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[Naturegirl1999]

Why is cake called cake?

[Maximum Spin]

Why is cake called cake?

Unclear. At one point, it was widely believed that the answer was "because it is cooked", which is true of eg. "biscuit", lit. "twice-cooked", but this explanation has lost favour. Which doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true either.

[dragdeler]

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[methylatedspirit]

I want to corrupt some images by playing its raw data from the headphone out jack on my PC, and recording it back into the microphone in jack on the same PC, then iterating this process until something interesting happens. It's basically a version of I Am Sitting In a Room, but using the raw data of images. I might post something on the "Random things you drew" thread if I find the results interesting.

Any suggestions for images to use that wouldn't be "sacrilegious" (like using the default Windows XP wallpaper, Bliss)? It does not need to be in .raw format, but it does need to be at least 1080p (n×1080 resolution), and in a reasonable aspect ratio (4:3, 16:9, or somewhere in that region). I'll downscale anything larger down to 1080p, because anything larger than that has a very long play time (even a typical 13 MP image is 13 minutes long when read as 44.1 kHz, 8-bit unsigned integer mono raw audio). Of course, no NSFW or anything that might break this forum's rules.

Other than that, I'm basically open to anything, though given how broad this question is, I'm probably going to choose a few images that I like, and go with those.

[dragdeler]

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[methylatedspirit]

How do you do that you can't just rename an image into .mp3 ?!

Well, of course not. The next best thing is to take an image in, say, .jpeg format, and use Irfanview to open that image, then telling it to save that image as raw image data. Select Planar. Then, I can abuse Audacity's ability to import raw data as audio (File > Import > Raw Data...). Pick that image that is now in .raw format. I personally select "Unsigned 8-bit PCM" as the encoding, and "1 Channel (Mono)" as the number of channels. You can pretty much leave everything else alone. Import. You are now working with raw image data as audio. Do whatever effects you want to do to it. In my case, record and play it (or similar, I've ordered the Y-splitter cable necessary for this to work but I don't have it, so I haven't really solidified my process.)

Once that's done, go to File > Export > Export Audio... to save your masterpiece. Under "Save as type", select "Other uncompressed files". Under Format Options, select "RAW (Header-less)" as the Header, and "Unsigned 8-bit PCM" as the encoding. Give it a name, then save.

To open your masterpiece, open Irfanview again. Open that image (either through File > Open... or by dragging and dropping). You should be seeing a dialogue box like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Type in the resolution of the original image. Set the bit depth to 24 BPP, and select Planar. Press "OK".

A distorted version of the image you started with should appear. You can go to File > Save as... to save this in a different format, such as .jpeg or .png.

Or I guess, for shits and giggles, go back to when you imported the raw data, and save it as .mp3. You have now converted an image into mp3 format. It's probably not best to listen to it, though. It's loud.

(This describes what I do. I got the main concept from this article. That deals with .bmp files, so their method is somewhat different.)

It's hard because we don't know the effect it applies, im guessing singular pixels change color so probably something with few different colors to start?

That's the point. I want to know how my hardware messes with things as I do this process of playing and recording over and over. Plus, I run some custom audio drivers that add Dolby Atmos and some other stuff to my system, so I'm also seeing how the software messes with things.

[wierd]

Consider getting a shoebox cassette recorder.  They are pretty cheap these days. Walmart.com carries several varieties.

Run the audio out of your computer to the mic jack of the cassette recorder, and the headphone jack of the cassette player to the mic jack of the PC.


Play your "masterpiece" to the cassette recorder, and imbue it with all that bias hiss and warm analog noise-- then play it back, and see what happened.

[scriver]

Cake comes from kaka, which comes from koka, which means to boil. See it's because originally all cake was boiled in water. Dry cake wasn't invented until 1743.

[Reelya]

Consider getting a shoebox cassette recorder.  They are pretty cheap these days. Walmart.com carries several varieties.

I saw a thing about clear plastic version of those.

