Definition
Plain language
How loud a sound is, and how much that loudness moves up and down.
As stated in the literature
The energy or amplitude envelope of a speech signal; mean intensity and intensity variation are standard prosodic descriptors, distinct from pitch and timing features.
Also called: intensity variation
Why it matters: Loudness and its swings carry emphasis and emotion that the words alone do not, so ignoring intensity throws away part of what a speaker meant.
For example, someone whispering an apology and then shouting the same words produces very different intensity readings for identical text.
Heard on the show
“… And design it on a rig where the obvious thing to measure — raw camera intensity — is going to be polluted by reference background and interference artifacts that have nothing …”Episode 002 — An AI Ran a Real Optics Lab for 21 Hours and Found a Transformer-Shaped Pattern in Light