new technique recording audio onto ceramic pot ...

pianokey88

pianokey88

New member
Did anyone see CSI Las Vegas on TV last night?

There was a scene that showed audio evidence gathered from the surface of a ceramic pot.

Texture was being applied to the pot with a whisk broom while it turned on the potters wheel. The suspect was talking to the potter and her vocal vibrations were transmitted to the broom fibers and then supposedly into the wet clay. The CSI scientists took the pot back to the lab and used a laser and some kind of fancy audio computer filter software to decipher what had been said while the pot was being made!

I wonder if there is any real situation of this being done? Seemed kind of far-fetched to me ...

dtb
 
I saw that and was wondering if it was possible as well. Kinda cool. Don't really believe it though.
 
It seems to me there would be too much background noise from the wheel's mechanism and the broom interacting with the surface. Then the force of the voice would only be acting on the tiny bristles instead of being focused like Edison's first gramaphones. Finally, the recording would only get one revolution because the broom overwrites everything each time the pot goes around.
 
yes i record audio onto my toilet all the time. the quality kicks the crap out of pro tools.
 
pianokey88 said:
Did anyone see CSI Las Vegas on TV last night?

There was a scene that showed audio evidence gathered from the surface of a ceramic pot.

Texture was being applied to the pot with a whisk broom while it turned on the potters wheel. The suspect was talking to the potter and her vocal vibrations were transmitted to the broom fibers and then supposedly into the wet clay. The CSI scientists took the pot back to the lab and used a laser and some kind of fancy audio computer filter software to decipher what had been said while the pot was being made!

I wonder if there is any real situation of this being done? Seemed kind of far-fetched to me ...

dtb
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YES. It is possible. This same technique is used by the FBI and the CIA to pick up conversations using a laser on the window of the room. Th eLaser vibrates visually so that a computer recognition program ca compile an audio waveform. If the broom fibers were small enough and stiff enouigh then they would act like a needle on a record and transmit these vibrations to the grooves they are making in the clay. Not impossible but very probable.
 
funny, yesterday i was reading online about mechanical transducers. then i watched CSI last night. very possible, i think. we should use this process on ancient pottery. maybe we could hear some of the early conversations... that would be cool!
 
yeah it's just like the old gramaphones recording on to wax... except that was designed to record the vibrations/sound and the pots were not... so a little bit tougher, but it's possible. it would be cool if we could hear voices of ancient civilizations, but quite frightening I think. in fact I think there was another show where they claimed to use this technique to hear the voice of jesus.
 
I didn't claim I heard it or that I believed it, just something I saw on one of those CSI type shows. Someone claimed that the voice that was heard using that technique was Jesus'. Now personally, I don't even go to church. If I had to pick a religion, this would be it right here - music.
 
This reminds me of a demonstration I went to at the Library of Congress a couple of years ago. These guys had developed a technique whereby they could retrieve audio from scanning discs & cylinders. It was really wild.
 
I wonder how long it takes for the inevitable debates to spawn over which medium is "warmer," clay or ceramic ?
 
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MadAudio said:
This reminds me of a demonstration I went to at the Library of Congress a couple of years ago. These guys had developed a technique whereby they could retrieve audio from scanning discs & cylinders. It was really wild.
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really? was the disc a piece of clear polycarbonate plastic molded with pits and lands?? and then scanned with a laser reading the pits and lands and converting them into 1's and 0's??!!
:p
 
Doesn't anyone else think that the rotational errors, and thermal interference, and random air moving across the surface, and actual material impurities in the clay's composition would create FAR more vibrational patterns than the very weak force of airborn audio? Seems to me that all you'd get would be a lot of crap noise which would be impossible to distinguish from speech. Oops, there's a blob of harder clay in that spot, no audio... oops, it turned a little slower there, indistinguishable audio... oops, a mosquito landed on the clay there and made pits in it... oops, someone farted in China and the Earth shook slightly...

I rate is as highly unlikely.

This isn't the same as a laser mic, which will sense small vibrations on an ALREADY-FORMED hard, flat, dense, edge-suspended surface such as glass.

Investigators would also have to know the EXACT rotational speed of the pottery, probably to many decimal places. I'll admit I didn't see the episode so I'm not sure if this was accounted for. There's also the aforementioned issue of the old vibrations being replaced every time it rotates, which probably only allows about the final second or two of audio.

And what happens to the clay when it dries? Something tells me that a lot of the smaller pits and grooves get filled or stretched.
 
chessrock said:
I wonder how long it takes for the inevitable debates to spawn over which medium is "warmer," clay or ceramic ?
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Depends on whether it was recorded at 24 or 96...
 
bleyrad said:
Doesn't anyone else think...
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Dude, I've been holding back in this all day.

That's dumber than most McGyver tricks or the time Steve Austin pulled down a helicopter. How fast do those wheels go? 120 RPM? So you'd have like a half-second. And there's no stinkin' way any of them bristles would be pushed back and forth by the sound enough to be differentiated from everything else that's pushin' bristles.
 
Bottom line here, is that it was a television show. Things get distorted on TV, and they are making something that could be a reality; a reality... I like that show, and I've been in a real crime lab that was operated by NCIS back when they were simply known as NIS. The print lifting, DNA testing is all based on real technique. But some of it is just good television and that's all...
 
BentRabbit said:
So....

In your opinion, what's the best ancient clay pot with Jesus' voice on it for under $200?

:cool:
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Anything well over 2000 years old and manufactured in Jeruselam...
 
In a somewhat related but still off-topic note:

I saw some Japanese clay pots that were made into stereo speakers. They actually sounded pretty decent, but are more of a decorative thing than high quality audio.
 
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