Shorter sounds necessarily have broader spectral bandwidths

Evidence

The time-frequency tradeoff governs this relationship in the following way: a short-duration sound must have a broad bandwidth spectrum. The only way to achieve a narrow bandwidth spectrum is to provide a long duration. However, longduration sounds can, and often do, have broad spectra, such as white noise. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 177

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the time-frequency tradeoff, a core acoustics concept the reader asked for.
• XREF: connects to: A sound’s time-domain rate of change determines its frequency-domain bandwidth — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 489