The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory • Hacker News Board

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#271

Post by dclowd9901 » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 6:59 AM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #131

mrb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you take a track and play it a little bit faster or slower it still sounds great or awful as at the default speed in most cases." Yup. Another example: in most of the world (where the television system is PAL or SECAM) movies are played on TV or released on DVD at 25 frame per second. But to achieve this frame rate, they take the theatrical film release at 24 fps and speed the video and audio up by 25/24th (4.17%…

Another example is the kind of dastardly television trick of increasing the speed of a television program to shorten it and thus increase the amount of advertising space that can be run alongside the program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6i1VVikRu0 This video claims that TBS is currently increasing the speed of Seinfeld episodes a whopping 9%, reducing a 25 minute episode to some 22.5 minutes.

You absolutely see it in TBS broadcasts of Family Guy, where they can get away with speeding up the show without impacting its look and feel tremendously.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#272

Post by rspeer » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 7:10 AM UTC

elihu wrote: post #236

rspeer wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something special about 432 Hz that has nothing to do with how the music is perceived -- if you're tuning the traditional way, by forming fifths above and below A as ratios of 3/2 and 2/3, then a lot of the numbers you hit are nice integer numbers of hertz as well, because 432 is 2^4 * 3^3. Meaningless in practice, but it makes it convenient to describe the tuning of, for example, a stringed instrument.

Main> majscale [(1,1),(9,8),(5,4),(4,3),(3,2),(5,3),(15,8),(2,1)] Main> map (\(x,y) -> (432.0 * (fromIntegral x)) / (fromIntegral y)) majscale [432.0,486.0,540.0,576.0,648.0,720.0,810.0,864.0] That's pretty cool. The whole major scale comes out as whole numbers in just intonation. (In 12-tone equal temperament it doesn't, because 12TET uses the 12th root of 2 as a uniform division of the octave.) This looks like your…

I was thinking it's kind of sad that A minor is the scale that's more fundamental in musical notation -- going up to C with a just minor third gets you the not-so-pretty 518.4 because there's no factor of 5 to divide by.

But really, the moment you decide thirds and fifths both matter, and you want to build them on more than one note, you have to either continuously re-tune or give up on JI and worry about temperament instead. The numbers work great in a Pythagorean tuning, where only fifths matter: that tuning gets you both A=432 and C=512 (middle C = 256).

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#273

Post by stupidcar » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 7:32 AM UTC

BenElgar wrote: post #232

droidist2 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean you can train yourself to have perfect pitch?

As I understand, no. There's some suggestion that small children, usually under the age of 10, can acquire perfect pitch, but no adult has ever been documented acquiring it. Source: http://www.zainea.com/absolpitch.pdf

There seems to be some controversy about this though. I've seen other papers[1] claiming that adults can acquire it, albeit only to a limited extent.

[1] e.g. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027715...

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#274

Post by rcxdude » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 7:39 AM UTC

gaur wrote: post #185

zokier wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 1MHz crystals are common off-the-shelf items, 440kHz are not?

In order for that explanation to make sense, one has to assume that 11x multipliers and 25x dividers were common off-the-shelf items during the time period in question. If the choice is between a custom crystal and two custom boards, the custom crystal is going to be the far less painful choice.

Arbitrary dividers and multipliers are fairly easy to design in a circuit. Certainly far easier than cutting a custom crystal.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#275

Post by spraak » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 8:01 AM UTC

The article doesn't explain itself very well.

> There are millions of people in the world who believe that Goebbels dictated the tuning to make people feel more anxious and warlike.

Is that a hyperbole? I doubt there are millions that believe this.

> I cannot say with certainty that there is no difference in the psychological effects of A = 432 Hz and A = 440 Hz, but I suspect there is no significant difference

This is the most interesting part, I think - i.e. what psychological difference is there? because that is what most proponents are focused on (e.g. the effects on the heart, chakras, etc.)

