pecking order by daylight noise

pecking order

everyone knows their place

20 HP

A mixer for eight parts where you don't set levels: you set who's on top. Patch them in at anything from a whisper to 10 V and it seats each one a step under the hen above her, then holds her there like a fader would. One that pokes up past the rung above is pecked straight back down.

The order

Eight hens on a roost, a part in each. I is the top rung and VIII the bottom, in the jacks' order. Whatever's in the top hen leads, and every hen under her is seated a step quieter than the one above.

TOP, an eight-stop switch: which hen leads. The rest keep their order under her, so TOP on V reads V, I, II, III, IV, VI, VII, VIII.

TOP's jack: 1 V a rung, added to the switch. A sequencer hands the lead round: the voice for the verse, the lead for the break, and back.

TOP's dots are lights: the one lit is the hen on top, wherever the jack has put her.

Finding her place

I to VIII: audio, up to ±10 V. Each is heard the way a loudness meter hears, and only while she's making a sound.

STEP, the big knob: how far apart the rungs are. Fully left all eight are one loudness, a wall with nobody in front; at noon 3 dB a rung; at full 6 dB, so VIII sits 42 dB under I.

A new part's first notes only ever come down. In about three seconds she's found her place, and after that her level is hers: a swell, a fade or a quiet verse is left as a fader would leave it. She's only moved if she's 6 dB under her place for a while, or 3 dB over it.

Silence is never turned up. A part that stops keeps her place for when she comes back.

The peck: a hen that gets past the rung above hers is turned straight back down. Three quarters of what's over comes off within a few hundredths of a second, and she's let back up over a third of a second.

The lights: each hen's rung glows with her level against her place, so a ladder lit evenly is a mix that's sitting. Her head flares when she's pecked.

The yard

WIDTH: each part's low end stays in the middle. Her top goes where her rung puts her: the top three in the middle, a lead, a kick and a snare; the next four out in pairs, wider down the roost; the bottom one in the middle, at the back. WIDTH says how far out.

BACK sends the lower rungs back into the room: darker on top, and more of each to AWAY. The top hen none of it, the bottom all of it.

HOME, left and right: the room coming back. Patch a reverb from AWAY to HOME. It joins the mix as it is, unranked, before the roof; another PECKING ORDER's mix can come home here too.

The roof

ROOF: the drive into the roof, from 24 dB under it to 12 dB into it, 6 dB under at noon, quiet enough to be another one's submix. The roof is 5 V, and it looks a millisecond and a half ahead, so nothing gets out over it.

The light through the cracks in the roof is how hard it's holding, from the ridge out.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with the jacks, the knobs, TOP's switch, 40 LEDs and the whole circuit on its front. Each rung, each head and each crack in the roof has its own cell in a black printed baffle, so a lit rung never lights the hen beside it. TOP's eight dots are lit from a small ring board round the switch's shaft, closed off from the rungs by a black printed cup. Three converters hear all ten inputs at once, 46,875 times a second, and an RP2350 mixes them on one core and runs the lights on the other.

The PECKING ORDER panel lit: every hen's rung lit evenly, a head flaring where a hen's just been pecked, light through the roof's cracks, its knobs, its switch and its jacks.

Drag it or use the arrow keys to turn it; click it to take it apart.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Depth: 20.8 mm behind the panel, plus the power cable's plug
+12 V: about 60 mA dark, 160 mA with the ladder sitting and the roof idle, 240 mA at the most (estimated)
−12 V: about 3 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 3 knobs, an eight-stop switch

I/O

I to VIII: the hens: audio, ±10 V, read to ±12 V; unpatched, silent
HOME: the return, left and right: audio, the same
TOP: CV, 1 V a rung, added to the switch, read to ±12 V
LEFT, RIGHT: the mix: audio, never over 5 V
AWAY: the send: audio, to ±10 V

Engine

Brain: RP2350 at 46,875 Hz, 32-bit float
The mix: digital: each hen from 5 Hz, flat to 15 kHz, 1 dB down at 18 kHz (estimated)
In to out: about 4 ms, 1.5 of it the roof looking ahead
The order: every hen's place, seat and peck 1,465 times a second
Light: 48 white LEDs, 180 frames a second
Power cycle: every hen new to the roost; only the calibration is kept