Hacker News Reader

> In practice, musicians ignore sound and watch a conductor when separated by such distances [of 100 feet].

It had never occurred to me that a conductor was a kind of clock at an approximately uniform distance from the performers.

Uniform distance matters little for a conductor. Performers watch visual cues from him and speed of light is very fast (unlike sound).

If you are 100 meters away, you have delay of about a third of a second if you use sound, but for light it will be a fraction of a millisecond.

> Uniform distance matters little for a conductor. Performers watch visual cues from him and speed of light is very fast (unlike sound).

Doesn't matter for the performers, but it matters for the conductor.

Conductor is the metronome.