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I'd love to see those 325 lines of code open sourced on github, ported to javascript and tweaked into a super awesome sound explosion of until now unheard proportions.
Listen to the sound here ~ https://youtu.be/5XpKaitVy_E?t=19m8s You can see a live version in '83 with the synthesiser in action here (Pinkpop Holland 23.5.1983) ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIw4RqENjDc
to synthesize it in real time, in 1983,
took 2 years to design and build a 19”
rack full of digital hardware and 200,000
lines of system code to run the synthesizer. [1]
Reference
That really brings back memories. That sound means all the phonecalls, parking and standing line is over and you get to actually watch a movie as it was meant to be seen. The engineering of the "noise" also had a practical purpose. It sweeps by most every frequency, including the entire vocal range. So it was impossible to continue any conversation without noticing that the movie was about to start. The seconds after…
The final chord in the new version still has an odd tuning -- sharp for D major, but flat for E flat major. I can't be the first to have noticed. I wonder why he didn't fix that.
Tip: Deep Note makes an excellent alarm clock. Gradual crescendo, makes you feel pumped up to get going...
Tip: Whatever sound/song you set your alarm to you will grow to hate. Right now that Deep Note has good feeling by association, it will grow to be your nemesis as your alarm. Then movies will remind you of your alarm. :(
To experiance real 3D sound with head phones Google for Binaural audio videos!
I always thought the THX sound was a cheesy rip-off of the opening from legendary Blues guitarist Gary Moore (RIP), to "Nuclear Attack" , "Dirty Fingers" album recorded in '81. [0] Listen to the sound here ~ https://youtu.be/5XpKaitVy_E?t=19m8s You can see a live version in '83 with the synthesiser in action here (Pinkpop Holland 23.5.1983) ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIw4RqENjDc to synthesize it in real time,…
The Gary Moore sound is a simple pitch-down of a single (rich) synth patch. There are no rising harmonics in it. Further, it wasn't actually released until '83 at the earliest.
The Deep Note uses a whole bunch of cello patches, each following its own pitch envelope, and resolving on the final 5th. IIRC Moorer generated a large number of versions to demo (as it used a random initial starting sound) and the winning version just happened to have a bunch of voices start on a similar pitch shifting down.
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Those years, 1983-84 were golden years for (now) cheap hardware, Dave Smith demo'd MIDI interoperability, the yamaha DX7 came out in 83, roland juno 106 in 84.
They were preceded by E-mu Emulator (1981) and PPG Wave (1981). PPG is the predecessor of Waldorf, Emu and Ensoniq got swallowed up and force merged by Creative Arts.
The final chord in the new version still has an odd tuning -- sharp for D major, but flat for E flat major. I can't be the first to have noticed. I wonder why he didn't fix that.