The Halt Tape - Humming Sound - What is that noise?

[Observer]

Redsocks

Ian Ridpath may still be vindicated with his light house theory.
Sorry Colonel, I've just realised that i was chasing a light house beam, we could never defend that.

Obs

[redsocks]

Redsocks

Ian Ridpath may still be vindicated with his light house theory.
Sorry Colonel, I've just realised that i was chasing a light house beam, we could never defend that.

Obs

Hear what you are saying Lt Col and yes it was pretty stupid........you ever heard of the word "smoke screen" Charles?.... trouble is it may take over your whole life......you know the airmen will have to join in as well to give it some weight........


Redsocks

[Observer]

Redsocks

We could make this into a play, will you write the script, but i want production rites.

Obs

[redsocks]

Redsocks

We could make this into a play, will you write the script, but i want production rites.

Obs

Yeah 50/40 sounds good, any other takers to make a few quid just think of the chat show/docu possibilities!!


Redsocks

[Observer]

Redsocks

Just be careful you don't nick any of Spielberg's script or we will both be in the mire.

Obs

[redsocks]

Redsocks

Just be careful you don't nick any of Spielberg's script or we will both be in the mire.

Obs

I dont think that would work twice Obs surely people cant be that stupid....................

Redsocks

[AdrianF]

On one of the breaks in the tape, there is a sound like a piano. When isolated it sounds to me like a C, then D, then E, followed by C again, it then drops an octave and goes up a perfect fifth....


Adrian

[AdrianF]

That one was for owners of a piano and a sense of humour.

Seriously though, the original recording, or cleaned version from 'Strange but True' is a completely different beast from the version that is available on line. Trying to pass further judgement on the low fi version is pretty pointless IMO, there is clearly a lot more to be heard on the cleaned version.

Adrian

[redsocks]

On one of the breaks in the tape, there is a sound like a piano. When isolated it sounds to me like a C, then D, then E, followed by C again, it then drops an octave and goes up a perfect fifth....Adrian

Adrian . . . that's the theme from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - eeekk !

Lol at Silvertop, but it does sound somewhat the theme from close encounters!

Redsocks

[Observer]

I can remember some problems we had with mics if we were too near neon light tubes. It caused a hum through the PA, we thought it was feed back at first until we moved the mic further away from the tubes and it stopped. I honestly cannot remember what type of mics we had. I am not technically minded like some of you boffins so i have no idea.

Obs

[DoRayEgon]

Hiya Adrian/Silvertop,
I did just post a reply, but gremlins seem to have eaten it, so If this appears twice you'll know why!
Ok, I've just joined photbucket so I can give links to the screengrabs I've just made.
It is over twenty years now since I had a chat with Charles Halt ... and so I can sympathise with contributors that were at the incident being expected to have total recall ... here is what I remember. Col Halt did show a pocket recorder to me for a few second and claimed it was the one he used. I have no reason to doubt him - and since he had taken the trouble to bring a cast of a landing mark with him, I think the odds are good. It seemed to be an early, well made olympus pearlcorder - I didn't take much note at the time other than thinking ' ah it's one of those'.
It is my opinion that the tape was previously recorded and that some of the odd noises that occasionally appear (piano music, footsteps etc) are either as a result of tape misalignment at stop/start points or bleedthrough when not completely over written when re-recorded (partial tape hysterysis).
Ok the spectrogram shows a well defined single tone at 1.9khz and a maximm recording bandwidth of around 6khz. This is what you would expect as top end response for a pocket recorder ... pretty good actually.
http://i481.photobucket.com/albums/rr173/winkeech/tone.jpg
The peripheral sound levels seem remarkably high for a simple omni mic - I don't know the provenance of the tape, but it looks to me as though the audio was run through a compressor and a noise filter prior to mp3 compression. That would make sense.

I then made a recording of the sound made by a gen 1 plus scope - recorded at a distance of half to one inch away from the scope body. I have uploaded it here on youtube:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=10c7BEEG_cA
as you can hear it has a much wider sound spectrum than the single tone on Halt's recording and generaly sounds lower ... but there is a single tone peak at around 3khz, which can be seen on the spectrogram ... which is here at:
http://i481.photobucket.com/albums/rr173/winkeech/experiment.jpg
As we can see, the overall frequency response of this recorder is identical to Halt's original (around 6 khz top end) and so it looks as though he really did record it on his pocket recorder ... or went to a lot of trouble and fine detail in a studio afterwards ... for me, everything points to it being as he described - nothing I see here contradicts his assertation.
Hope that is of some help,
and I hope the reply posts correctly this time!
best wishes, Win.

My Gen 1 makes a smilar noise, it didn't do it as bad at first but after a few torch episodes it started, then after exposure to a bright light it got a lot louder (strangely enough while looking at the lighthouse ), , i put it down to overloading thingy in the thing that does the thing that makes it work? (sorry no tech speek ).
It does it with or without the IR on, i have an identical one (bought at the same time in 1993 ish ?) that's quiet as a mouse in comparison but has only been used twice, the noisy one has been round redlesham a few times over the years and still works ok but TBH it only gets a hours use a year max (ever tried walking through a forest at night with one eye in full night vision mode and the other a green haze makes for funny veiws, twisted ankles and concussion