Looking for Skeptics

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People on JREF who cannot hear voices in flaccon's recordings:

1 Alderbank
2 Donn
3 Biscuit
4 Orphia Nay
5 Slowvehicle
6 IXP
7 AdMan
8 Drs_Res
9 jsfisher
10 blue sock monkey
11 trustbutverify
12 John Jones
13 Blue Bubble
14 Maurice Ledifficile
15 Abaddon
16 Jack by the Hedge
17 pakeha
18 xterra
19 Quinn
20 Empress
21 tsig
22 Daylightstar
23 Agatha
24 asydhouse
25 Old man
26 Squeegee Beckenheim
27 dlorde
28 Lucian
 
scrappy said:
It is preferred that a silent recording from a computer rather than a website.
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Two possibilities spring to mind here. One is that you don't realise that the internet is nothing but a bunch of computers.

The other is that what "is preferred" is not a file of silence, but a recording of ambient sounds.
 
Perhaps we could test the claim that a recording changes from one playback to the next.

If we could capture the Analog Wave of the recording at each time, the playbacks could be compared.

In the age of digital sound processing, it is possible to see a graphical representation of an analog sound. Many would be familiar with the sight of this wave shaped pattern, as it has become widely recognized as a visual manifestation of sound over the years. What many do not realize though, is exactly what this wave represents.[6] The analog wave is actually a graph, where the X axis represents one thing, and the Y axis another. In this case, the Y axis represents the position of the microphone’s diaphragm, and the X axis represents time. Essentially, the analog wave is a way to visually track a microphone diaphragm’s movement over a specific period of time
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(Apologies if I don't understand digital sound recording technology.)
 
My Abaddonettes unleashed minecraft upon my computers, and thanks to leaky Java, a crash occurred.

Lo and behold, audio reproduced exactly what Flaccon presented. It was astonishing.

Kill the leaky process, and the odd sounds go away.

It would seem the spirits cannot cope with Task Manager.

Or maybe computers whack out once in a while.
 
Lucian said:
People on JREF who cannot hear voices in flaccon's recordings:

1 Alderbank
2 Donn
3 Biscuit
4 Orphia Nay
5 Slowvehicle
6 IXP
7 AdMan
8 Drs_Res
9 jsfisher
10 blue sock monkey
11 trustbutverify
12 John Jones
13 Blue Bubble
14 Maurice Ledifficile
15 Abaddon
16 Jack by the Hedge
17 pakeha
18 xterra
19 Quinn
20 Empress
21 tsig
22 Daylightstar
23 Agatha
24 asydhouse
25 Old man
26 Squeegee Beckenheim
27 dlorde
28 Lucian
Click to expand...

29 Tuxcat.
 
People on JREF who cannot hear voices in flaccon's recordings:

1 Alderbank
2 Donn
3 Biscuit
4 Orphia Nay
5 Slowvehicle
6 IXP
7 AdMan
8 Drs_Res
9 jsfisher
10 blue sock monkey
11 trustbutverify
12 John Jones
13 Blue Bubble
14 Maurice Ledifficile
15 Abaddon
16 Jack by the Hedge
17 pakeha
18 xterra
19 Quinn
20 Empress
21 tsig
22 Daylightstar
23 Agatha
24 asydhouse
25 Old man
26 Squeegee Beckenheim
27 dlorde
28 Lucian
29 Tuxcat.
Click to expand...
There ya go.
 
jsfisher said:
I have emailed flaccon three audio files.

Tracey,

I am known as "jsfisher" on the JREF forums. The .ZIP file attached to this email contains three audio files of "silence" I recorded on my PC. The PC is a Lenovo Thinkpad T420. The recordings were made with the volume on the internal speaker full off, full on, and normal. It was all done in a room with a ceiling fan whirring away and it was raining heavily outside. It should be obvious from the file names which file is which.

/jsfisher
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For now, I have the only other copy of the files. After flaccon opens them on her computer and the spirits have an opportunity to do whatever it is they do, I'll share my copies with everyone.


3b1071dc64cb32957d892675a34b58f4 VolumeNormInt.wav
a6cf73c079218014b398a29eec454479 VolumeOff.wav
1addae41c6e1baa76033d15ef476add4 VolumeUpInt.wav
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I thought she wanted an absolutely silent recording, not ones of ambient noise. :confused:

You know what she's going to start hearing in those...
 
AdMan said:
I thought she wanted an absolutely silent recording, not ones of ambient noise. :confused:

You know what she's going to start hearing in those...
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One of the three is absolute silence.

ETA: Besides, the claim is that after playing them on her computer, my copy will change to match. I've listened to all three files I sent flaccon at full volume and also at full volume with a amplify boost from Audicity. No voices; nothing close to voices, but according to the claim, the voices will be just as clear in my files as hers after the spirits intervene.
 
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Any complaints that files change during transfer can be proven to happen or not happen by generating an MD5 hash checksum. Any changes to the file at all will generate in the hash being radically different between the two computers.

