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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."

10 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. no it doesn't by Firlefanz · · Score: 4, Informative

    encoding of the song into a lossy format destroys the image."

    I have an mp3 encoded @192kps, using the Nullsoft tiny fullscreen plugin displays the image just fine (its at the last few seconds of the 2nd track of the Windowlicker EP.

  3. Good copy protection by sean23007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interesting way to get people to buy CDs instead of downloading them... how many people would actually download a song of Britney Spears' if pictures of her came with the songs that you buy? Yeah, the RIAA should just try this...

    --

    Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
  4. aphex twin by tps12 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Man, if ever there was a musician who deserves the geek limelight (geeklight?), it is AFX. Not only does he hack his instruments and work primarily (solely?) with homebrewed samples, but he has a fucking tank.

    Also, his music is amazing.

    --

    Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
  5. inaccuracy... by Xmarksta · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.

    The image is not destroyed -- it just morphs into an image of Jack Valenti.

  6. But I always see faces... by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is news?

    I always see faces when listing to Aphex Twin if I sit there for long enough... although sometimes it helps to be in the right frame of mind.

    :)

    --
    "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  7. 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!
  8. Humorous (?) Predictions by Wise+Dragon · · Score: 4, Funny

    Christian Music will have crosses, doves, and christian fish encoded into the signal, which will probably improve the music.

    Gothic music will encode pentagrams, broken crosses, and tributes to Jack Chick, but nobody will notice because it's all screaming anyway.

    Country music will include images of pickup trucks, cowboy hats, and liquor bottles, but since country fans are all hicks, they will never be discovered.

    The RIAA will mandate that all music have encoded into it pictures that won't survive reencoding, but that, when translated to mp3, will crash your computer.

  9. It's not steganography by rhizome · · Score: 4, Informative

    Steganography is encoding something in another medium so as not to alter the carrier medium, like a watermark. What Aphex Twin did was to use a piece of software that converts graphics to sound (x, y, z = time, frequency, and intensity/volume) via an Inverse Fast-Fourier Transform. There is no encoding involved, the picture *is* the sound that you hear. Big difference.

    --
    When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.