Ian, as far as I know, under most Uni*s you can simply write binary data to /dev/audio and it will play (http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=65073 or http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/cant-hear-sound-from -cat-dev-urandom-dev-audio-883996/) music or noises if the system is correctly configured and depending on what you send to it.
Then there's /dev/dsp (http://www.opensound.com/pguide/audio.html) and I don't know enough to tell you the difference between /dev/audio and /dev/dsp (in the days when I mainly played with Linux, computers didn't come with a soundcard and I couldn't afford one). I don't know if MacOSX is Uni* enough to come equipped with those devices in its filesystem... -- Stefano > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:programming- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Ian Clark > Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 5:26 PM > To: Programming forum > Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Music of the spheres > > Thanks, David. > > A 1980s microcomputer offered a built-in function to do this as a matter of > course. That was back in the days when we thought it smart to play Three > Blind Mice with a sequence of beeps. But nowadays such a simple facility > seems to have dropped off the menu. If I knew more UNIX I suspect it > wouldn't be a problem. > > If nobody knows a straightforward way I'll have to fiddle with one of the more > involved ways you suggest. Like outputting a WAV file and then playing it. > Audacity will indeed generate me a 1 sec WAV of any spot-frequency -- in any > waveform I like -- and also tell me the name of the nearest musical note. I've > used it before for the 7 classical planets. They chime pretty well together (a > fact that historically cried out for explanation). > > But I don't know how to use Audacity like a driver. And I was hoping for a > more general facility, to grace a series of simple math articles. > > I didn't know OEIS offered a way to play any number sequence as a sound > (thanks for that) -- but Mathematica certainly does. The Riemann Zeta > function sounds really spacey. > > Mathematicians are shy of admitting the utility of "displaying" a time-series > in this way. Applied to market prices, you might even be able to train your ear > to hear the crash coming. :-) > > > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 1:01 PM, David Ward Lambert > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'd recommend nyquist or nyquist + audacity if I could figure out how > > to use them. You'd have the choice of synthesized instruments as well > > as a sine wave, and many output formats. > > > > There must be a way via web browser, I'm sure you're aware the the > > online encyclopedia of integer sequences provides an option to play > > the sequence. > > > > I apologize for responding---I do not know the answer. > > > > Dave. > > > > Message: 5 > > Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 04:21:05 +0100 > > From: Ian Clark <[email protected]> > > Subject: [Jprogramming] Music of the spheres > > To: Programming forum <[email protected]> > > Message-ID: > > > > > <[email protected] > ail.com> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > > > If I have a noun: 194.18 > > (the value, in Hz, as it happens, of the 24th octave above the > > "musical note" of the solar day... other planetary periods to be > > substituted) > > does anyone have a simple way of generating a brief audible tone of > > that frequency? > > > > Mac or Unix please, not Win. > > > > Just a verb to emit the sound will be fine for now. Generating a WAV > > file to play conventionally is a likely future requirement. > > > > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
