound as a perception, the debate would not exist as such.

A sound is a vibration of molecules(or atoms) in a fluid. The laws of classical physics, particular fluid mechanics, predict that as the tree strikes the ground, it rapidly displaces air and this creates vibrational waves which when picked up by our ears are perceived as sound. So the answer to the OP's question is a definitive yes. Physical law is heavily dependent on scale. I know of no evidence that the quantum observer effect on the classical scale. If you do, I'd live to see it.

They also use a certain depth for long-range communication, called the deep sound channel, where sounds travel thousands of kilometers.

Sound waves are oscillations of air molecules that created changes in air pressure. If these oscillations are between 20 hz and 20 khz, our ears can tranduce them into electrical impulses sent to our brains which we perceive as "sound". Sound waves above 20 khz cannot be perceived by us but they can by other animals.

Does sound exist at all without creatures capable of perceiving it? Does the universe exist at all without any creatures that can perceive it?

As long as there are sound waves (waves produced by the movement of an atmosphere), there is sound, whether there is any observer or not.
I didn't know that some people defined the presence of sound as only the sound that is perceived. Seems kind of immature to me.

My view is, if something is given as the parameter (e.g. "a tree falls in the forest"), then that parameter is assumed to be true and we must work logic based on that parameter.

the question can be extended in the same "philosophical" direction that leads to questions like "if something happens, and no 'human' was there to perceive it, did it really happen?".

it seems that humans are in a dilemma as to whether reality exists only in their own minds, or whether it exists despite their absence of audience.

will anything happen in the universe after every human is dead?
does it require human consciousness to empower existence?

no one was there to witness the big bang, and so therefore maybe it did not happen because no one perceived it.

all descriptions that a human can provide about the universe are only descriptions which are derived subjectively from local experience.

the word "sound" may mean "a subjective perception by humans of regular rarefactions and compressions within a medium in a closed pressurized system that excite "human" auditory receptors", and that is a rather arrogant definition of the word "sound" because there is no other definition of "sound" or "noise" (which is chaotic "sound") other than a subjective definition, and therefore the word "sound" cannot apply to things "unheard" (in the human vocabulary).

it does not matter how advanced the vocabulary of a person is, there are no words to describe things that are not subjective.

"big", "bright", "hot", "many", "loud" etc are all subjective words.

nothing can be described subjectively unless there is a witness.

i may take the idea further than that by saying that even if many humans heard the tree fall, but i did not hear it, then it did not happen because i have no personal experience of it.

other people telling me they heard a sound does not make me hear it, and therefore it remains a fact that i did not hear it.

i am not arrogant enough to presume that only my own mental faculties reveal any truth about the universe.

who cares anyway.

there is no sound in the vacuum of space.

Turns out that space is not a true vacuum, an something akin to sound waves travel through it.

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/The_Sou ... tars_Audio

Aug. 13, 2006
Courtesy Sheffield Hallam University
and World Science staff

Ancient Greeks thought planets and stars were embedded in vast crystal spheres that hummed as they spun around the heavens, giving off what the ancients called “the music of the spheres.”

» HR3831, discovered by Kurtz, a new class of star with a powerful magnetic field. It pulses every 11.7 minutes.
» Xi-hydrae, an old star in the constellation Hydra. It is 130 light years away and 60 times brighter than the Sun. Its sounds, which have been featured in club music in Belgium, are reminiscent of African drumming.
» A "white dwarf" or dead star 50 light years away, also in Centaurus
» The first piece of music composed for stellar instruments: the slowly-building Stellar Music No. 1 by Jenõ Keuler and Zoltán Kolláth.

It was a beautiful idea, and wrong.

But not totally wrong. There are no crystal spheres; but as astronomers found out in the 1970s, “the sun and other stars do actually ‘sing,’” said astronomer Donald Kurtz of The University of Central Lancashire in Preston, U.K. The eerie tones are now downloadable (see sidebar.)
Stars—themselves spherical—can produce notes through their vibrations, like musical instruments. We can’t hear the sounds directly, but “astronomers can detect them through asteroseismology—looking beneath the surfaces of the stars into their cores,” Kurtz said. “We can see inside the Sun as clearly as you can see a fetus in the womb using ultrasound.”

Experts worldwide discussed asteroseismology at a conference early this month at the University of Sheffield, U.K.

Stars produce ghostly whistling, drumming, humming or rumbling sounds, said Kurtz, though their frequencies—or speeds of vibration—must be artificially boosted to bring them into human hearing range. At a lecture at the conference, Kurtz demonstrated how Bach would sound if played by the stars, combining pitches from different stars into a computer-projected melody. He also used helium, cymbals and bottles to recreate stellar sounds.

“Stars have natural vibrations that are sound waves, just as musical instruments do,” Kurtz explained. “In the case of an instrument such as a horn, the cause of the vibrations is the musician blowing on the horn and buzzing his or her lips at a frequency that matches the natural vibrations of the horn. For the star, the vibrations start by changes in the passage of energy from the nuclear inferno in the heart of the star on its way to the surface, and escape into space.” Early last year, researchers published a paper noting that a massive quake had left a so-called neutron star vibrating like a bell, sounding a note corresponding to what humans designate as F sharp. Early this year, scientists reported that not only stars vibrate musically—the whole Milky Way is oscillating as well, like a drumhead. “Understanding the sounds of the stars is important for our understanding of the formation of the solar system and the Earth,” Kurtz said. Using asteroseismology “We can even monitor dangerous ‘active’ regions on the far side of the Sun.” These stormy zones can later send out blasts that create geomagnetic storms on Earth, leading to power failures and radio disruption.

It would still cause sound waves to move through the air, so technically, it would still make a noise. Furthermore, there would always be some animals (insects, birds and so on) present in a forest that would hear it.

Vibrations of a visco eleastic medium exists whether any one is around or not. Noises and sounds have to be -heard-. They are perceptions and require a perceiver ..

ruvyen

The sound waves of a tree falling in the forest will be perceived by other organisms in the forest.

The basic assumption of the paradox is that there is no one around. That is to say, no one that could hear. Which includes all possible percipients of air vibrations.

ruveuyn

Then it's not a forrest.

I thought it was a question of objectivism vs subjectivism.