Famicoman.com

Flea Market Find – 8-Track Tape Player

So for $5, I was able to nab a boxed (though used) Stereo 8 player. Not a common purchase I know, but it is bound to get at least some use as a stereo component.

The Box, weighing about 7 pounds while full

Eight-tracks, for those who don’t know, were once the reigning format for portable music, later being replaced by the cassette tape. Like the four-track tape, the eight-track would have multiple programs per tape that could be switched from one to the other using a button on the player. Though eight-track tapes, like the name implies, can hold more music than a four-track tape, they do so in the same amount of space. Ultimately, the sound quality of an eight-track tape is less than the quality of a four-track tape.

Queen’s News of the World

Upon adding the unit to my stereo, I can say that the sound quality is indeed low. If anything, eight-track tapes can be kept around for their novelty, or the off chance I find something on one that I cannot get anywhere else.

Front of the 8-track tape player

Angled view of the player with 8-track

Posted in Audio, Flea Market Finds | No Comments »

Vinyl – A New Perspective

I didn’t grow up with records. Sure, there were a few in the house, but they never would get any play. They were banished to one corner of the basement where they were easily forgotten. The ’90s were a time where a kid was surrounded by cassettes. I look back, and there were maybe a handful of CDs kicking around in the living room. All the cars were outfitted with cassette players, I had a Walkman and a little fisher price player; tape was king. As a teenager in the new millennium, everyone would be quick to assume that I have a evolved with technology, and sport a  substantial CD collection consisting of all the latest and greatest bands. Staring over at my stack of fifteen dusty CDs, I can’t say that I would agree that this particular mold fits me. For some reason, I tend to flock towards vinyl records.

There are numerous reasons why I choose vinyl. Up front, I would tell you that I enjoy the quality. I’m not necessarily saying that vinyl is far superior to CDs in terms of sound, as I have heard both sides of the argument. Records are of course analog while CDs are digital. There are numerous arguments about digital recording versus analog recording involving losslessness, compression, overall sound quality, etc. Honestly, it all seems to vary from recording to recording because of differences in recording hardware, and general human influence. One thing that seems to be consistent however is how music mastery has changed throughout the years. Vinyl mastering is thought to take much more care as modern mastering seems to focus more on loudness than other aspects. If some of today’s masters were put directly onto vinyl, the needle would jump around and the record would be unplayable making vinyl a far more delicate format. When I say I like the quality of records, I don’t imply that I think vinyl is always a crisp format offering the best possible sound. To me, vinyl offers a warmer sound that I don’t think I get from CDs. Sure, there are cracks and pops and hisses, but this all just adds to the experience and brings out character from the audio.

Another thing that I enjoy about records is the price. CDs brand new seem to hover around fifteen dollars, while used ones may situate around the ten dollar mark. Vinyl on the other hand, can be had for limited money. While there are, strangely enough, reproductions and new vinyl selling for around the same prices as CDs,  older vinyl is cheap. I can go out to a flea market and fill holes in my collection for ten cents to 2 dollars a record. So not only am I able to get titles I’m after, but for the price I can also experiment. Something looks interesting, I don’t feel bad putting down another dollar to bring it home.

Records also seem to have some interesting history that makes them appealing. Going around from vendor to vendor, you strike up conversation. Sometimes it’s about how the records came from a radio station, or maybe you get wrapped up in someone’s memory of a concert, or just a recollection of another time and place that fits perfectly with the music you are buying. Every record has its own personal story. Every scratch or scuff has its own place in history. Doodles line the faces off The Beatles on their Let it Be album, telephone numbers are scattered all over the back of Billy Joel’s The Stranger. No two records are the same, even if the music on them is.

There is also plenty of stuff you can get on records that you cannot find on anywhere else. There are some pieces in my collection that I know will not be released on CD, there are some things that were brought to CD, but are remixes of the original tracks, etc.

I don’t remember exactly how I got into collecting records. I probably saw a copy of Dark Side of the Moon or something equally as substantial for one dollar and decided if anything, it is at least interesting to have around. This has grown, however. My collection increases almost weekly, and I now have over one thousand individual albums on the medium. All that can deter me at this point is where to put them.

A wall of my records

My stereo and a few more records

Posted in Audio | 2 Comments »

Piradio

A month ago, I was in preparation for a charity event, Relay for Life. Whether or not you agree with their practices doesn’t matter. I simply used the event as a vehicle for a new project. The idea of the event is you and a group of people camp out on a football field while doing a 24-hour walkathon. I got the bright idea of creating a portable radio station for this event, so members of the group walking with radios could all get the same music from a central base of operations on the field. This was also an idea for doing an on-location podcast.

