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The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

jakubmarian.com

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

#171

Post by zokier »

gaur wrote: post #162
detaro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From other sources it doesn't seem clear if this actually was considered in the decision, but it describes how they got the tone: > The B.B.C. tuning-note is derived from an oscillator controlled by a piezo-electric crystal that vibrates with a frequency of one million Hz. This is reduced to a frequency of 1,000 Hz by electronic dividers; it is then multiplied eleven times and divided by twenty-five, so producing the…

I wonder why they decided it was better to design and build an 11x multiplier and a 25x divider rather than cut a 440 kHz crystal and run it with a copy of the 1000x divider electronics they already had.

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

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

#172

Post by kelvin0 »

codingdave wrote: post #36
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).

Just curious - what exactly is a double music major? (I always have heard of double majors as being separate subjects.)

Cost him twice as much, with the added benefit that it gives the person the right to mention their double major twice in every sentence they speak/write.

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

#173

Post by hexane360 »

seandougall wrote: post #109
robbyt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine is a professional mix engineer in NYC. He's worked with several large artists, you've probably heard of. He strongly believes in setting numerically interesting values for things like eq, gain reduction, song length, delay time in ms, etc.

A not-insubstantial part of the engineer's job is to impress the artists. Mastering engineers even more so.

https://xkcd.com/670/

I would take it a step further. I'd make up my own units based on seemingly natural things and then tune to numerically interesting values of those.

"This next song's beat is 432 times faster than a cricket chirping at 50 degrees C."

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

ptaipale wrote: post #120
costcopizza wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh-- pick your battles. If family members get a positive placebo effect from listening to "5 Hours High Quality BEST 432hz Meditation Healing Chakra" on YouTube...Who cares?

The one whose inheritance is next squandered on highly priced meditation chakra recordings and excessively expensive hoax high-end audio equipment? (From Youtube to purchasing mail order junk...)

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by phire »

mrb wrote: post #108
anigbrowl wrote: post #76

I have been following this for years, being both a sound engineer and a bit of a hippie who knows a lot of other hippies. The basic issue is that 432 is a numerologically interesting number compared to 440. So if it's more interesting it should be better for artistic purposes, goes the argument. However this falls flat as soon as you consider that the 432 is only interesting relative to the completely arbirtrary dura…

"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%…

Of course almost nobody knows this because nobody notices it.

Though, I can now instantly tell if I'm watching a PAL or NTSC version of Star Trek TNG based on the the first few bars of the opening song.

Which is weird, because I don't even have pitch perfect hearing and I'm not even that musically inclined.

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

#177

Post by nonbel »

syntheticnature wrote: post #133
nonbel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure there is nothing special about the duration of a second. It comes from dividing a day into two sets of 12, then those 12 into five sets of 12 (12x5=60), then those 60s into 60 each. We know our bodies do follow circadian rhythms, so you have the initial link to length of day. Then everything else is split into sets of 12, a number with exceptional properties that natural selection may optimize t…

Except that our day length is also changing -- very slowly, but changing it is. Further, given that the human clock, disconnected from day/night feedback, apparently treats 24.2 hours as a day.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_clock

>"the human clock, disconnected from day/night feedback"

I am saying the second was originally linked to length of day, so the calibrated clock should be used. Also, at some point the differences due to latitude changes, etc will be biologically indistinguishable from stuff like the effect of clouds.

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

#178

Post by nonbel »

gh02t wrote: post #132
nonbel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure there is nothing special about the duration of a second. It comes from dividing a day into two sets of 12, then those 12 into five sets of 12 (12x5=60), then those 60s into 60 each. We know our bodies do follow circadian rhythms, so you have the initial link to length of day. Then everything else is split into sets of 12, a number with exceptional properties that natural selection may optimize t…

> I wouldn't be so sure there is nothing special about the duration of a second. It comes from dividing a day into two sets of 12, then those 12 into five sets of 12 (12x5=60), then those 60s into 60 each. That's exactly why, actually. This is what the second was once defined as, but the problem is that the length of a day varies slightly - up to ~8s depending on the time of year and other seconds. As the article men…

>"It'd also be crazy hard to keep track of how long a second is at any given moment, since some of the variation is random from tidal forces."

I think you could use something like this, which may be accurate enough:

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

It may be more accurate to use something like the JPL ephemerides to convert between the two though:

https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/toolkit_docs/FORTRAN/req/...

Finally, the current definition of a second is meant to approximate the previous definition of a second. I am saying the previous one may have some correlation with biological activity.

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

#179

Post by MereInterest »

akira2501 wrote: post #161
johncolanduoni wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that definition was grandfathered in such that it matched the previous definition of a second up to the previously specified precision. You've just moved the arbitrary part to the number 9,192,631,770. The same thing was done for the meter (defined such that the speed of light is precisely 299,792,458 m/s), ampere (current which produces 2 × 10−7 N/m of force between two parallel conductors). There's plans to…

> current which produces 2 × 10−7 N/m of force between two parallel conductors Hate to be a stickler, but: "...conductors of negligible cross-section and of infinite length." It's still one of my least favorite SI definitions.

If anybody wants to read lots of commentary on units and their definitions, take a look at the data sheets for the Frink language. The ampere and the candela are two of the more irksome ones, as described by the author.

https://frinklang.org/frinkdata/units.txt

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

#180

Post by djsumdog »

soundwave106 wrote: post #155
dmix wrote: post #46

Decided to try searching this and found this lovely site: > A=432 Hz, known as Verdi’s ‘A’ is an alternative tuning that is mathematically consistent with the universe. Music based on 432Hz transmits beneficial healing energy, because it is a pure tone of math fundamental to nature https://attunedvibrations.com/432hz/ Oh new age pseudo science. My mom loves this stuff and I never fully understood why. My sister gets…

Tunings (whether by key shift or by reference frequency or whatever other means) can evoke a different sort of feeling and mood in music IMHO. Music is such a personal thing in so many ways, so even though the "beneficial healing energy" / "pure tone of math fundamental to nature" thing is kind of BS, I'll allow a little out there mystical pseudobabble. :) It's just a pity in a way that the mystical BS focuses only o…

Yea, I don't like this idea of belittling people because they got pulled into this idea.

Tuning is arbitrary. I've listened to some comparisons between A=432 vs 440 and I think the 440 actually sounds better. But then again, like this article even states, it depends so much on the piece. If you're listening to stuff from the 1700s/1800s, it would make sense to try to use the tuning they used at the time, if only to try to get the sense of emotion intended by the originally composers/arrangers/musicians (even then it's a best guess).

But yes, it is pretty arbitrary. It's the tuning of a note depended on the number of cycles per some arbitrary time unit we defined.

If you're listening to a song today, with all our sound precision technology, you're hearing it the way the original author/musicians wanted it to sound (depending on your equalizers, speakers and various other audio setup).

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