Basically you get stuff like this:



And this was being sold as a trendy and retro device. Except there's one issue. It looks like that because it's made for prisons, and prisons have strict rules about electronics being transparent so you can't hide contraband. Also, prisons are slow to approve new gear, for example for many years they didn't allow CDs because CDs could be snapped and make a sharp weapon, so you could only get tapes. So the reason it's so cool and "retro" is that they hadn't approved anything newer for prisoners to use.

So you had all this old gear still made by a couple of companies due to being the only thing you could send into prison, and Urban Outfitters and others also used them as supplier for the smaller non-prison demand, trying to pass this stuff off as hip retro gear.

I'm guessing some prisons have eased up on the no-cds rule, because now the tape players can no longer be bought from Urban Outfitters but they have Clear Tech personal CD players. I guess prisons have entered the 1990s now.
https://au.urbanoutfitters.com/en-au/product/clear-tech-personal-cd-player/UO-43307891-000?color=clear&size=one-size

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[wierd]

In this case, I was meaning the walmart "store brand", Onn.

They are NOT clear.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-Cassette-Recorder/620895284?&adid=22222222254370450722&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=b&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=439466338768&wl4=dsa-911786236547&wl5=9024345&wl6=123324478565&wl7=&wl8=&veh=sem

Or, perhaps a Coby CVR22
https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CVR-22-Portable-Cassette-Recorder/dp/B0108A6000?ref_=Oct_s9_apbd_obs_hd_bw_biuK&pf_rd_r=2E8RB9859BTD3TYJ08XV&pf_rd_p=9b8b0a0d-1002-53f5-94ee-07458fda46c2&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-10&pf_rd_t=BROWSE&pf_rd_i=172628

or a Jensen MRC100
https://www.target.com/p/jensen-cassette-player-recorder-mcr-100/-/A-54212745?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=google_pla_df&fndsrc=tgtao&CPNG=PLA_Electronics%2BShopping_Brand_Competitor&adgroup=SC_Electronics&LID=700000001170770pgs&network=g&device=c&location=9024345&ds_rl=1246978&gclid=CjwKCAjw1ej5BRBhEiwAfHyh1Am7yRjJmHmDQy-Dfw_pdsXbu5j3X0K2Q7hPF79bdaKJWk-tKXYLDxoCs3UQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

you get the idea.  Shoebox recorders, NOT clear plastic-- Inexpensive.

[Reelya]

I know, I'm just talking that for a while, those clear ones were apparently the main ones you could get, even being sold outside prison.

Cassettes made a comeback, but it's fairly recently. In 2019 for example, apparently cassette sales more than doubled from the year before in the UK. They're making players again because there's a boom on. In fact I think on the video that was mentioned, they say many artists available on cassette were in fact only available on cassette because of the prison sales thing. That's probably what allowed cassettes to struggle on despite being so obsolete, so that a comeback was possible.

If you want one you probably should get one now before they just stop making them again, it's a distinct possibility.

[wierd]

I just know I picked up one of the Onn recorders before the pandemic, for my TI99/4A.  Aside from the lack of a program counter (which can be dealt with imperfectly but acceptably using a cassette indexing program to park the tape at fixed time intervals) it works just fine as a retrocomputer datasette recorder. (apparently outputting actual speaker level audio instead of line-level audio is rare these days.)

I was just suggesting it, as the analog hissing of a type I cassette (which is all you can get these days unless you want to spend a fortune on NOS Type II, III and IV cassettes) would introduce "natural" noise to the signal that can be layered repeatedly in the fashion suggested.

[dragdeler]

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[methylatedspirit]

Just an addendum: My instructions aren't gospel or anything, so try different settings! Use interleaved images instead of planar! Try different encodings! Experiment with different effects! The best thing about working with uncompressed raw files is that you can't render a file unreadable, no matter how badly it gets corrupted. Sometimes you do get unrecognizable messes, but even that can be art in itself. I posted in the "Random Things you drew" thread about these images I applied the Paulstretch effect to, and that produced something that I can only describe as colorful noise art.

I'm encouraging you to experiment because I'm certain you know things that I don't know, and you'd be able to come up with different methods that I never would've considered based on your own knowledge and available tools. My method is adapted from this article, so it's entirely possible that you can come up with something new by experimenting.