Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

On Wednesday I took a look at an NTSB report and realised they had unintentionally released something they weren't allowed to.
The NTSB routinely uses audio analysis of cockpit voice recorders to investigate plane crashes, it has proven to be an immensely powerful technique, but I noticed one report had pubished a fairly detailed spectrogram. A visual representation of the audio showing frequencies vs time.
I wondered whether it could be converted back into the audio, or at least some approximation, and sure enough some smart people actually pulled it off. Within 24 hours the entire NTSB archive was shut down.

Follow me on Twitter for more updates:
twitter.com/DJSnM

I have a discord server where I regularly turn up:
discord.gg/zStmKbM

If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon
patreon.com/scottmanley