Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[Checkmite]

Sherkeu's two links, the one to actual crickets, and the AP recording, sound equally steady to me. But then again: that might be to me only! Are you saying that they aren't?!

Yes; proving that is the entire point of the experiment I outlined. A cricket's chirp is not a steady tone; it can't be. Crickets don't stridulate fast enough to produce a steady tone.

 

[dann]

No, the sound of one cricket is not a steady tone, and apparently the recordings of several crickets aren't surroundy enough for you.

The thing about a mass of crickets though is that it sounds like a mass of crickets; that is, the sound is omnidirectional and there is a certain quality of vastness, almost like an echo, that lends the impression of a multitude of sources.

I give up!

 

[Checkmite]

I take it you're not even going to try the simple experiment, then? Disappointing, if not surprising.

 

[dann]

I take it that you'll continue to insist that one cricket should sound like a lot of crickets, which is the only reason why your "simple experiment" might work on the recording of one cricket.
And, no, I'm not going to try it - for that reason as well as for the reason that I wouldn't know how to. Somebody with more technical skills might be able to do it.

You, on the other hand, have now been presented with recordings of crickets chirping that sound just like the released AP recording, and yet you remain adamant that actual recordings of crickets don't sound exactly like being omni-directionally surrounded by crickets (no wonder!), so I suggest that you do the simple experiment of surrounding yourself with devices playing the recordings to find out if it improves the experience for you.

No, wait, that won't do any good anyway because you'll probably insist that it still sounds very different from the "de-noised and filtered" AP version, thus proving to you that this version must have originated from a super commie harassment (if I understand your latest version correctly?) device targeted on US American diplomats - approximately the same way that US American military personnel targeted prisoners at the other end of the island: Welcome to 'the disco'. Except, of course, for the fact that at Gitmo you wouldn't have the problem of having to conceal anything from the detainees.

Wonderful place, by the way, on the Cuban side of the fence. I've been there. In particular, I can recommend the Casa de la Trove to anyone who loves son cubano or changüi: Heard a lot of crickets, too!

 

[Checkmite]

I take it that you'll continue to insist that one cricket should sound like a lot of crickets, which is the only reason why your "simple experiment" might work on the recording of one cricket.

As a matter of fact, I've so far only tried it on videos where the sound is of a natural chorus of crickets, because when I did a search for "cricket sounds" those are the first several videos I found and besides, the objection you pose here was sort of foreseeable.

Even on a recording of presumably thousands of crickets, slowing the playback speed conspicuously slows the rate of the trilling the crickets make.

And, no, I'm not going to try it - for that reason as well as for the reason that I wouldn't know how to. Somebody with more technical skills might be able to do it.

I provided instructions in the post. If you can change the volume of a YouTube video using the video's own controls, you can also change the speed of playback using the steps I described. It requires no special tools or technical capabilities.

 

[calebprime]

Checkmite, I might listen to the sounds and manipulate them in my studio. If I do, I'll post the results.

Suggestions for exactly what to do -- slow down, speed up, layer, filter, etc. -- would be welcome.

I just want to make sure that I'm using the right sounds. Can you provide the links to the two sounds again?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Tell you what, let's try a fun little experiment. Think you guys are gonna love it! All you need to do is go to the AP sound video, a link to which dann thoughtfully provided above.

Listen to the clip at full speed. You'll probably say you can hear a "trilling", although very fast, in it. You might say it sounds like the cricket recording has just been sped up, since the "trilling" in the AP video is quite noticeably "faster" than the trilling you hear in the cricket clip.

So, here's the experiment. At the bottom of the YouTube video, you'll see a little gear icon - the settings button. Click it, and you'll be able to choose the speed of the video's playback (and thus its audio). Go ahead and play the AP video at 0.5 speed, and take note of what you hear. OMG...that's weird!

And then do the opposite - play the clip at X2 speed, and take note of what you hear. Wait, what???

