Wiardgroup

> 
> The Buchla "Sources of Uncertainty' is the seminal circuit that
> employs a similar use of noise (as a modulator of the sampled source,
> rather than the noise being the sampled source itself), and a
> recursive structure that can create suprisingly musical patterns in
> the name of UNCERTAINTY, which I think is a better term than RANDOMNESS.
> 

To be arcanely technical about it...

When I use the term entropy I mean Shannon's measure of information entropy, not 
thermodynamic entropy (which uses a similar equation, the reason Shannon used the term 
"entropy"). Information entropy is just a histogram of the number of levels in a matrix of 
information, expressed as the number of bits needed to store that number of levels. If 
there are only two levels, you only need 1 bit to store it. If there are 4 levels, you need 2 
bits to store the information and so on.

The original Buchla 266 presented control of the level entropy of the uncertainty source 
(from  1 to 6 bits). But there was no control over the frequency spectrum entropy (if you 
calculated the information entropy of the DFT). The Buchla 265 sample and hold presented 
control of the time spectrum entropy via the recursion control, but not the level entropy.

The Noise Ring provides both types of control, level entropy via the "Chance" control, and 
frequency spectrum entropy via the "Change" control.

I don't know if this is scientifically true, but it is believeable that the ear does both types of 
entropy measurements at a very fundimental level. The ear uses a kind of "battery" system 
to supply the ear, because blood flow would be too noisy. The ear uses "hairs" to sense 
both level and frequency information. IF an excited cell uses more "current" than a non-
excited one, then the way the ear is structured, the information entropy is proportional to 
the "current draw" for the two different "hair" structures. One for levels (amplifier cells) and 
one for time spectrum entropy (cochlial cells). Higher information entropy excites more 
cells, which draw more "current".

The above may be complete scientific hog-wash. But there must be some structure that 
does this or you could not hear the difference in the tones produced.

The proof is, we know it works, because it works!