For Windows there is Checksum Control Portable from portableapps com. This will lay any problems like that to rest as it will be shown on the checksum.
 
jsfisher said:
One of the three is absolute silence.

ETA: Besides, the claim is that after playing them on her computer, my copy will change to match. I've listened to all three files I sent flaccon at full volume and also at full volume with a amplify boost from Audicity. No voices; nothing close to voices, but according to the claim, the voices will be just as clear in my files as hers after the spirits intervene.
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You could MD5 checksum this - any changes at all will result in the hash string being different.
 
Ambient sounds should be fine. This is what I understand Flaccon does. She basically makes a webcam video with the camera covered. Her mic must be on, since she had to wait for the birds outside to be vewwy quiet.
 
Maurice Ledifficile said:
Ambient sounds should be fine. This is what I understand Flaccon does. She basically makes a webcam video with the camera covered. Her mic must be on, since she had to wait for the birds outside to be vewwy quiet.
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I have a couple of questions:

Why not use a proper microphone? Webcam mics are utter rubbish. As are internal mics - my Lenovo G580 is great at transmitting fan, HDD and keyboard noises across Google Talk or Skype but not my voice. Same with webcams.

Why not record the files in Audacity using a proper mic and store them as losslessly compressed FLAC files; high quality with no data loss?
 
tuxcat said:
I have a couple of questions:

Why not use a proper microphone? Webcam mics are utter rubbish. As are internal mics - my Lenovo G580 is great at transmitting fan, HDD and keyboard noises across Google Talk or Skype but not my voice. Same with webcams.

Why not record the files in Audacity using a proper mic and store them as losslessly compressed FLAC files; high quality with no data loss?
Click to expand...

The recordings are not where the spirits lie. They are in the playback. They're also on the recording. But they're also not on the recording. I forget...

If you use a better mic, and better software, and you make sure there's nothing wrong with the cpu, and use good speakers, and you don't listen to the speaker as though it were a conch shell, and guard against pareidolia by having all witnesses state what they hear, independently, without communication between witnesses, then perhaps we'll find for sure that the spirits are not really there.

And that seems to be very hard to take...
 
Orphia Nay said:
Perhaps we could test the claim that a recording changes from one playback to the next.

If we could capture the Analog Wave of the recording at each time, the playbacks could be compared.

(Apologies if I don't understand digital sound recording technology.)
Click to expand...

tuxcat said:
Any complaints that files change during transfer can be proven to happen or not happen by generating an MD5 hash checksum. Any changes to the file at all will generate in the hash being radically different between the two computers.

For Windows there is Checksum Control Portable from portableapps com. This will lay any problems like that to rest as it will be shown on the checksum.
Click to expand...

I haven't heard of an MD5 hash checksum, but a quick look at Wikipedia makes me think this is a good idea too.

What would be the advantages of MD5 hash checksum over an Analog Wave graph?

What program would you use to make an MD5 hash checksum out of flaccon's recordings? Audacity doesn't have the function.
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=70902

Audacity does, however have waveforms:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Waveform

Note, flaccon has Audacity.
 
Itchy fingers, must type...

To anyone who likes their posts too long, and to all who need a barely biased refresher:


Edison made the suggestion of the possibility of investigating the idea of perhaps making a machine to converse with the departed.

Flaccon heard spooky voices in the garbled sounds of her silent webcam recordings.

She put the two together and thought she might have (or be) the key.

She then started to look for better ways. She tried different software, speakers and ear positions.

She learned to calibrate hands-on for success.

At first this meant to record silence for 10 or 15 seconds then listen for the answer to a question which was asked after the recording was already made.

She then got the idea of challenging skeptics, with no clear, consistent claim, suggesting she might have a shot at a skeptic prize.

Enter “Looking for skeptics”.

Here we were told that specific responses to those questions were on specific recordings.

We were then told the spirits could see, that they could clearly say the name of cards, but that they were too snooty to try a test involving this ability to see and name cards.

Alderbank provided live assistance, with no hope of progress despite valiant efforts.

Then we were encouraged to listen to all sorts of recordings, none of which came close to demonstrate anything near what could be a paranormal event.

Something has to give.

In fresher developments, we learned that when a file is recorded, and then played on flaccon’s rig, it is thereafter transformed, by the spirits, into a recording of them trying their darnedest to communicate.

I love the idea of the checksum as a test method for alterations, but I hope someone will be able to vulgarize the results. The proof must not be perceived as a matter of faith.


[If you’re still with me, thanks and apologies.]
 
Maurice Ledifficile said:
To anyone who likes their posts too long, and to all who need a barely biased refresher:

<summary snipped>

[If you’re still with me, thanks and apologies.]
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, Maurice--I'm sure it'll be appreciated by newcomers and those who haven't been following along too closely. :)

Heaven knows some of the posts from flaccon and others have been rather vexing.
 
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