For those too lazy to play along (or who simply won't because they've already decided it's crickets), you may notice that if you play the AP video at half speed or double speed, the sound doesn't actually change, compared to the normal speed. At all. The sound is absolutely identical - up to and including the speed of the "trilling" you hear in it.

But how is that possible? It's possible because what you interpret as a "trilling", isn't. It's a harmonic. Now I could go into a big long description of what a harmonic is, but I'm sure you can handle looking all that up yourself if you're interested. The important thing is, this effect can't be reproduced in an audio clip of crickets (I'll let you try that part out for yourself, too). That's because cricket sound is a literal trilling; it's mechanically produced, by the cricket vibrating a dedicated body part. When you play a recording of cricket sound at half speed, the vibration happens half as fast, and there's no way to avoid hearing that. Opposite effect can be heard by playing the recording twice as fast...

I take it you're not even going to try the simple experiment, then? Disappointing, if not surprising.

I almost gave up searching. Do you know how many links Dann has provided in this thread? It's a lot. Eventually I found the link, a few pages back, in one of Alphaba's posts. http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12032861&postcount=137

There is a problem with your experiment and I'm afraid your proposed explanation makes no sense.

YouTube's speed control does not work like old analog technology. Most of us are still familiar with what a speeded up or slowed down audio recording sounds like: the pitch rises or falls accordingly. YouTube does not work like that. If you speed up the video it doesn't play the sound faster. It chops out lots of fragments and plays the remainder at normal speed. So the result is granular but not pitch-shifted. If you slow it down, it copies and repeats lots of fragments to fill the gaps that would otherwise appear. Try it with a YouTube video of speech or music. It's deliberately done that way so that users can change the speed without losing intelligibility.

Your proposed explanation makes no sense because it doesn't matter how an audio waveform was produced. Whether it was recorded from real vibrations in the air or something synthesised in a computer, if you change that waveform's playback speed, it's pitch will change. YouTube doesn't do that because it changes the waveform, not the speed.

(Might be worth saying I'm an audio engineer working in broadcasting who's spent a lot of his working life listening to audio equipment to identify flaws and trying to track down their cause.)

 

[dann]

No, no, no, Jack by the hedge! I know that you mean well, but we don't need disenchantment just yet.

If you, calebprime and Alphaba stick your heads together, I think that what Checkmite is looking for is something like what Alphaba did (twice!), and then, if you can enhance the segment at the bottom to the right, ”around the 7000 Hz peak”, and go:

"There is a maker's serial number 9906947- XB71. Not cricket. Harassment. Cubans made the sound!”

and if you could also deliver it in a Cambodian accent, that would be absolutely fantastic and might convince even me!!!

 

[Jack by the hedge]

It doesn't sound just like it, though. The pitch is similar, but the cricket is trilling, while the AP's sound is not.

The quality of the AP recording isn't great, but you're right that the trilling is pretty well imperceptible in that recording. The basic 7kHz-ish component is compellingly similar though. My opinion right now is that it's probably a poor quality recording of several crickets.

 

[calebprime]

My mad skilz are at your disposal. J-hedge is right, though.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

No, no, no, Jack by the hedge! I know that you mean well, but we don't need disenchantment just yet.

If you, calebprime and Alphaba stick your heads together, I think that what Checkmite is looking for is something like what Alphaba did (twice!), and then, if you can enhance the segment at the bottom to the right, ”around the 7000 Hz peak”, and go:

and if you could also deliver it in a Cambodian accent, that would be absolutely fantastic and might convince even me!!!

So you're proposing genetically engineered synthetic crickets, developed by the Cubans to drive people crazy? Interesting. <strokes chin> Seems to be working.

 

[calebprime]

I took the linked sound of the Cuban cricket and slowed it down a couple of ways.

