BASSic fun

My computer desk doesn't really favour anything more than a 2.1 speaker configuration. So when I wanted to dump my sorry sounding Philips Smart Sound LC 2.1 speaker unit, I searched for another 2.1 speaker that was in the right price-to-performance sweet spot. This time, I didn't want to end up with another LC2.1 sound-alike, which turned out to be cheap both in price and quality. But I am over it now and my brand spanking new Altec Lansing ATP3 is monetarily cheaper and aurally dear.

My pre-shopping research made a strong case for this speaker, and it very much lives up to it's fame. I mean, the bass is always in-your-face with no artifacts at all volumes. Oh yeah, let's talk about the bass. Due to my room's terrain and my desktop's oppulence, the only place to keep my speaker system is on my computer desk. The best place to keep a down-firing sub like mine is against a wall. But placing it on my desk has it's own thrills. Anytime a deep drum sounds, I can feel my desk vibrating as if it were the one that was hit. The effect is spectacular in games and in hiphop music, especially.
AFAIK, subwoofers are pretty much unshielded and so must be kept away from other electronics. But this is the first subwoofer I've had that distorts the monitor's display noticeably with every bass note. The effect is annoying, of course, and I am appraising a suitable location to relocate the sub. The ATP3's specified frequency range is only 45Hz to 18KHz, which was surprising considering the response. So, one day, I set out to find just how the subwoofer does great bass without touching the 18Hz to 43Hz spectrum. I downloaded a few tone generators and quickly liked playing with NCH Tone generator.

Using the tone generator introduced me to an absolutely unexpected and mind-blowing experience with deep bass. It totally changed my appreciation for the speaker as well. After stepping through the numbers, I found the following "sweet spots" in the speaker's response. NB, I didn't test extensively, rather just stepped through at the program' spinbox's granularity.
88.10 Hz
93.34 Hz
117.60 Hz
124.59 Hz

Though not near the infrasonic range, these frequency spots shook the room pretty good. My favourite was the 124ish Hertz. At this frequency, the ATP3 seemingly produces the most bass output. The subwoofer and the mid-range drives started behaving like goddamn leaf-blowers, pumping a continous stream of air. At first I couldn't up the volume above three-fourth at this frequency because there were all sorts of whirring sounds, apparently, coming from all around me. That was the first time I discovered how many loose objects were on my desk and around my room as well. Loose changes and small boxes were the first ones to rain down on my desk from the subwoofer's perch. A stationery holder (full of stationeries) and the subwoofer of my old LC 2.1 system started moving fluently along the desk. The glass windows and a light-weight, free-standing dressing table were the source of the whirring sounds. After securing them down I was able to up the volume still more.
But not completely though as harmonic distorsions become too evident. But even then the effects of the bass was pretty exciting. I brought water filled vessels into my room to observe ripples of varying amplitude with varying frequencies. That was when i noticed something more cool.

I remembered an episode of MythBusters where Adam Savage tested the myth of the Brown Note. The myth says that there is a subsonic frequency between 5 and 10Hz at which any listener supposedly involuntarily loses control of his sphincter. Or, in other words, the hapless audience shat their pants. They found no such note, at least in the three frequencies they tested (IIRC, 5, 7 & 9 Hz). My guess is that an infrasonic laxative note is quite plausible knowing the dangerous effects of the lower hertzes. Different intensities of infrasounds can knock down buildings, liquefy any animal's organs in a second, simulate an earthquake, travel around the world seven times over and can can mess up the mind, all 'without a sound'. I can understand why we can't hear ultra-sonic sounds (our middle-ear is a sort-of low-pass filter), but I always wondered how we can hear 20Hz but not 17 Hz. Maybe, at sub-17Hz, we only "hear" (or, "feel") the individual beats.
Anyways, coming back to the topic, my plan wasn't to inadvertently stain my long johns, however. In the episode, when Adam Savage, surrounded by arrays of subwoofer spitting low hertzes, tried to speak, his voice came out on-and-off, coinciding with the frequency they were working. That was due to the rhythmic compression and rarefaction of his lungs by the massive wall of air being moved by the insane SPL audio drives.

