If a ___ falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Certainly when it falls it causes the air to become repeatedly compressed and rarefied creating longitudinal waves. But for those waves to become "sound" one needs the hearing equivalent of an observer who has the ability to interpret those waves as sound. So the answer to the question is "no". This has nothing to do with the meta, by the way; I just wanted to contribute to the ongoing debate.