My mission started by going to Best Buy and picking up a cheap Dynex brand 4-station FM transmitter. I hooked it up to my iPod and saw that I got maybe 60 feet of good signal from the transmitter. My goal was to try to push the transmitter to do over 100 yards. A seemingly impossible goal, but I knew since this thing had no external antenna, I could solder one on somewhere and get some improvement, right?

After taking apart the unit, I was left with this,

Front of the board

Back of the board

I didn’t know where to start in my attempt to add an antenna. I tried googling off some of the numbers on the pcb but couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was looking at. I then got some help from an old friend by the name of TestMAD who was more savvy in this area than I was. He conferred with his father on this project, and they deduced that I would solder one wire to one of the three pads (you can see them on the bottom left of the pcb in the first picture) and I would have to solder another wire to ground, which I did by scraping away some of the green on the back of the board and soldering onto that.

Next, there was the matter of antenna size. The antenna size had to correspond with a particular frequency I would broadcast on. If I were to change the broadcast frequency, I would have to change the antenna size as well. Making it too long or too short could hurt the signal. So, I decided to keep transmission at 88.1MHz which would require an antenna around 33.5 inches long. There was next the choice of what type of antenna to use. A dipole or a quarter wave vertical antenna were suitable options.

A quarter wave vertical antenna using radials (picture from radio-electronics.com)

A dipole antenna (picture from wikipedia.org)

I settled on the dipole as I had an adjustable tv antenna that could fit the specifications. It was also good for portability. Later I was told that using the other antenna design could have provided more coverage, which could be something to try at a later date.

After the final assembly, I had something that looked like this,

Yep, pretty classy. I might as well point out that in that picture, the antennae are too long. The length or 33.5 inches is supposed to include both the length of the actual antenna as well as the wire used to connect it to the pcb.

So on the day I was to use this, it turns out the event was pushed inside due to possible bad weather. However, this was great news in that the football field where the event was supposed to be held was completely empty. The field also had yard markers, so I could easily see how much coverage I was getting. After sizing the antennae, powering up and walking out into the field with nothing more than a battery powered radio, I got about 75 yards before I lost the signal. I didn’t hit my goal, but I squeezed a noticeable amount of coverage out of the transmitter.

If anything, I leared a few things about transmitters and antenna design. Also, hey, now I have an FM transmitter I can use just about anywhere, for anything. Maybe it’ll pop it’s way into some other projects.

Posted in Audio, Communication | No Comments »

Binaural Beats

So recently with doing some audio experimenting, I was introduced to the concept of binaural beats. The idea is that a listener uses a pair of stereo headphones to listen to two differen frequencies, one in each ear. The result is the perception of a beating tone as if it was produced by the brain itself. This causes brainwave synchronization with desired frequencies from outside stimuli.

So why would anyone want to do this? The practical side of this is use with learning, health, and meditation. In studies, binaural beats have been seen to increase information retention as well as the amount assimilated. Binaural beats have also been see to act as pain relief, and even help with addiction rehabilitation. Some also believe when targeting specific types of brainwaves, meditation can be enhanced as well as attribute to out of body experience and lucid dreaming.

On the other end of the spectrum, binaural beats are used as entertainment. How effectively they are used in this sense is debatable. The thought is that by manipulating brainwaves, you can temporarily change perception.  So basically, binaural beats give people the ability to create audio that mimics the effects of chemical substances that alter normal body function. Enter I-Doser, probably the leading name in brainwave entertainment. Their shtick is offering up “doses” in the form of audio files that give the same effects as legal/illegal substances. However, there is much question about if they actually work or not. Many claim they do though it takes a while (which may coincide with how binaural beats are used with meditation) however a large majority of people who have had experience with I-Doser claim that either nothing happens or many people suffer the placebo effect. If you want to see for yourself, you can obtain some demos at the I-Doser website.

So of course after hearing of the concept of binaural beats, I wanted to hear binaural beats. I found an interesting program by the name of Gnaural which acts a a binaural beat generator. Its open-source and thus free, so you can try it at your liesure. Gnaural seems to be a fully functional generator with the ability to control pink noise, frequencies, etc. I tried it out and I can say it was an interesting experience, theres definately a weird feeling achieved through the sound.

So in closing, give it a whirl if you’re interested. Who knows, you may be one step closer to controlling your own dreams.