What surprised me was that I was able to do the same thing with my stock ATP3 subwoofer!

It was great fun to talk normally but end up sounding like a robot on a vibrating spaceship. Of course, with only 103dB SPL, the ATP3 isn't the 60 inch subwoofer and definetly not qualified for no SPL competitions. Ergo, I have to stay within about a half a meter of the sub woofer to pull this trick. But the bass's bewitchment burns brighter and compels me to buy a bigger custom woofer unit. I wanted to know how low a frequency a sub can produce (not reproduce, as I believe most audio formats don't store them in the first place) and came upon "the buttkicker". The ultimate way to experience bass is, supposedly, up yours. The device attaches to the bottom of a seat or a couch and transmits bass efficiently through the solid medium directly to the "recipient". I only wish someone would buy this for my birthday or something.

So, try the little sinsoidal experiment and see if you can't experience the primal bass response of your subwoofers too. And, of course, here's an obligatory note: Any damage to your equipment or to you or to your neighour's cat from trying out anything I said, is your own fault. The tool suggested here puts your speaker unit to a sustained high power output mode and hence should not be used for more than a few moment at a time, with the definition of "few moment" being left for your common sense to figure.

Here's a snapshot of my desktop showing the location of the ATP3, if you can find it among the junk, that is :)
Image taken on my father's nokia 6255 (I think).

Spine Yoga?

I often have dreams that I can remember vividly for a week or two. I started a personal "dream blog" to journal my night time woolgatherings, but I had long since put that idea under wraps. I journaled one of my dreams but mozilla was kind enough to crash before sending the data to blogger and I wasn't going to write everything from scratch. But it was too hard to keep the post reader-friendly too because I had to introduce many familiar and unfamiliar persons to the reader, explain the flow of the dream's (il-)logical flow, explain the dozens of scenarios/scenes, explain the significance and familiarity of a particular person/object/situation or other non-tangible concept in my past and just plain forgetting some link in the dreams's flow. So, I'll try to be very specific, and very generic, where need be.

I remember all of the dream now having reviewed it a couple of times in my head. But the wierd part was when I was in my friend's house (Hey Anand Shankar!) and I saw his family friends and relatives chilling out and doing various stuff. One group of older male relatives were watching something on TV. It looked like a fully interactive and personal yoga training video. I watched the introduction by two long-braided, saffron wearing yoga teachers explaining yoga and it's benefits. Though looking like saints, they talked like the usual suspects at any telemarketing show.

I don't quite remember the speech but their was leading to something called "Spine Yoga". I think they were on about how it's a new form of yoga and how it can cure back problems. The audience became interested now as if anticipating. Then the guys on tv asked the listeners to place the "sensor" on their head. One of the men sitting before the tv (who, incidently, had a half-shaven head, much like a 'brahman') placed a small, black and squat-cylindrical sized device with a wire training behind it and to the tv, on his head in a particular spot. The sensor thing didn't fall off which could be because of adhesive or suction with the man's shaven head (guess my brain just didn't think up of any reason). Anyway, the man on tv seemed to know that the sensor had been placed correctly on someone's head for he proceeded to show how to sit down properly for the yoga.

This is where I was pretty intrigued. The man on tv, in live video, asked the 'user' to do various things like straighten his neck a bit more, straighten his back slightly, etc. I was pretty amazed how one sensor (presumably a gyroscope) was able to detect spinal curvature in addition to the neck's attitude. That's when I noticed that a video camera was also feeding the tv (I am pretty sure the camera wasn't there the first time I saw the tv. My brain must've made it up when I questioned the sensor's ability). I watched a few minutes of the video while they explained the need for the slight curvature of the spine (?). Then, as appropriate to a dream, the video was concluding with the marketers saying encouraging words about Spine Yoga.

