Analog Sequencer/Sampler?

[Theo]

----- Original Message -----
From: Hallgeir Helland <hhelland at mailandnews.com>

> Hi all,
>
> Do you think it'd be possible to record sound waves on a floppy disk?

Yes you can.
Just feed the analog signal to the heads.
Someone at the radio station I worked for did this to make a jingle
machiene.
O'cause two weeks later sony came up with MD.

> That way you could have lots of sounds on one disk, with the highest
> fidelity on the outmost track.

Er..if memory serves about 30 seconds at 300rmp (the normal speed),
30sec if you lower the speed to 150rpm,
that's a lot of 1/2 second hihat sounds!!
Write side one from outside to inside and side two from inside to outside
for continues playback.
Problem here is crosstalk from one side of the disk to the other.

Think that the bandwith at 300rpm was somthing like 150Khz,
If the drive will run at 75rpm you will still have plenty of bandwith.

> Finding loop points would be easy once
> you got the RPM of the disk.

Sounds will occupy more than one track,
you need the normal disk addressing for accesing sounds and making loops.
The bad news is that floppy seek times are low
and that the intervals you can acces become more course when the speed goes
down.

>However to play at different pitches will
> require speed changes on the drive motor...

This can be done, although the range will be limmited.

> Any thoughts? Can this be an idea?

Maybe there are other ways to mistreat the drive,
e.g. slow down the drive so that a sound fits on one track.
This could be a great source for low fi sounds ;).

Writing pwm or fm modulated signals to the drive may solve some problems
(cross talk/dynamic range),
not sure about this, just a thought.

You may use a minidisk instead of a floppy.
There are some alternate remote controls for radio and theater use
that make it easy to trigger "samples" from a MD.
I have heard a track that used the MD to play loops.
Didn't sound to great, not sure the bad timing was the MD or the artist.

Cheers, Theo

>
> Hallgeir   (how'bout analog signals on a hard drive???)
> --
> HELLAND MUSIKK TEKNOLOGI
> -=  Hallgeir Helland  =-
> hhelland at mailandnews.com
>