dgmGrooveGraphics - Text/Image to Audio for Groove Art

[opcode66]

Over the past two days I made a push to finish it. I wanted to do some more testing anyway. Needless to say, the application is light-years ahead of where it was.

I’ve pretty much added every feature I’ve ever wanted. The real improvement is the choice of how the program slices up the image and turns it into audio. Before, it would only do a band. That was good for text and it worked well as you see on the prioro page with the ||| KNO-002 ||| text. But, I couldn’t load a picture and have it do a spiral slice, so, when cut to disc, it would look like the picture. I could only have it do the picture in a band before. I’ve finally added spiral splicing to the application, which is awesome.

When testing cutting text worked great, but images looked like a swirled mess. Totally indecipherable. I stopped messing with the program after these failed test. It seemed at the time that pictures wouldn’t work because the grayscale interpretation wasn’t working. I was wrong!!!! So very wrong!!!!! The swirled mess is actually what it would look like. How do I know??? Well, one of the images below shows you a new feature I added. Now, if you are doing text or image in either banded or spiral mode the application shows you a disc image that approximates what you will get when you cut the audio. I figured out how to take an image and do a polar translation so it would look like how it would appear on disc if you cut the image as a band. As it turns out, banded pictures look exactly like the test cuts I was doing in the past!!!!

Now that I have the code written to slice out a spiral of pixels from an image and do the pixel to sound translation from the spiral, I should be able to get a good looking image in my cuts. Grayscale and everything. But, even if the grayscale doesn’t work, I’ve added a feature to turn any image into black and white using a dithering algorithm. The result is not bad (see below). And, black and white will always cut not matter what. If the grayscale does work, I added the ability to make the stereo audio out of phase which should add depth variation to the resulting cut grooves. Which, in turn, should accentuate grayscale even more!

I added a ton additional features than I won’t explain here. Check out the screenshot to see all the options.

Suffice it to say, I’m excited to actually test cut later today. So awesome!

Image in Banded Mode:

Banded_Image.png

Black & White Dither in Spiral Mode:

Spiral_Image_black_and_white.png

Original Image:

IMG_2739.JPG

The new application interface:

dgmGrooveGraphics.png

[opcode66]

I will post test cuts tomorrow. My prior round of test cuts were not a success. But, they were also not a failure. As you can see from the second and third images below. The pixel data in the rotations were not lining up. I had a rounding error in a line of code which impacted how many samples per rotation were being generated. I have since resolved the error. In the third picture below you can see an example of Banded text. Note how nice the font looks. No aliasing on curved edges. In the third image below you can see from inside to out there is a Banded Text example with grayscale. Next, is an image sliced into a Spiral rendered as a dithered black and white image. The third band is a grayscaled Spiral image using varying volume and a constant frequency of 1kHz. The final (outer) band is the same as the third except both frequency and volume are varied to create grayscale. As you can see, I'm able to get variations of shade. Now that my spiraling code will create 1.8 seconds per revoluation at 33.3 RPM (and correct lenghts at any other speed) this should finally work as expected!

Black and White Dithering and Grayscale via varying Volume with constant frequency seem to produce the most visible results. The banded text will be neat for release numbers or track titles or album titles or what not. Some simple imagery will actually look cool banded as well.

dgmGrooveGraphics-Spiral-Example.jpg

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10646906_10204832025953283_3329642405961433680_n.jpg

dgmGrooveGraphics Example User Interface

dgmGrooveGraphics Sample Audio - 4 Rotations

[opcode66]

Well, I would call today's test cuts a distinct success! You can see in the video that I have achieved a spiral slice that is in grayscale. A totally visible and distinct image. It only gets better from here folks. I will now be offering high quality image to audio translations for a reasonable fee. Sorry everyone, but I decided not to offer this application free to the public. For a number of reasons. But, primarily, because I don't feel like anyone would really appreciate the effort that went into making this a reality.

Innovation at its finest! Stay tuned for more goodies. I've been very busy...

[studiorp]

Interesting, but with your software can you insert a file video than a picture in the groove, as in Phonovid system ?

[opcode66]

What exactly are you refering to? I can think of two distinct things that are called that. One is a way to make a graphic on a picture disc that appears to animate (which I could do yes). The other is a system to encode images as audio that can be played back and displayed on a tv (which technically i could also do but is not at all what i'm going for here since I want to see images in the grooves in the discs.)

[studiorp]

Yes, I am refering to second way.

[opcode66]

Well, the later would require a sound to scan line translation device. Or, a computer program to turn the sound into an image. Again, totally doable. But, not the purpose of this project.

Aphex Twin did this on one of his albums.

[opcode66]

Groove within a Groove Test

One groove with an image in grayscale. The other groove has music. I overcut a few times because I didn't adjust the music volume appropriately. This was just a quick test... I'm cutting two discs now. Each with a picture of one of my cats and a text band with their name written in it.

[opcode66]

This software has now come of age. Check the classified's section for a post regarding my new Image to Audio Transfer Service. This is working so fantastically well. But, I'll let you all be the judge of that. Full grayscale with extremely fine detail. Stay tuned for more great things coming from me, your lovable rogue, Opcode66 in the very near future!

IMG_6077.JPG

IMG_6078.JPG

[Sillitoe]

Very cool!

[EmAtChapterV]

I've cut SSTV signals - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television - to disc with varying levels of success. The speed accuracy has to be absolutely perfect on both recording and playback, or the image comes out wavy and slanted.

[opcode66]

Certainly not the purpose of this applications, friends. Quite obviously, the only gear you need to interpret images here is your eyeballs. With regard to SSTV, who has an interpreter either hardware or software? You are dealing with an extremely limited audience there. As it stands, quite a lot of people can see with their eyeballs. And, even more are able to do so with the aid of new technology. So, I figured, why not focus on this, right?