My dream didn't end there of course (I remember that I was looking at my friend's new computer, later talking to him as he arrived in his home, leaving the house and stuff). But the Video camera + Gyroscopic sensor utilizing technology I experienced stayed fresh in my mind even after I've woken up. I was pretty sure I couldn't've made the term "Spine Yoga" up that, as soon as I got up, I switched on the monitor and googled for the term! But Spine yoga doesn't seem to be a defined word, as far as i can search at least. As for the interactive video technology, it's probably my brain's extension of the Eye-toy technology, only instead of a sword or a gun shaped sensor, there was a head-mounted sensor. And then there's the video with real live characters instead of a game engine generated ones. Probably many pre-recorded clips for every scenarios possible.

Whatever. That's that.

I don't know if I talk or laugh in my sleep, but sometimes I wake up with the wierd feeling that I did. I remember another dream, (don't worry, I'll keep this one short) where I was listenening to a lecture of sorts (I mean, it was out in the fields. Under a tree. With two or three students? Next to a railway station? go figure!). The lecturing guy was just about finished and he turned to leave with a lingering statement. All was quiet and peaceful and soft. This was where I mulled over the statement and spoke up. I remembered every word I said a few days ago, but now the words escape my mind. But I remember, as I finished my talk, everyone's head in the field(?) turned towards me and looked at me with slight puzzlement in their eyes. I then slowly sank down and woke up brightly.
Again, I had the strange feeling that I had actally vocalised what I said in my dream. I wish I could've written this when I remembered what it was that I said. So, I've decided that when I buy a video camera or a web-camea, I'll record my slumbering self, just to establish whether or not. It won't accomplish much. Or anything, for that matter, except to tell me if I am a somnavocalist (or is that somnaoralist? somnarhetorican? I don't think there's a word for it, but you get the idea), but it just might be the weirdest clip of the day if it ever leaks into the net.

Are these for ever?

It's tough to come up with a interesting-yet-goofy-sounding name when you are going to talk about bling blings. Ask my mom on how I dislike being encumbered with even the tiniest loop of gold or silver. Though I've favoured wearing a couple "interesting" looking stuff like that copper snake ring and that cool LED-flashing ring sold at an exhibition when I was considerably younger, I just am not comfortable wearing something to make a "status statement". I am not quite sure jewels look at home on a man.

The feeling's entirely personal of course. I do appreciate a beautiful and elegant piece enhancing an elegant maid's beauty subtly. So when I was searching for a topic for my brief spell of recreational modeling, I chose diamonds.


Now I have done a few jewellery designs in the past too. But they were pretty botched up things and not quite satifactorily done. Here are a few of them:

This one I call "Chained Heart" and was the artifact of my foray into 3D goldsmithing. It was quite interesting to make since it was my first experience with creating a chain with the Spacing tool and rendering highly reflective scene.

I call this, quite obviously, "Crowned". The model is a Poser 6.0 character imported into 3D studio max to bear the horrible gold and ruby (?) crown. This scene wasn't about the crown. I posed the king(!) in a menacing pose pointing a finger (relax, it's the index) at someone. Unfortunately, I am not very good at clothing and hairdressing in Poser 6, so the scene is a bit, er, bare and I left it, er, hanging, at least for now.

Spiral ringlet prototype. This one gave me quite a bit of headache, probably because I suck at geometry and elctronics. It has 3 sine waves inter-twined in such a way that when given a gradient thickness and bent 180 degrees along the y-axis, the ensemble shouldn't intersect anywhere. Needless to say, mine intersects.

About a week ago, I found reference pictures of a diamond cut called "Simple brilliance" cut. It looked simple enough to model and it was. Finding the right maerial for the diamond model was easy enough as well since there are a lot of tutorials on material making. So, at last, I had me a diamantine in my virtual hands.



With the stone ready, I could finally make me some simple rings. I did a quick google for simple diamond rings to loosely base my deigns on. I haven't started any complex ring designs yet. So, here are the simple ones:
Simple diamond ring:


Aqua toe ring:


Coppermine diamond ring:


Goldmine diamond ring (Yeah, I suck at naming things). Note the "To my beloved" engraving too:


Goldmine in a box:


Goldmine in a box, closeup:



More later.


[Later..]
Here's two more for now. Both designs were (unwilling) courtesy of boldingold.com

Golden Helix:


Tension set ring: