This is a chat I had with a couple of guys on the net about an idea I have.
| Me: | Is it possible to go into a simple workshop, which has no recordings and no communication with the outside, and in a day create a machine that gives off the sound of Martin Luther King saying "I have a dream"?
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| Guy 1: | Yes, but it would be a miraculous achievement.
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| Guy 1: | Almost impossible.
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| Me: | I have an idea of how I can do it.
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| Guy 1: | ?
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| Me: | My idea has two parts, one part is to make a sound producing machine, one could maybe do that with some wax roll or something, like the old phonographs. The other part is to actually make the sound. Which I would do somehow or other involving that I simply memorize a highly compressed sound file.
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| Guy 1: | How would you get the same tones as MLK?
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| Me: | I mean that I memorize a compressed part of his recorded speech.
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| Me: | (I memorize the bits of the file)
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| Guy 1: | What all x million of theme?
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| Me: | To memorize it I would only need to memorize about 3300 bits.
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| Me: | If it is compressed with a codec that has a bit rate of about that number of bits per second.
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| Guy 1: | I dont think such compression exists.
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| Me: | Yes, there are those which go down to even 2 kbits/second.
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| Guy 2: | It's only a few seconds of audio.
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| Me: | I have listened to the recording, it is around 1 second, maybe a little more.
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| Me: | He says it many times, so some are bit longer, some a little shorter.
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| Guy 1: | Still, what do you memorise?
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| Guy 2: | You'd have to memorize how to decompress the audio though.
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| Me: | Yes, I would need to memorize the algorithm, too :)
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| Guy 1: | Bits are 1010110.
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| Guy 1: | A kbit is 1000 of those.
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| Guy 1: | You are looking at ~100kb for a few seconds.
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| Me: | It corresponds to about 1000 decimal digits.
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| Me: | So it is like memorizing 1000 digits of Pi or so.
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| Guy 2: | You'd probably memorize about a thousand hex digits.
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| Me: | Even less, but around that, I think 1000 decimal would be enough.
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| Me: | But then one would need to have a smart technique of transfering that wave unto a wax roll or so.
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| Me: | But I think that could be done.
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| Me: | I am thinking of a workshop without any electricity or anthing like that, just mechanics.
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| Guy 1: | ooo... hmm.
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| Guy 1: | How do you get from bits to sound then?
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| Me: | That's what I have not fully realized yet in my mind, but one idea is to gradually imprint a track in the wax roll by means of a long lever by which I can translate big movements to the small movements needed in the wax, so on the "big" side I move it along the wave, which could be on a long paper roll where I have been drawing the wave.
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| Me: | And to draw that wave I need to translate my memorized material by means of an algorithm.
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| Me: | (the decompression)
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| Guy 1: | Hmm, seems borderline impossible.
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| Me: | Yes, but I think it can be done by some smart methods.
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| Guy 1: | Oh perhaps, extraordinarily difficult however.
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| Me: | He he he, well the memorizing part is not so difficult, and the other parts that we have discussed here might become quite simple if you find some good ideas and techniques.
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| Me: | But anyway, I like the idea, purely for doing something impressive :)
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| Me: | And odd.
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| Me: | It makes me enthusiastic that your first impression is that it seems like a miracle.
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