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You know those Asian water bowls with which you can make mysterious sounds; just turn and turn them until the vibrations of the bowl start to make deep sounds.
In this age of hard, binary digital communication and information, some people feel a need to experience some good old analogics again.
Analog sounds convey a more "rooted", serious, warm and deep experience. Digital soundscapes convey the repetitiveness of an empty cold machine.
So here's my idea for a romantic 21st century gift. Instead of sending an SMS text message or an e-mail ("You've got mail", the movie - how boring) or post-it message to your lover, use the mythical "mot cadeau" waterbowl.
This nicely decorated metal shell, this bowl, contains a simple and tiny recording device (some kind of chip) hidden in the bottom, a small vibrating device which will amplify the sound waves back on replay (the bowl itself is actually already an amplifier), and one tiny battery. (this electronic stuff has to be hidden very well, as to not spoil the illusion).
So you basically have an empty bowl. Now the lover fills the bowl, and whispers his love words into the lightly perfumed water. The verse is recorded and can be replayed simply by gently turning the bowl. A mysterious echo will accompany the words as they travel through the water at replay.
The gift is ready. The beloved will find this an intimate, unique cadeau. The words are embedded forever in the water. Have some candles float on the water, and turn the shell whenever you're in a romantic mood.
The words are not hard, crisp, or visual, but they come mysteriously, vaguely recognizable, they well up... it's all about the evocation of some proto-language, symbolising a pre-representational form of communication (hm hm), perfect for conveying the hesitant and fragile mood which lovers find themselves in.
That's it.
Maybe acoustics experts can even make this without any electronics at all, simply by shaping the bowl in such a way that certain words start to appear when you turn it. But then of course the uniqueness of the message disappears.
Ok.
[Also: I urgently need to score more girls and learn to speak English better; both are equally difficult.]
Analog recording chip
http://web.media.mi...ce_chip/isd4003.pdf
Chip that records audio as analog samples [csea, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
[link]
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//experience gold analogics again//
//the recording devidce would be some kind of chip//
Small flaw in the device me thinks. Surely if you want an analogue output, you want an analogue recording device, not a chip, that can only record digitally?
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(1) Darn fine idea.
(2) Borrow a puppy you can take for walks. |
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Fairly easily bakeable based on analog record/playback chip, see [link] |
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[goff] and [csea] true, I thought analog recording devices were big and clumsy, but this analog recording chip seems to do the trick. Of course, one could say that all digital devices with a speaker have an analog component in them, since the digital sounds are "realized" via the vibrations in the speaker.
Well, if the sounds travel through the water, they become more analog anyways, and that's the important thing. |
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[2 fries shy of a happy meal], hehe, are you saying that I should consider a puppy to be my girl? I hope I'm not that pathetic :-) Or is it so that girls are more easy to take out for a walk as long as there's a puppy on their side? Puppies are great to talk about, that's true. ("Errr... this is my puppy" "...errr...how nice" "yes, will you now kiss me then?" "er...ok".) Life is simple. |
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//You know those Asian water bowls with which you can make mysterious sounds//
No, actually, so the rest of this is kinda lost on me. I'm sure it's an excellent idea though. |
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Tabs what is wrong with French? and in this case it is meant to be a romantic idea so French or Italian would be the choices of language. |
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I just thought the alliteration "mo - kado" had a nice sound to it. But I stand corrected. |
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I suppose it could be a girl puppy, it doesn't really matter.
When you are walking an adorable little ball of fur, all females within range can't seem to resist going out of their way to pet it, and talk with the owner of course. |
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Reincarnation as a puppy...hmmm. |
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//If the sounds travel through water, they become more analog anyways//
Sorry, Django, know what you mean about the sound quality being "warmer" or whatever, but they do not become "more analog". As you say, the signal is converted to analog at the speaker anyway. It's the transformation from analog to digital and vice versa (Fourier transform), which causes the freqency loss and other problems. Like the sound of the chip, but from what I can gather form the technical workings, it's going to have some freqency loss anyway, becuase it has to sample to record. By not doing the digital transformation, it will actually lose more information, becuase of the "foldback" effect above the Nyquist freqency. Most digital systems get around this by "oversampling" - they sample more bits than they need to (i.e. sample window is moved so that it overlaps the last one) and at a higher frequency band than the human ear can hear, meaning that a lot of the noise distortion effect at high freqencies is removed. Still brass instruments at high freqency can sound very "bitty" on CD. Anyway, suspect play back is warmer sound, which is what you're looking for really. |
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<sp> "Nyquist", but that's the least of your worries in that anno :-) |
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my god yes. Will go back and correct it... |
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I saw one of those bowls in a gift store once. Bunch of hippies were fawning all over it and talking about how cool it was and experimenting with different ways to get it to make tunes. I picked it up, held it up to my ass and ripped off a particularly loud fart. It made a great resonating sound, and had the added benefit of pretty much ruining it for the hippies. |
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Nice idea, django. Thanks for posting it! (WTAGIPBAN) |
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