UNKNOWN ARTEFACT: Sound Engineers, apply here!

The fundamental problem at the moment is that we haven't found a repeating sequence in these sounds.

...We know that there is some pattern to the sequences; never the same sound three times in a row...

I don't know about this. I think there are effectively two tracks of audio: The Purrs & Chittering, and the Howls. The Purrs & Chittering never overlap with each other, and the spacing of the two different Purr tones seems to be extremely regular. There are cases where a Purr gets overshadowed by a Howl, and you need to subtract the Howl to be able to hear/see the Purr. That being said, a few of the Purr transcriptions (to binary) that I've seen put spaces between strings, I'm assuming where the Howls come in. That might not be the intention of the being creating the code...and it might be hindering our translation. If the Howls aren't part of the Purr message, and you run the Purr data stream continuously with no spaces, you DO get cases where there are three Purrs of the same type in a row. It also removes the oddity of how there seem to be several 6-bit streams of Purrs in certain messages, especially in UA2.

Also, since the timing of the Howls and Purrs seem to be out of synch, perhaps the ratio of their repeat intervals is significant. Or perhaps the (eventual) synching up of a Purr and one of the Howls acts as a start bit, or 'leading punctuation' indicating the start of a long message. Perhaps the message is so long we assume it doesn't repeat, and it just requires several jettisoned recordings to get the whole message. I'm a little late to this game...how long are the longest recordings?
 
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I've started looking through this thread, and noticed some people were on the same idea that I had about the musical notes, though my results were slightly different. I'll copy what I posted in the other main thread:

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but oh well, I'll do it again.

The constant "buzzing" sound through out all recordings is (scientific pitch notation) F#4, or the F# above middle C on a standard 88 key piano.

The "whale song" alternates between two different sequences. F#4 and E4. The next is D4, G#4, (F4, very quickly), then back to D4.

For the second 3 note sequence, I'm not exactly sure if I'm actually hearing that F4 between the G#4 and the D4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch_notation

Taking a quick peak at the above link, we see that the constant F#4 is 369.99hz.

The two note sequence is F#4 to E4, so 369.99hz to 329.63hz

The three note sequence is D4, G#4, F4, D4, or 293.66hz, 415.3hz, 349.23hz back to 293.66hz

I had the thought that maybe the 3 note sequence could be 3d coordinates in the galaxy map, though I haven't tested it yet. I'm pretty sure the primary notes I'm hearing are in the 4th octave, which if we were to go by those frequencies, then those coordinates wouldn't be very far away from Sol, being 0,0,0.

I'm thinking that since D4 is repeated, it would be the first number in the coordinate sequence. But, if I am in fact imagining that F4 in the sound, then we'd still have 293, 415, 293.

Someone tell me if I've gone crazy and need to go to sleep.


edit: I just noticed while looking at the references on that Scientific Pitch Notation wiki this lovely little nugget: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...ackholesounds/

"Sound waves 57 octaves lower than middle-C are rumbling away from a supermassive black hole in
the Perseus cluster."
 
Wait...isn't this explained on the Bulletin Boards in game now? The Unidentified Artifacts sound out morse code spelling out the nearest celestial body? Or did I read that wrong last night, it was very late...?
 
Wait...isn't this explained on the Bulletin Boards in game now? The Unidentified Artifacts sound out morse code spelling out the nearest celestial body? Or did I read that wrong last night, it was very late...?

Frontier confirm there more to them than just that.
 
if we were to go by those frequencies, then those coordinates wouldn't be very far away from Sol, being 0,0,0.

How do you account for possible negative coordinates? Granted, they may not be needed if the location isn't on any negatives, but I feel a coordinate system should allow for negatives.
 
I think this has been mentioned before but, if the sounds do refer to coordinates, then these probes may need a common origin. One could assume it's Sol, but it could also be the centre of the galaxy. Sorry for dragging old stuff up! :)
 
A long time since I've been able to get into the game or this puzzle, but pleased to see it is still going on. Hopefully I'll get some more time soon!

Morse code was ruled out as there are no more than 3 identical adjacent notes, and morse requires more than this - unless there are new discoveries I'm not up to speed with yet?

A lot to catch up on I think - are there any summaries that are a bit easier to digest than threads with hundreds of pages?
 
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