Mainly, in SoundHack, I changed the sample header, so that it simply plays back very slow. Then I recorded that Systems audio.

https://app.box.com/s/2oeu3ym5q97hcz2brlmv6d675oezaynw

I imported the sound into the sampler instrument that goes with my sequencer, and played back the sound progressively lower, to give a feel for how it changes.

https://app.box.com/s/2v83j89mva6pkhnsilosw1twsvld3lvy

comments: Different chirps have different shapes overall. This one has a sort of 3-part structure.

0-40 sec quietest (2-part structure sometimes, longer-short, warble) Part 1
40-1:20 tiny bit louder (less warble, more even, moving to upward rise2) Part 2
1:30-2:25 louder (warble up by minor third max occasionally) (-2cnd down) Part 3
2:25-4:00 loudest plateau (also pitch up overall by maj 2cnd max)

eta: The "warble" is a little minor-3rd trill, mostly.


A slowed-down clean recording would show that a sound is made by an animal so it's more likely to have these kinds of small variations in structure than a machine (old-school machine, that is) would.


Attempts to get the cricket to perform the I Love Lucy theme were unpropitious.

 

[dann]

Easy now! Remember they're Cuban crickets!
You should probably go for something with Desi Arnaz:

 

[calebprime]

He has a kind of rippling grace there in the lower legs.

Anyway, now that I've studied the Cuban cricket I could recognize the difference between it and something generated electronically.

Whether I could tell the difference with a very distorted source is another question.

 

[William Parcher]

A good biological sonic weapon would be the Coqui frog, rather than a cricket. These frogs will cause suicides.

 

[calebprime]

Here it's some cicadas in the summer. I think they're tolerable for two or three reasons:

1) my most far-fetched reason: Sounds produced by insects rubbing some membrane have some natural variation, as opposed to primitive electronic sounds like sine waves. variation of some kinds makes some things more bearable. (not always.)

2) they're up in trees, so not in people's faces

3) they do it mostly in the summer when people are indoors.

4) the sound stops.

5) it's all high frequencies, so it has no penetrating power through walls.


Otherwise, what a racket!

 

[dann]

A good biological sonic weapon would be the Coqui frog, rather than a cricket. These frogs will cause suicides.

I never heard of those! They seem to be called Coqui for obvious reasons!

 

[Checkmite]

Your proposed explanation makes no sense because it doesn't matter how an audio waveform was produced. Whether it was recorded from real vibrations in the air or something synthesised in a computer, if you change that waveform's playback speed, it's pitch will change. YouTube doesn't do that because it changes the waveform, not the speed.

I wasn't talking about the pitch; in fact I didn't even mention it in my post. But, you bring up a good point about the YouTube video's speed control. Calebprime seems to have a solution along the same lines though.

 

[Checkmite]

I took the linked sound of the Cuban cricket and slowed it down a couple of ways.

Mainly, in SoundHack, I changed the sample header, so that it simply plays back very slow. Then I recorded that Systems audio.

https://app.box.com/s/2oeu3ym5q97hcz2brlmv6d675oezaynw

I imported the sound into the sampler instrument that goes with my sequencer, and played back the sound progressively lower, to give a feel for how it changes.

https://app.box.com/s/2v83j89mva6pkhnsilosw1twsvld3lvy

comments: Different chirps have different shapes overall. This one has a sort of 3-part structure.

0-40 sec quietest (2-part structure sometimes, longer-short, warble) Part 1
40-1:20 tiny bit louder (less warble, more even, moving to upward rise2) Part 2
1:30-2:25 louder (warble up by minor third max occasionally) (-2cnd down) Part 3
2:25-4:00 loudest plateau (also pitch up overall by maj 2cnd max)

eta: The "warble" is a little minor-3rd trill, mostly.


A slowed-down clean recording would show that a sound is made by an animal so it's more likely to have these kinds of small variations in structure than a machine (old-school machine, that is) would.

Okay - that's great! Now can you do the same thing with the audio in the AP's clip, and see if doing the same things to it produces identical results.

 

[calebprime]

Yeah, I have a history of careless mistakes, so I want to make sure I have the right clip for you.

Can you link me to the clip?

I'll do it tomorrow am.

-c