UNKNOWN ARTEFACT: Sound Engineers, apply here!
- Thread starter sohara
- Start date
That was a very quick and dirty attempt to remove background frequencies, but I'm pretty certain there's a voice there. I'm sure a much clearer version can be created from Digiscream's original sample.
OK - consider my interest piqued...
I have been struggling to think of a reason for this 'insectoid' sounding chatter - I have tried processing that section in an attempt to extract a voice, but I lost too much clarity to warrant further investigation. I suspected that it was merely alien in origin, ruling out any sensible outcome, given that I don't speak Thargoid
I do have one question however - aren't you the same guy that posted the Reddit theory whereby you were flipping the 'header' values to equal the bit length of the entire message? If so, why post this under a different account? Questions aside, I agree with a lot of your comments; we do need more data, and we do need more organisation in terms of collating results.
Excellent work, and thanks for sharing how you processed the file. Maybe there is something there, after all...
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There may be a voice in the Ancient artifact transmission. Here's how I found it:
Tools: Audacity
Sample used - Digiscream's audio http://www.digitalscream.org.uk/audio/unknown_artifact_audio.mp3
Method:
1) cut off the in-game audio (cargo scoop) at the end of the sample
2) Normalised remaining sample to 0DB
3) Pitch shift up by two oactaves
4) using audactity, I duplicated a portion of the background hum, and used this as a sample in the "Noise reduction" tool. The same effect may be done better by using a band pass filter. This was a quick and dirty attempt, with a little time we can clear this up a lot.
5) And here's the result:
CAUTION: turn down your volume
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0hIXtltcwMq
There is human voice after each burst of whale song. It sounds like a numbers station.
Someone with better audio skill than I should be able to process the audio with more clarity. This was inspired by the recent reddit post, which may not have been a hoax after all
Aw... hellllllll...
No I'm not the same guy
this is the first evidence i have contributed to this effort. I was inspired to try this after playing around with the sample given in the "Hoax" reddit thread from earlier this evening. http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/353aao/ive_managed_to_read_unknown_artefact_message/
I wanted to check if that guy was trolling or not, so decided to cross-check his sample with Digiscreams' recording. I happened to notice there were very faint vocal patterns visible (but not audible) in the same place in the two samples.
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No I'm not the same guy
http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/353aao/ive_managed_to_read_unknown_artefact_message/
I wanted to check if that guy was trolling or not, so decided to cross-check his sample with Digiscreams' recording. I happened to notice there were very faint vocal patterns visible (but not audible) in the same place in two samples.
So was it a 'hoax' then? Because that guy who posted got a lot of hate from people saying he wasn't telling the truth...
No I'm not the same guy
Sorry ape, that was directed at jspoto / volrev / CMDR ModelVillain - he posted this on a separate Reddit account, the suspicious beast inside me just wanted to understand why
Nice work cross-checking the output, it seems to have potential. I can't get very far without degrading the audio to the point that it's unrecognisable!
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It's not a flat out hoax - there are indeed some human sounding qualities to that slice of audio. Redditors are a vicious bunch
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There may be a voice in the Ancient artifact transmission. Here's how I found it:
Tools: Audacity
Sample used - Digiscream's audio http://www.digitalscream.org.uk/audio/unknown_artifact_audio.mp3
Method:
1) cut off the in-game audio (cargo scoop) at the end of the sample
2) Normalised remaining sample to 0DB
3) Pitch shift up by two oactaves
4) using audactity, I duplicated a portion of the background hum, and used this as a sample in the "Noise reduction" tool. The same effect may be done better by using a band pass filter. This was a quick and dirty attempt, with a little time we can clear this up a lot.
5) And here's the result:
CAUTION: turn down your volume
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0hIXtltcwMq
There is human voice after each burst of whale song. It sounds like a numbers station.
Someone with better audio skill than I should be able to process the audio with more clarity. This was inspired by the recent reddit post, which may not have been a hoax after all
I'm pretty sure that spoken section is some of the same numbers that were uttered in some other audio that was extracted.
I'm beginning to think there is a limited pool of audio clips that the game calls upon for this, layers a few (or few dozen) of them together, applies some kind of randomization to certain aspects of pitch or other effects, and what you hear is the end result. You may get a similar sounding transmission from the artifact each time you drop it out of hold and listen to get a recording, but I have a feeling other ambient things are also in there, and being presented differently with limited randomization based on that instance of the sound. It would stand to reason, I think, that muffled transmissions from ourselves would be part of that variety of ambient sounds in space.
Edit: Adding to this further, I think it may also explain why, after so many repeated drops in the same system, and so many recording of it in the same system, we still do not seem to reach a definite repeating pattern upon observing all of these recordings.
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Sorry ape, that was directed at jspoto - he posted this on a separate Reddit account, the suspicious beast inside me just wanted to understand why
Nice work cross-checking the output, it seems to have potential. I can't get very far without degrading the audio to the point that it's unrecognisable!
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It's not a flat out hoax - there are indeed some human sounding qualities to that slice of audio. Redditors are a vicious bunch
Some were from here and posted near same comments as on there as on the forums here.
"Hoax" in quotation marks , as it I assumed it to be trolling. Turns out i was wrong, and there does seem to be something there. I'll edit in a link and credit to that post, but that user has now deleted his account.
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He DID deleted his account afterwards, so....
I've not heard anything similar myself, but after reviewing most of the clips that I have with the same filters, they all sound like the same sample, every 30 seconds, after the distinct whale noises.
It may be a product of too much Single Malt, but I think I can discern a single phrase from the audio - "[unintelligible] Your objective is... [static]"
While I find this potential lead quite exciting, it's entirely plausible I could be willing myself to hear something. I would appreciate someone else corroborating this!
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Actually I heard something along the lines of that, so it might not just be you. I think I might try the same thing on one of my recordings and see if I get a similar result..
The space madness may be getting to us all, I hear a string of numbers. I'm having another go at cleaning up the sound now. It does seem to be one single string repeating throughout Digiscream's clip.
Or, the message is quite large
The fact that there isn't a single instance of three or more 1's or 0's discovered in all of the recordings indicate that it's not random - there's a pattern or rule ensuring that more than 2 consecutive bits cannot have the same value.
For the same reason, it could also indicate that a cipher has been placed over random data, making it seem less random. We'll not delve into that one, just yet!
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For reference, I heard that little gem posted above ("your objective is...") while investigating digitalscream's 'UA_1' recording.
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Agreed - largely why I dismissed this section in the first place. Perhaps the source audio is actually of human origin, but FDEV applied some technical wizardry to make it sound more... Thargoid-y.
If it ends up being a couple of Devs ordering a Domino's Pizza*, I swear, I may just give up and get back to locating the Formadine Rift...
*other Pizza brands are available
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Not sure whether I hear speech but if you go back to the original recordings, all of them seem to have this bit in common. Basically after the whale growl noise bit you hear this bit of audio, it sounds like it's always the same, in all of the clips that we have.
This could be the cipher to the whole message. If we figure this bit out which seems to be embedded in every clip it might tell us how to decode the entire message.
This could be the cipher to the whole message. If we figure this bit out which seems to be embedded in every clip it might tell us how to decode the entire message.