Re: Trivial, but cool

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

Jon Drukman writes:
>Trivial, but cool
>
>vickie has just discovered the magic of phase cancellation, a technique
>suggested on the back of brian eno's landmark "ambient 4: on land" album as
>a way of increasing the "spaciousness" of a recording without any magic
>encoding processes.

    Thanks to Richard and Jon for the explainations. We have a main
system amp with a simple Dolby surround decoder, and have ocasionally
listened to music through it with the front amp off. But the
serendiptious experience of her broken headphones had much more impact. 

>basically, you take the common information from a stereo recording and throw
>it away, leaving the stuff "on the edges".  usually in pop music the stuff
>in the center is the lead vocals and bass content.  so, bingo, instant kate
>instrumentals.

    We have a rear amp output, and I could make a sound sample if anyone
is interested. (Apologies to those who downloaded the broken MPEG audio
file. I'm currently looking for a better WAV to MPEG encoder.)

>that's also how those "vocal remover" boxes work.  i bet if vickie got one
>of those and listened to kate through it, it would sound the same as her
>"broken headphones".

   Oddly enough, the main brand of vocal remover boxes is known as the
"Thompson Vocal Eliminator." It's odd, because Thompson was Vickie's
maiden name (she was married to a man named Mapes and never bothered
to change it back.)


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)