Wolfgang Voigt's GAS Project: the Poll

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

Yes. In the first track you can start to see the dotted line at about 2:30.

screenshot, screenshot, screenshot!

sorry, i'm getting worked up here

Track 1

https://i.imgur.com/bcjCIQm.jpg

the proof is in the pudding

Track 7 (and end of 6, beginning of 8): a new, higher frequency beep appears, way up at 19khz. I can't hear it.

https://i.imgur.com/SHRsNSM.jpg

Thanks for the pics, Chinchilla! I can't hear the beeps but the pitched bom-bom march beat is driving me nuts (OK, what did I expect from an album called "the Long March", fine) so I think I'm out anyway.

Does the beep line up with the higher or the lower-pitched kick or neither?

Somewhat depressing not to hear it though. I remember probably 10-15 years ago a friend was saying that electronic artists should retire at 35 because they can't hear the treble well enough and their beats become insufficiently punchy. Which seemed a bit harsh at the time (& even aged <30 I couldn't hear the alleged problem), but now I'm in my 40s and still daydreaming of maybe putting out some little blurts of bleepy thumpy stuff on bandcamp one of these decades, only to realise that I'm missing at least half of the CD-quality spectrum...

At least I now feel vindicated in my decision not to buy this thing unheard on Bandcamp Friday in protest at there being no streamable preview tracks.

Chinchilla did you rip a CD or was it a download?

Thank you for those EQ settings, octobeard.

Yes, thanks - that post inspired me to tinker.

The images above are from a FLAC CD rip. I bought the download on Bandcamp, but the individual tracks there are faded out at the end (still not sure why he or anyone thought this was desirable). The continuous mix is one big file. What I wanted was no fades and individual tracks, so I went to that illicit place where Souls are Sought and found a CD rip. Individual tracks, no fades. But now I'm back to working with the big long full-album file, to make it easier to strip out those frequencies across the whole album. Then if I'm feeling ambitious I'll split it up into tracks myself.

I'm not actually that obsessed with this, but I'm a casual/for fun user of Audition who is still learning, and this gives me a good chance to learn some new skills.

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I listened to the tracks on Apple Music (lossless setting, no eq override, soundcheck turned off) and didn’t hear the beep

listened on youtube (quality unknown) and did hear the beep

yup, checked two more tracks and I’m not going crazy — the youtube tracks have everything that has been mentioned, apple music does not

I wonder if it’s been re-uploaded there, or if something in the mastering process/file export got botched

for what it’s worth, the apple music version also has no fade-outs or gaps between the tracks

I listened to the 1 track version of this from slsk. Initially I couldn't hear the beep at all on my laptop speakers, but when I plugged into my stereo (and verified that the beeps were there in the sonogram) I could make them out. If no one had said anything I doubt that I would have noticed, but now that I do - I can't miss it. Sorta like hearing John Bonham's squeaky bass drum pedal - you may not notice it, but once you ID it you can't not hear it.

Looking at old and new files confirms that they have replaced the beepy version. mh's posts got me to listen anew on streaming - beeps gone. So I redownloaded from bandcamp and looked at the spectral display - beeps stripped out, and the new files look much like the ones I edited for myself (needn't have spent that time, I guess). Dotted line replaced with empty space.

I listened on Spotify just to hear this beep (GAS is not really my thing) and I couldn't hear it at all. I can usually pick out pretty high frequencies so I wondered if maybe I heard the fixed versions

When I was looking around for streaming examples, I noticed the new one wasn’t listed on boomkat and some others. I’m guessing they may have yanked the release

the one on YT is very beepy on my computer speakers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGLmnvv8hjM

i listened to the spotify version on my phone and i could still hear something but way less pronounced

Wow interesting discussion. The FLACs I have do have the beep. Downloaded for the same reason - no previews on Bandcamp, and can't buy the CD on Bandcamp.
I hope the CD I eventually purchase doesn't have the beeps! As someone with mild tinnitus I'm surprised I can hear them, but my hearing loss is actually slightly lower in the frequency band (annoyingly).

Vinyl just arrived and it has the beeps. It's in four sides, and it fades out at the end of each side.

Spotify confirmed, the beep has been removed there, at least on my streams