Subaudio are sounds below the range of human hearing–below about 20 Hz. While we can’t hear these sounds, they can make their way into our audio files in various ways and cause some issues for us. Understanding these issues can help us make decisions in tracking, mixing, and mastering to ensure clean bass sounds and the highest possible fidelity in our recordings.
Making Binaural Beats in Pure Data (Brainwave Entrainment)
Talking about binaural beats, claims about their ability to entrain brainwaves, and walking through how easy they are to make yourself in Pure Data.
In binaural beats, two pitches with slightly different frequencies are played, one in each ear, supposedly creating a vibration at the difference tone inside your head, which can be used to entrain your brainwaves to help you relax, get you high, or even affect your behavior. The science isn’t there, but that doesn’t mean we can’t embrace binaural beats as a musical aesthetic, using Pd to make a fun, free “healing music generator.”
…just as long as we use our critical thinking and our ability to find credible resources.
Please TRUST YOUR DOCTOR (not the internet, including my videos) when making your medical decisions.
Synth Tip: Don’t Filter Sine Waves
Since sine waves are made up of only a single frequency, it’s not usually particularly effective to filter them.
Several of my students sent me Reaktor ensembles with filtered sine waves, so I wanted to quickly talk through why they’re not really the most effective thing to filter. I go through things in Native Instruments Reaktor, but the concept is applicable in whatever synthesis environment you’re working in–Pd, Max/MSP, Kyma, etc.
Bluetooth Audio Transmission
A quick overview of the transmission of digital audio over Bluetooth for wireless headphones and smart speakers.
Since sending audio over Bluetooth is a digital transmission of audio, it’s good for us to understand what conversions are taking place in the journey from our devices to our ears. Thinking about the sample rate, bit depth, and different aspects of compression can help us make good choices about to support the fidelity of our audio chain.
Databending a 360 Video with a Hex Editor
Tutorial on using a hex editor (Hex Fiend) to mess up a 360 video in one easy step.
Spectral Evolver and I are starting the initial work to put together another series of databent videos, this time working with 360 videos and ambisonic audio. These files are BIG, so some of this experimentation might take a little while, but, in the short term, a super-easy way to get some glitches fast is to just find-and-replace some numbers in a hex editor.