100% if you're using optical cable

That's just one of those things that are really neat about physics. Optical sound! Whee!

But when you start dealing with very long cable runs, even a significant fraction of c becomes detectable. Like he says in the post, even milliseconds count.

At c, light travels about 300km in a millisecond. That's a really long cable run.

Seriously. Working in sound can really make you feel like a wizard sometimes.

I just took sound, turned it into electrical current, then I turned it into light for a little while, then back into current... Some of it I turned it radio signal... Then I turned all back into sound.

Oh yeah, and along the way, I displayed information about the sound you never new existed in about seventeen different ways across five or six computer displays while I was at it.

When it becomes detectable, it means there's a problem somewhere.

Ya, 9 seconds later, the back section is starting to hear it! Then they had to time delay the video screens to that, so the lips on screen lined up with audio coming out of the speakers.

It was seriously like watching a dubbed Japanese movie. But who cares! I could hear just fine.

This is not quite as bad as saying, "No one will ever need more than 640k of memory", but still...

Despite Gates' Prediction, Spam Far From a Thing of the Past

"Bill Gates declared in 2004 at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that spam would be 'a thing of the past' within five years. However, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, has written in a blog post that 'with the prophecy's five-year anniversary approaching, spam continues to cause a headache for companies and home users.'"

The sound didn't match the jumbotrons at the Monument. Plus the sound echos off the buildings (and in my case, the Monument.) I had to stand facing the Monument in order to not get the speaker feed in one year and a delayed echo off the Monument in the other. And the wind played games with the sound. Thank god they cranked the volume for the oath and after. Most of the opening stuff I heard over a radio someone had because the speakers weren't loud enough. And Aretha's bit? Totally incomprehensible. The Mall? Not the best acoustics.

Nobody believes me when I tell them wind wreaks havok on sound. Outdoor shows are a pain. Wind, humidity, fog, barametric pressure. Weather is a mother!

My group totally talked about how wind effected the sound. We too were at the base of the Washington, (on the slope of the southeast side, north of the Naval bandshell) but except for the Japanese movie dubbing delay, we could hear everything.

For those who don't believe that being outdoors can greatly affect sound, point them to the number of soldiers in battle who have reported that, because of an oddity of geographic position or atmospheric conditions, had no idea that a battle or, you know, artillery fire, was occuring less than fifty yards away from them.

Sound is a very bizzare thing sometimes.