Teleseismic Earthquake

This is a teleseismic earthquake -- one that occurs at a great distance away from a seismic station. You hear two distinct arrivals: The P- and the S-wave arrivals. They're marked on the seismogram shown, at around 300 seconds and around 550 seconds. (The dashed vertical lines show the arrival times, with the type of wave arrival listed at the top of the line). The two arrivals have distinctly different pitches. The P-wave is richer in higher frequencies, so it sounds like the clap in this case. The S-wave energy is more attenuated, depleted in high frequencies, and so sounds like a muffled echo of the P-wave's clap-like sound. Following the S-wave arrival is the longer, spread-out surface wave arrival. It makes a drawn-out rumble, lower in frequency than either the P-wave or the S-wave, but more powerful because it isn't as attenuated as the P- and S-waves.

There are other expected seismic wave arrivals marked on the seismogram, but they aren't audible. The surface wave obscures the much quieter sounds that they make.

So that you can hear the difference better, the seismogram is repeated three times in the audio track, with a gap between each repetition.

Teleseismic earthquake Audio