Wolfgang Voigt's GAS Project: the Poll

a niggling contrast to the sumptuousness of the rest of it

maybe there should be some element of discomfort though if you're trying to communicate latent anxiety and dread?

yeah, i do understand this angle. have to say, though, one of the things i loved about all of his other albums is his ability to communicate those same things by other means, using mild discordance and strange overtones and resonances going in and out of line. it's very easy to signal anxiety, i think -- just put an alarm clock going off through your album -- but it's so much more rewarding to do it subtle ways

ha yes an alarm clock. think you're gonna fall asleep to my music huh suckers?

but yeah, i do think the annoyance of it would vary highly from listener to listener. to me, it puts it in the same category as labradford's Mi Media Naranja, which is probably a beautiful listen but features an insanely boosted high frequency, and they play the triangle a LOT so

never noticed that about mi media... actually, so yeah we may have different tolerances here. i am a bit old and deaf though

I made myself a version with the offending frequency much reduced (10436hz at -18db) I used a really sharp notch filter to not monkey around with the surrounding frequencies too much, happy to share if anyone wants it.

yes plz

this sounds like something that would be absolute torture to listen to

relieved to see others were bothered by the tone and i'm not nuts, had to turn it off almost immediately, really disappointing. i'm also interested in the maresn3st edit

never noticed that about mi media

yeah, it starts suddenly at about 55 seconds into the first track ("S")

and about 3 minutes into the third track "WR". i don't remember which one on the back half of the album, but i remember playing side B of the record and thinking "goddamn it AGAIN?!" so i know it's somewhere on that side too

co-sign on maresn3st edit

Pop me an email at n@k@ginc@psuleto✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧ (w/out google-proofing)

Oh bum, that didn't go well apologies, n a k a g i n c a p s u l e t o w e r @ g m a i l . c o m

Have only listened to this on shitty speakers and and didn't notice the tone at all. Am I very aware of the high-pitched frequency on the Labradford album though and never found it offensive so perhaps I'll be OK.

Side issue but I am terrified of the implications of hearing vs not hearing certain sounds and frequencies. I remember being with my old man around Christmas time and pointing out the piped silver of a robin singing and being distraught that he simply couldn't pick it up. He shrugged it off so I guess there is that.

Yeah bill oddie has talked about his sadness at not being able to hear the calls of certain birds any longer. The GAS bleep did make me think of the alarm calls that blackbirds make in the hedgerows round here as night comes in

I can't hear the offending tone am I losing it

I am become bill oddie

As someone with tinnitus and some hearing loss in my right ear - you get used to it, the alternative is a deep dark depression, staring mortality and fragility in the face directly, and its resulting, unrelenting anxiety. Basically stopped going to concerts and listening or writing music for a year when it first became "permanent". Copium is a pretty powerful drug and one that probably saved my life.

That said, that high pitch ringing (which I can clearly hear) is dreadful and I can't listen to this new one.

I have tinnitus / hearing loss and cannot hear the high-pitched tones on this album at all.

I first listened on shitty laptop speakers and did t notice it. I’m afraid now that you all have pointed it out that when I give it a proper listen I’m primed to hear only that. Kind of like I can’t not hear “smoke pot smoke pot everybody smoke pot” in I Am The Walrus ever since a fundamentalist preacher told my school class to listen for it nearly 40 years ago.

yeah, those of you who can't hear it, or who it doesn't bother - i kind of want that! i feel a little worried that it DOES bother me, given my many years playing drums in small concrete rooms

xp coolest fundamentalist preacher ever!

I still feel like you don't need anything past the first four albums.

I think the frequency of the beeps is drowned out by the constant one I hear all the time, so it's not that I don't hear the high-pitched beep, it's that mine is louder.

"listen up kids -- watch out! after church there's this guy i know who will try to give you drugs. he'll tell you that if you take them you'll probably never come back to church ever again, because you'll see the world in a different way from then on! so many people have done this before, and it's right outside out these doors! goodbye children!"

Bill Oddie being invoked on a GAS thread is either the greatest moment in mankind's history or the sign of the approaching singularity and I'm going to walk stark bollock naked into the woods now bye.

i have slight tinnitus, so there is a chance i would not notice this quirk,
but the main question for me is : given i have 6 GAS cds (4 cd boxset from a few years back, and subsequent 2 albums), do i actually need more?

I'm so interested in what Voigt's process is. I'd love to watch him assemble a GAS track from start to finish. I can't imagine I'll be listening to this many more times, though. The insistent marching beat is annoying and unsettling, even without the high pitched beep that I can't hear.

