What Richard Heyser said that he did was to sense the asymmetry in musical and speech waveforms and activate a relay that would interrupt the signal, making it obvious.
When a test waveform was put through, it was almost invariably symmetrical, because sine waves are essentially symmetrical, especially low distortion ones.
I am pretty sure from what he told me personally that he actually made this device. How it worked, eludes me at the moment. Perhaps a serious engineer reading this can offer a suggestion.
When a test waveform was put through, it was almost invariably symmetrical, because sine waves are essentially symmetrical, especially low distortion ones.
I am pretty sure from what he told me personally that he actually made this device. How it worked, eludes me at the moment. Perhaps a serious engineer reading this can offer a suggestion.
And how exactly does that conflict with what was said in the BAS Speaker article?
Searching on the Internet hasn't turned up any evidence of his ever having actually built it. Personally I think it was really just an Einsteinian "thought experiment" used to illustrate a point.
The BAS Speaker article said that his explanation was that the box would have a computer in it that could recognize test tones and if the test tones weren't present, it would intermittently short the output to ground.
If you had a computer and could digitize the input signal, it would be a piece of cake. If you assume that all the test signals would be symmetric (which would also mean you'd have to assume that no one would ever do an impulse test) all you'd have to do is look for any signal which had a DC component. That would tell you the signal was asymmetric and the computer would then intermittently short the output to ground.
se
Then find some evidence that it ever actually existed outside of a thought experiment.
se
Why should I? I knew him personally for more than 15 years. I have no reason to doubt him. Since a computer, except for an analog one, would be out of the question, and a relay would be a crude indicator of something different about music and speech, I think that he used some sort of 'bridge' to get the power to power the relay.
In those days we used slide rules, mechanical calculators, and batch processing for computer analysis. How does this fit in?
In those days we used slide rules, mechanical calculators, and batch processing for computer analysis. How does this fit in?
Last edited:
Does everyone understand about asymmetry in music and voice? Many audio sources create an asymmetrical waveform that actually has more positive than negative, or visa-versa. Many famous singers have this characteristic. Of course, there has to be a DC balance over time, but this is not instantaneous, but over an average of the musical or vocal input. This was often a problem in FM transmission, and perhaps with some compressor-expander circuits. This would be the 'trigger' for Heyser's box.
It's not Richard Heyser that I'm doubting. It's your memory of a comment made to you 40 years ago that I have my doubts about.
se
- Status
- Not open for further replies.