Subaudible Track from the movie Irreversible @DomoKunFPGA

Dacia Owens My curiousity about this movie came from it's audio track (I have disdain for the movie's actual content). Subaudible signals were used in the 1970's to heighten the experience of such movies as "Earthquake" and "Rollercoaster" which featured something called "Sensurround", a very interesting thing since low frequency rumble could not be included on the film's magnetic track or optical track at the time; Instead, they sent control tones to rumble-generating circuits in the theaters that were equipped for Sensurround.

Fast forward to today: I have filtered part of the track from the Irreversible OST titled "Rectum" named for the filming location bar. Thanks to tight FFT filtering, only elements below 70Hz remain, so you can get an idea of subaudible effect on your central nervous system.

Although most sites discussing this movie say there is a "28 Hz subaudible sound" used, I'd like to elaborate on this by saying there are two key low bass sounds used to augment the logarithmic "revving" sound in the mid-band. [It is not a steady 28Hz sound.] These two are also following the frequency shift of the mid-band, but are in the 22 to 36Hz range, followed by a 1st harmonic in the 45 to 75Hz range approximately. You can see this sweeping movement quite clearly using a FFT spectrum analyzer program. It sounds like a random rumbling, but it is far from it.

Medically, I would suppose this low-to-high sweep in the sub-A band has the effect on your large intestine similar to squeezing a tube of toothpaste over and over to push out the contents. This same pushing-pulling on your ears' semicircular canals driven by your eardrums would have the effect of making someone dizzy or nauseous ("car-sick") without alerting your primary hearing senses to the fact that your eardrum capacity is being heavily loaded.

You will need to have some decent audio equipment to hear this. It can not be played on cheap computer sound junk. If you own such equipment, please turn it in to your local police station.

updated 9 years ago

Subaudible Track from the movie Irreversible

Dacia Owens 2016-12-02 | My curiousity about this movie came from it's audio track (I have disdain for the movie's actual content). Subaudible signals were used in the 1970's to heighten the experience of such movies as "Earthquake" and "Rollercoaster" which featured something called "Sensurround", a very interesting thing since low frequency rumble could not be included on the film's magnetic track or optical track at the time; Instead, they sent control tones to rumble-generating circuits in the theaters that were equipped for Sensurround.

Fast forward to today: I have filtered part of the track from the Irreversible OST titled "Rectum" named for the filming location bar. Thanks to tight FFT filtering, only elements below 70Hz remain, so you can get an idea of subaudible effect on your central nervous system.

Although most sites discussing this movie say there is a "28 Hz subaudible sound" used, I'd like to elaborate on this by saying there are two key low bass sounds used to augment the logarithmic "revving" sound in the mid-band. [It is not a steady 28Hz sound.] These two are also following the frequency shift of the mid-band, but are in the 22 to 36Hz range, followed by a 1st harmonic in the 45 to 75Hz range approximately. You can see this sweeping movement quite clearly using a FFT spectrum analyzer program. It sounds like a random rumbling, but it is far from it.

Medically, I would suppose this low-to-high sweep in the sub-A band has the effect on your large intestine similar to squeezing a tube of toothpaste over and over to push out the contents. This same pushing-pulling on your ears' semicircular canals driven by your eardrums would have the effect of making someone dizzy or nauseous ("car-sick") without alerting your primary hearing senses to the fact that your eardrum capacity is being heavily loaded.

You will need to have some decent audio equipment to hear this. It can not be played on cheap computer sound junk. If you own such equipment, please turn it in to your local police station.

Incandescent segment display

Dacia Owens 2019-06-11 | Microchip PIC16F628 driving an ASCII input set of 3 boards with individual incandescent 16-segment displays (vintage).

Missile Guy

Dacia Owens 2018-11-28 | When I die, I want a public cremation. It should come off exactly like this.

Room For One Less

Dacia Owens 2017-04-12 | A quick skit from Rod Serling's Night Gallery that sees a crowded elevator from the standpoint of one humorous yet logical alien.

My Facebook Lookback

Dacia Owens 2014-02-05 | To celebrate it's 10 Year Anniversary, Facebook created videos for each of its users by sampling highlights from the last year of activity. It has great music and is pretty heart-warming for the most part. Good job, Facebook!

Ladies and Gentlemen, our Corporate Anthem

Dacia Owens 2012-11-15 | Simon Preston masterfully creates and performs the corporation's anthem for Houston, Energy City in the future. From Rollerball, 1975.

Big LED Matrix Display Sign

Dacia Owens 2011-12-16 | This is my 3 feet high by 6 feet wide scrolling LED matrix sign that I built.
It uses 3 color LED modules from highway traffic signage, purchased from BGMicro Electronics. The controller is a Papilio development board using Xilinx Spartan 3E - http://papilio.cc and software core is AVR8 using Arduino C environment to program. Lambda power supplies and miles of wire.

Twitter Mentions and alerts LED Scrolling Display

Dacia Owens 2011-11-04 | 19" Rack mount panel that houses my LED scrolling sign, driver board and Papilio FPGA. More information on this at http://www.joelowens.org/papilio

Paw Paw races his Camero

Dacia Owens 2011-10-01 | Oct 1, 2011 Abilene Dragstrip

74HC595 Serial Load Digital Discrete Output Board

Dacia Owens 2011-08-24 | Papilio & Arduino folks,
This design uses 74HC595 serial shift register with data latch driving:
1) ULN2803 for current sink
2) UDN2981 for current source
3) Resistor DIP pack for driving LED arrays
4) Direct Digital for driving, well you know - whatever you want.

http://www.joelowens.org/papilio for more information.

LED sign code finally fixed!

Dacia Owens 2011-08-01 | Some things have to be declared INT instead of byte to work right!

B-1B coming in for a landing.

Dacia Owens 2011-07-14 | Watch in horror as this B-1B lands behind a really large bush. Amazing.

Pong on a scrolling LED sign? Yes! With a Papilio FPGA!

Dacia Owens 2011-06-23 | Good grief, PONG has been everywhere. From early analog on oscilloscopes to some of the first game consoles ever. But was it intended to run on a 7x50 LED scrolling sign? Probably not. But with the Papilio board with its Spartan-3E FPGA by Xilinx, a 4-Button/4-LED Wing, a 16-bit I/O Wing and a few wires (well, plus a salvaged busted LED scrolling sign minus its processor) and away we go!

While the code for this video isn't complete (no scoring and game overhead), the basic game concepts are in place. Written in C++ under the Arduino environment, it was a flight of fancy to draw on some of my first ages-ago VIC-20 programming to create this bit of mischief. Code available on my site: http://papilio.joelowens.org

LED scrolling sign using Papilio FPGA dev board

Dacia Owens 2011-05-24 | LED scrolling sign driven by Papilio FPGA board using Arduino development environment. File and LED/LCD bitmap file available at http://papilio.joelowens.org