The beep totally ruins it for me. I can hear it on my computer speakers and I'm afraid that if I play it loud on the big ones it'll make my ears ring for a few hours. That noise was on Rausch too, but it was quieter. and only when the kick drum is going.

I am guessing this wasn't intentional? It is probably just the same plugin he used on the last album, and since he has tinnitus I think he just can't hear it. I've noticed this sort of thing on a number of older artists' work, high pitched noises just appearing in the mix which clearly aren't supposed to be there. It makes me wonder if they have any (younger) people listen to these final mixes before putting them out there.

Fundamentalist do make sinning sound attractive. See the kids who get way into acting out the bad stuff in Hell Houses, etc.

It makes me wonder if they have any (younger) people listen to these final mixes before putting them out there.

i did wonder about this scenario too, totally speculative. but the emperor has no clothes thing where no one can tell him because it's assumed he wants it?

it's funny that nobody complains about the kick drum. I kinda like the beep myself. but I listen to a lot of EAI.

another example is "Appleshine" by Underworld which has this piercing hi-hat run through most of the song. thankfully when it was actually released in physical form they adjusted the levels so it wasn't so distracting. but yeah this definitely seems to be an issue among older electronic guys

I was able to successfully EQ the ringing tones out; found some choice details in another forum and checked the spectral. There's actually TWO tones, a 2nd at nearly 16k that I can't hear. But here's some EQ settings to remove them, applied it and it works! Album is completely enjoyable now for me.

Band 1:
Type: Bell
Freq: 10480hz
Gain: -30dB
Q: 40
Slope: 96 dB/oct

Band 2:
Type: Bell
Freq: 15725hz
Gain: -25dB
Q: 40
Slope: 96 dB/oct

Hm, listening to this on my ok (albeit old) speakers and can’t hear anything that bugs me. Listened to some high frequency tones and my hearing seems to top out at 16khz but everything below that was audible. This is on a Spotify stream. Ah well I guess I get to enjoy a Gas album.

it's the first and third beat of every measure, and it's the same tone each time. very interesting what's audible and what isn't!
my dog fucking hates the album

you must hate your dog if you named it fucking

yea I'd buy that some speakers either can't hit that frequency or do so at a level that's difficult to hear

as mentioned I can think of a number of recordings by 50+ electronic musicians that have (almost certainly inadvertent) high-pitched noises which are impossible to ignore on the car stereo but nearly inaudible on my home speakers, despite the home speakers being much better

you misunderstood me Nick! it's that i'm fucking the dog, and the act of that "hates" the album, in a way!

i hear it very loudly using headphones, on my MBP speakers, and stereo speakers

Oh wow I just listened to it on my phone and it is unmistakably there and super-annoying. So it’s something to do with my home system (which is vastly better than an IPhone 7!)

weird! yeah i guess it would be pretty device-dependent. maybe iphone 7 has some sort of equalizer you're using, or the speakers have lower frequencies? beats me. but yeah, once you hear it, it's like someone saying "carwash. carwash. carwash. carwash." for an hour straight

Yeah totally, it’s impossible to ignore on the phone speaker.

My streaming stuff goes on a complicated little journey from a Raspberry PI to an old Squeezebox to a Cambridge Audio DAC - and the latter has some sort of switchable filter setting that I’ve never fiddled with but I suspect it has stripped out the offending frequency.

I’m listening to the CD on an Onkyo with my Sennheiser headphones plugged directly in to the player and I don’t hear it…

i should have said, i've been listening to the Spotify version the whole time. not sure if format makes a difference or not

Would be kind of funny if he added the frequency and the fade/sudden starts only to the streaming versions.

I've tried this on several devices and speakers and I still can't hear it. I don't know if it's because I'm focusing hard on the higher frequencies or if the beeps are triggering it, but it seems to exacerbate my tinnitus every time I listen to it.

I put the first track into Audacity and looked at the spectral pitch display. Both the c. 10khz and c. 16khz beeps are clearly visible - little dotted lines. I tried using the EQ to turn down the 10khz as low as it would go, but this also stripped out some other sounds like the higher-frequency crackles. Then I tried using the marquee tool to select and delete the dotted line at 10khz, and that worked much better. I guess my hearing isn't good enough to hear the 16khz beeps - I don't notice them at all.

Then I started thinking that if I have to actively edit an album in order to enjoy it, maybe I should just say I don't enjoy the album and listen to something else. But it was kind of a fun exercise to excise that persistent beep.

Not Audacity, Audition.

the beep doesn't become audible until about 3 minutes into the first track. but then it's in all the others, from the very beginning, i think

sorry, then it's in all the others, all the way to the end, i meant