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Music Meets Steganography

Posted by Hemos on from the meeting-of-the-minds dept.

austad writes "Wired is running a story about how Aphex Twin has encoded a face into one of his songs. The face is visible when viewing the sound through a spectrograph. This is probably something I wouldn't want to see when coding in a dark room at 3AM. Sorry boys and girls, you have to buy the CD if you want to see it, encoding of the song into a lossy format destroys the image."

6 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. A way to boost sales... by 11thangel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is one of the ways musicians can boost sales and get more CD's out: include special features in the encoding. This a) doesnt hurt people who just want the music and/or get screwed over by copy protection, b) doesn't force the consumer to buy anything specific (i.e. hardware, or even the CD in the not-as-legal sense of it) and c) adds something cosmetic, pointless, but nonetheless cool.

    --

    I am !amused.
    1. Re:A way to boost sales... by Gibbys+Box+of+Trix · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The article states that the EP was released in 1999, and the face hasn't been announced by James or his record company. That hardly sounds like a publicity stunt to me.

      Aphex Twin isn't exactly everyone's cup of tea, I think you either buy this stuff or not, you're not going to be swayed to buy it because you can see a freaky face when you run it through certain software.

      I would, however, recommend Selected Ambient Works 85-92 as a gentler introduction to the man's work.

  2. Led Zep bootleg + Apple III monitor = by John+Harrison · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A vector drawn image of a guitar!

    While in college I rewired my old monitor from an Apple II. I think it was called an Apple III Monitor for some reason. Anyhow, I ran hooked my speaker wires up to the coils that controled the beam in the CRT. This caused it to draw funky patterns. One particular Led Zeppelin track would draw a guitar on the screen.

    Unfortunately the instrument being played was a harmonica. Strange that a harmonica would draw a guitar.

    Nobody would believe me when I told them this, but everyone willing to make a trip up to my room left as a believer.

    I have since written a simple WinAmp plug-in that emulates this effect. The analog way is much more neato though.

    --
    Lasers Controlled Games!
  3. Old News by BlaKmaJiK_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I found this about a year and a half ago, oddly enough at about 3 im the morning... scared the hell out of me but was the neatest find. I was watching songs in winamp with the voiceprint plugin that comes with it. Think it would make neat wallpaper.
    I took a screenshot and sent it to my friends and we looked around the web but couldnt find anyone else who had come across this. I think the song was "Complex Mathematical Equation" but i cant remember...

  4. AFX is a fine example.. by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The sad part is that true artists like AFX are pretty much ignored and panned by the lables and the radio stations while crap get's all the airplay.

    Sorry, but AFX has always been much more a musician than the rest of the mot there on pop-radio. Just like Moby,NutralMilk hotel, and the rest of the "underground" they all have more talent in their toenails than every artist that get's big-station radio play.

    And that my friends is exactly why I am proud of my wierd music collection. (I admit..it's wierd... AFX is wierd.. by popular standards...)

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  5. wow. by jon_c · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That is very cool, i'm impressed. The output looks like something an old dot matrix would have made. Am i right in looking at it that the text is made up like that, where each 'row' is a sin wave at some frequency?

    -Jon

    --
    this is my sig.