> and I think that if 432 Hz were some kind of a sweet spot, someone would have noticed by now.

This completely misses the point, because proponents of 432Hz are saying this exactly! that 432Hz is a sweet spot!

I'm not sure myself, but I found these to be hole's in the author's claims against it being a special frequency.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#276

Post by spraak » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 8:19 AM UTC

monktastic1 wrote: post #142

I spent three months in meditation retreat some years ago. I'd never heard of this phenomenon. At some point, I started hearing various tones that weren't coming from outside. They eventually became quite loud. I noticed three tones in particular, and wrote some code to pin down their frequencies. I discovered that they were C, E, and G, where the A would have been 432 Hz (or very close to it; certainly much closer t…

Thanks for sharing that. I think that the article's author missing the point here:

> and I think that if 432 Hz were some kind of a sweet spot, someone would have noticed by now.

because that's exactly what people who talk about 432 Hz are saying, that it's a sweet spot!

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#277

Post by triplesec » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 8:19 AM UTC

Buge wrote: post #264

triplesec wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explains the years of confusion I've suffered noticing sharp pianos in films. I could never work out what was wrong with American film pianos! Thank you, seriously.

The European (PAL) ones are sharp. The American (NTSC) ones are accurate (or very very slightly flat).

Late night error, thank you for pointing that out. European etc PAL formats go sharp when transcribed to. So American and all films transcribed into PAL go sharp, which happens a lot. So it's not the origin of the film, but the (usually) PAL format I historically watched them in that caused this.

And in cinema they were better (I seem to remember Geoffrey Rush 'playing' Rachmaninov 3rd Piano Concerto in that film, at excellent pitch in the cinema), so I knew they were sometimes right. But i think the tape, TV and DVD formats I'll have rewound most often in perplexity.

Another confounding: living in California a lot and not having incorrect pitch on local copies. And nowadays, when sources are digital, bit may have originated from analogue recordings, it's now very unclear what to expect.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#278

Post by spraak » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 8:21 AM UTC

misingnoglic wrote: post #18

Just wait until the conspiracy nuts learn about the tunings that affect the distance between notes, not just the shift! (I'm surprised my double music major is useful somewhere).

See dragonshine's post above which addresses that. I'm not calling dragonshine a 'nut', just saying that you'll need to speak further on it to make your point.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#279

Post by Johnny_Brahms » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 8:23 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #43

> orchestras specializing in older music may sometimes tune in the tuning close to the one for which the piece was originally written, which may range from 415 Hz to 470 Hz). I can say as someone who performs a lot of Baroque music (c. 1600 - 1750) that there is a relatively common standard of A=415 for music of this period. A=415 is often referred to as "Baroque pitch." This mainly applies to ensembles that speciali…

Mainland europe non-opera orchestras generally tunes 442, with some regional exceptions. Apart from germany that is. Last time I played in the germanosphere (the Cologne radio symphony orchestra a couple of weeks as co-principal bassoon in the early 00s), they _started_ at 443 or 444 and ended up somewhere around 446-447. That was _hell_ for us woodwinds.

The regional variations depends a lot on orchestra politics. For example, when I played the munich phil in the late 90s they started at 443, but concert heat be damned, if the last chord wasn't 443 there were some yelling at the first violins and brass section for striving to much upwards.

The Swedish radio decided to play 441 for political reasons (it was a compromise that stuck), and I think still does.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#280

Post by geon » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 8:30 AM UTC

50CNT wrote: post #268

jmiserez wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VLC can do this too: Speed up: ] key Speed down: [ key Normal speed: = key

I use that to watch slow lectures at anywhere to 1.8x to 2.3x the speed. Turns a 40 minute lecture into a 20 minute lecture.

Some people one youtube speak really slowly, or are unprepared. The 1.25x speed button is great for that.

Also, some youtubers speak way too fast. Slowing them down helps comprehension a lot, I find.