Incidentally, we all have digitized video disc technology in our homes. They are DVD and Bluray and Laser Disc if you are that old. The predecessor to these technologies were cut to lacquer masters by modified audio lathes. You can read all about it in the Red Book from the AES. Neat what they were doing with lathes experimentally in the 80's before the collapse of vinyl.

Did you also know that the predecessor of the fax machine was a technology used to send images "over the wire". Yes, indeed. Very similar to what I'm doing here. But, I've devised a process to maximize the visual effect by processing the audio in a different way. But, very similar in concept to this. Not as much SSTV.

Best part is that I can cut a fixed pitch audio track between the image groove and you can play a song on the same side as the image.

[EpicenterBryan]

I am speechless.
If anyone knows how I can nominate Todd for an award, E-mail me.
I only hope no one invites Kanye West that night.

[Bahndahn]

Holy smokes!! Wherever the outlet for said ballot, mine is checked opcode66! Awesome work on this!!

[EpicenterBryan]

Todd, I have a question for you.

Many of us have Lathes less capable than yours, and I wonder if it's possible for us to incorporate a file you convert to audio, with our own audio to do something similar to what you were able to do?

The reason I ask is my lathe is like a 6N where the pitch (once selected) is fixed, and there is a manual control for lead in and lead out. Can you explain how I might be able to interleave the two grooves like you demonstrated with something like a Presto or Rek-O-Kut?

Awesome results Todd. Just Awesome!

Bryan

[opcode66]

Thanks Bryan for the feedback. Much appreciated. I know you get the work involved in doing these sorts of things.

As you know, I have limited working knowledge of operating manual lathes. So, I might be oversimplifying things a bit. Also, other Trolls might have some better suggestions here. So, I hope they chime in too.

With respect to groove in groove, several things to mention:

A. Determine a good LPI 100 to 150 is great.
B. Do some tests on the loudest parts of your audio to insure that you won't overcut. Adjust volume or lpi appropriately.
C. Now that you've done the prep work, cut the image with a lead-in.
D. Then, cut the audio.
E. How to know where to start??? Well, you could mark off your ruler. But, 100 or 150 divisions of an inch leaves little room for error. You could make an automated drop timer if you are crafty (hint hint). Or, for presto folks, this is why you do a lead in. Drop dead center of the lead-in. Repeat the same cranking speed. Stop cranking when the lead-in comes to rest at the first revoluation at base pitch. It should be resting between. Have your microscope already aimed at that section to make fine adjustments on the fly. Once going, hypothetically, it should stay in between the original cut.

I've created a system using a laser distance sensor combined with a custom timer circuit that integrates into the automatic head drop system on my Neumann lathe. So, this is greatly facilitated. However, with practice you can do it by hand. It certainly has been done by others in the past. The lower your LPI, the easier it is, but the shorter your available recording time will be. As per usual, life is a never ending series of compromises.

Once you get good at dropping in that second groove it is downhill from there. Watch that volume level on the second groove though. Over-cutting here means skipping potentially, and then all you're hearing is the carrier waveform.

I have many ideas for new features and improvements. I think I can get better resolution and detail. I also think that I can do something like loop a chunk of audio instead of using a pure tone to make the images. That way, it would sound like something if you played the image groove. I could do memorial discs for people with the sound of a person's voice or pet looped and used to generate the image of that person or pet.

Really, I think I haven't even come close to imagining all the neat artistic things that are now possible here. This truly allows artists an additional vector for expression on their releases.

Thank you one and all for your interest.

[opcode66]

I'm working on a number of new features in the application. Mostly things that make it easier to use. Also adding a feature that will allow me to import an image and it will arrange properly rotated copies of the image in a circular pattern (as many copies as desired). Also adding the ability to zoom an image and reposition the zoomed version. Just implemented drag and dropping of an image into the interface. I'm also working on the text mode to be able to increase the font size past 72 which is the limit for whatever reason in the fontdialog object.

A super awesome feature will be label generation. The application will generate the audio for the grooves, but I can also print a label that would continue the image at the correct size, scale and position. This will complete the image on disc. Once I'm finished with this feature, I'm going to write a separate application that will allow me to easily generate print files for the labels sold on vinylike.de. I will distribute the label application, but it will only run in Windows. Maybe down the road I'll port this also to OSX because it will be simple enough.

Yet another feature will be to add other options for the carrier wave. Right now it is a sine wave. But, it doesn't have to be. In fact, I might get better results with a saw or square wave. And, I want to be able to use a repeated audio sample too. So, I could make a memorial disc for a person or a pet who passed. It could have the sound of the persons voice or pet's meow/bark repeated over and over and manipulated to form the image. A text band with their name. And, of course, a picture of them. A one of a kind vinyl lover's memorial work of art.

Finally, I've been researching something that combined with this already stunning technology will blow your mind. Let's just say the hologram on Jack Whites album will leave quite a lot to be desired when you see what I have in store. Not going to say much more about it at this time.

I have more cool ideas than I think I'll ever have time to implement in my lifetime. I'm glad this one is coming of age.

[SUNBEARS]

Can't wait to give this a whirl when u are done

[opcode66]

I am no longer planning to sistribute this application. I'd be happy to convert something for you if you'd like to test it.

[ejemmons]

Hi Todd, sorry I have been out of the loop, but I would be willing to beta for you - running Win8/Nuendo4/6/5. Your MX VST ended up running, with the audio issues described elsewhere: 2dB gain skew, plus non-unity gain thru, minor issues really. Please keep up the GREAT work!