ImageScanningSequencer
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Scientists scan damaged audio discs, resurrect fresh beats
Digitizing your analog archives? Vinyl to CD / MP3 / iPod turntables might do well enough for your old 45s, but the folks at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory prefer to listen to their old beats by taking pictures of them. More specifically, restoration specialists are using a system called IRENE/3D to snap high resolution images of damaged media. The cracked discs -- often made of wax on brass or composition board -- are then repaired digitally, letting researchers play the digitized discs with an emulated stylus. So far, the team has recovered a handful of 125 year old recordings from a team in Alexander Graham Bell's Volta laboratory. The all digital system gives researchers a hands-off way to recover audio from relic recordings without running the risk of damaging them in the process -- and no, they probably won't let you use it to listen to that beat up copy of the White Album you've had in your closet since eighth grade. Hit the source link to hear what they've recovered.
Image Scanning Sequencer goes portable, turns light table doodles into creepy murmurs
Those MAKE kids sure love their Arduino, and today's creation has a fun musical bent. The Image Scanning Sequencer -- a portable followup to the similarly-dubbed Image Scanning Sequencer -- has a strip of photo cells that can trigger MIDI notes based on what they're picking up. The darkness of the detected "note" sets the velocity of the note, and the location sets the pitch. The Arduino sits in between, making all the magic happen. If this all sounds completely meaningless and pointless, you're probably right, but check out the video after a break for chance at making sense of it all. And simulated whale noises. [Via MAKE, thanks Manny]
Image scanning sequencer excites our ears, leaves blank looks on our faces
Be warned: what you're about to see, hear and experience should you venture down beyond the break is exceptionally odd. Like, bordering on creepy. It's not so much the machine that's eerie -- after all, it's just a home built image scanning sequencer that uses LDRs to measure grey-scales and trigger MIDI notes from a selected threshold -- it's the audio we're concerned about. We're talking funeral tunes at their finest, which is honestly a bit heavy at this point in the morning. Those who can take it know where to head.[Via MAKE]