Posted in Audio | No Comments »

Software Vocoding with the Stylophone

So as I said a few weeks ago, I have a Stylophone which is essentially a pocket synthesizer. What I got the idea to to is use the Stylophone as my synth device in post-processing vocoding. I needed to do it post because I don’t (think I) have any equipment that would make me able to vocode audio on the fly. Oh yeah, almost forgot, a vocoder is a device that takes sound (usually a modulated sound like a voice), reduces the amount of information used to store it, and then turns it back into sound by oscillating it according to frequencies in a carrier sound. Basically, you can make mechanical/robotic voices using it.

So I wanted to make a robot voice using… oh… say… some podcast audio. So first, I trimmed out a little bit of podcast audio in Audacity, my favorite open-source audio editor, which was easy enough. Second, I rigged my Stylophone to my computers audio input and recorded a tone in audacity with vibrato turned on. I wasn’t sure what would be best, so I tried vibrato on, vibrato off, I changed notes while playing, adjusted pitch, etc. I wanted variety. So after I got the tones I wanted, I chopped out the empty space, the mess ups, etc to have a nice flowing audio sample.

So now I had the original audio and my Stylophone audio. How do I vocode? I found a wonderful program a while back called Zerius Vocoder. Now you have to note, its pretty basic and has only a few features, but gets the job done. Also, its free, which is always nice when you’re looking for software to try out.

The Modulator file is my podcast sample, the Carrier file is my Stylophone file, and the Output file is the output. As for the options, I messed around with those until I found what I perceived to be the best combination. There’s always the “Restore Defaults” button if you mess up and want to redo the options.

So after hitting “Vocode”, I have my finished file all ready and waiting to be played. Here are the files I used below…

Modulater File

Carrier File

Output File

After I finished making my new file, I decided to see just exactly how the frequencies changed using another great free tool, Spectro which gives spectrograms of audio waves. So using this, I was able to have visual representations of the frequencies of the audio files. See for yourself,

The modulator file below has an average frequency of 19.5KHz

The carrier file below has an average frequency of 22.1KHz

The output file below has an average frequency of 22.1KHz

Happy vocoding!

Posted in Audio, Projects | No Comments »

The Stylophone

So about two weeks ago, I ordered a Stylophone from Thinkgeek and have been more than satisfied. For those that don’t know, the Stylophone was a popular toy in the late 1960’s. What sets this toy apart is that it is infact a compact synthesizer. What makes it awesome is the fact that it was used by several big names in music, for example David Bowie played a Stylophone on his song, “Space Oddity” and Kraftwerk used it on their track, “Pocket Calculator”.

I purchased a reproduction Stylophone for $20, and certainly got everything I wanted and more. The new Stylophone has three tone settings as opposed to the original Stylophone’s one, so my Stylophone has the same set of tones as the original, but also two additional. I also learned after purchasing that there is a pitch knob underneath the unit, that can be used to tune the Stylophone to the desired key, but can also be used while playing for strange melodic effects. Lastly, there is a vibrato switch on the top next to the power switch, which can make the tones “pulse” in a way that mimics the human voice.

Below is a wav file of some tones I recorded while I was screwing around with it (yeah, this thing has a line out jack).

Stylophone Synth Demo

Posted in Audio, Things | No Comments »

Ghettoblasters and Boomboxen in the Modern Age

So for the past year or so, I’ve had increased interest in vintage boomboxes. I believe the appeal comes from the need for a powerful portable audio solution. Previous to having boomboxes, I would take a set of dc-powered computer speakers, chop off the plug, strip down the wires, and hook up a set of 9-volt batteries wired in parallel. The problem with this, however, is that 9-volt batteries are expensive, and most sets of computer speakers run on more then 9 volts of electricity. So yeah, I could mix and match batteries, but to get a reliable flow of electricity, that would require casing, and basically a bunch of wiring I didn’t want to do. So I went around with underpowered speakers that just caused problems when batter life ran short.

Now, I turn to boomboxes to do the hard work for me. Boomboxes were first introduced in the mid to late 70’s and became a facet of audio gear until their decline in the late 80’s. The appeal of boomboxes were their portability, battery life, and most important, volume. Every boombox was made to be cranked up with quality amplifiers and top of the line remixing features.

The thing that makes boomboxes accessible nowadays is the fact that the majority of them included built in cassette decks. With simple adapters purchasable at any electronics store for under $15, any new mp3 or cd player can be hooked up to a boombox, giving it whole new life and purpose.

Clockwise, mid 70s Panasonic, mid 80s Soundesign, late 80s Panasonic

Posted in Audio, Things | No Comments »