Sivuääni

Sivuääni is a Finnish term used to describe a secondary audio signal that appears alongside the main signal in a system with multiple audio paths. In telecommunications, sivuääni commonly refers to sidetone, the portion of a caller’s own voice that is fed back to the user’s own earpiece or to the other party through the network. Sidetone helps keep conversations natural by giving the speaker a sense of how loud they sound to the other person.

In practice, sivuääni arises from network design and signal routing, and it can be either intentionally controlled or an unintended artifact. Appropriate sidetone levels are important: too strong a sivuääni can be distracting or cause feedback, while too weak a level can make speech seem distant or unnatural. Engineers manage sivuääni through impedance matching, hybrid circuits, echo cancellers, and careful balancing of transmit and receive paths.

Beyond telecommunications, the term can also be used to describe unwanted tonal components that accompany a primary signal in audio systems. Such sivuääni may result from electrical interference, mechanical resonances, or poor grounding and shielding. In recording and playback environments, reducing these artifacts involves filtering, proper cabling, shielding, and circuit design to minimize coupling between channels.

The concept of sivuääni thus covers both the intentional feedback component used to support natural communication and incidental tonal artifacts that engineers seek to minimize. It is closely related to broader ideas of sidetone, echo cancellation, and crosstalk in audio and telecommunication systems.