hearing things

is it you or the rack

20 HP

A stereo insert that makes you doubt your rack. As its calm drains, a cable seems to come out, the power sags, it reboots, a hum creeps in, a note from a minute ago plays again in a gap. None of it is real, each one passes, and CALM brings it all back.

The HEARING THINGS panel: black, gold dots of an old plaster wall from edge to edge, lit from above, flaking, a damp stain spreading down the middle, and one long crack that runs down from the light under the name, splits between the two big knobs and runs out to both edges; the crack is a window of bare circuit board in 30 lengths. LEFT and RIGHT in at the top corners, DREAD and DOUBT either side of the crack, their CV jacks at the edges under the ins, FEAR and CALM's jacks at the edges either side of CALM's button under the split, BLAME's switch in the stain under it, NERVE and WRONG out either side of it, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot corners. hearing things at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it or tap either side of it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. BLAME clicks round its five stops the same way. CALM is a button: press it. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A dark loop in E minor, the whole mix through HEARING THINGS. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything HEARING THINGS does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. The loop is a stand-in rack.

The calm

While it's calm, nothing touches the sound. The calm drains: by itself, a little with every FEAR, and faster in a long silence. The crack in the wall grows as it goes, from the middle out to the edges. Each time the calm falls past a fifth of the way down, something goes wrong for sure; the lower it gets, the more often things go wrong by themselves.

DREAD, the big knob: how fast the calm drains and how often things go wrong. Fully left, never: the sound comes out exactly as it went in. At noon the calm lasts about two minutes and then something's wrong now and then; fully right it's gone in eight seconds and the rack falls apart every second or two.
DREAD, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
FEAR: a trigger. Each one takes a little of the calm: patch the kick.
CALM, a lit button and its trigger: all well again, at once. Whatever's wrong fades back to the sound in a hundredth of a second, never a click, and the crack goes dark. Its cap glows while something's wrong.

What goes wrong

DOUBT, the big knob: how convincing the faults are. Fully left they're plainly put on: they wait for the beat, their edges are smooth, a phantom comes back washed and to one side. Turned up, more of them are the real thing, longer and uglier: fully right, a dead cable for seconds with the crackle of the jack, a sag of more than a tone, a phantom as loud as when you played it.
DOUBT, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
BLAME, a five-way switch: what's to blame. Fully left the rack; then the rack and the room; at noon everything; then the room and you; fully right only you.
The rack: a cable seems to come out (the scratch of a jack, dead, then pushed back in); the power sags (the pitch droops and the level dips with a buzz, then it catches up); it reboots (a click, nothing, a soft pop, the sound fading back up); one side dies; one side drifts late and snaps back.
The room: a mains hum creeps in; the volume sinks, creeps back and is suddenly normal; your own sound plays faintly through the wall, from the next room.
You: a note you played a while ago plays again in a gap, as if the rack played it; the last moment plays again; something old plays faintly under the present.

None of it is ever louder than what came in or clips, every one ends, and then the sound is exactly what came in. The crack joins in: it dims with a sag, goes dark for a reboot, loses a side with a side, and a glint runs along it when a phantom comes.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the sound, with whatever's wrong with it.
NERVE: the calm as a voltage, 8 V calm to nothing left, so the rest of the rack can feel it go.
WRONG: a gate, high while something's wrong, so the rest of the rack can fail along.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 2 big knobs, a five-way switch, a lit button

Inputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty
FEAR, CALM: triggers, rising past 1 V
DREAD, DOUBT: CVs, each added to its knob, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, never louder than what came in
NERVE: CV, 0 to 8 V
WRONG: gate, 0/5 V