Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation & the ability of resonant frequencies in music to alter physical objects

[TubularCorporation]

Oh, that makes sense.  They had a couple of those giant, 70s hard drives in a storage closet when I was in college. They're the kind you had to keep perfectly level because the platters actually floated on a cusion of air or something while they were spinning (or maybe it was the head that floated, I forget), so even a little tilt would make them self destruct. I bet they couldn't even handle hearing Tito Jackson.

Edited August 19, 2022 by TubularCorporation

[Taupe Beats]

I mean, it's 2022 and I'm not sure the tech's there where anyone can handle hearing Tito Jackson.

[ArtificialDisco]

2 hours ago, Taupe Beats said:

Some random person at a rave back in 1999 once gave me a detailed explanation on how to turn an old hard drive disc into a gong. It was fascinating but I was way too high to retain any of the information. But the concept of an old hard drive disc as a gong stuck with me. Anyone know anything about this? I have never seen any info online to support this claim.

Put it in your drum kit for the most obscure cymbal ever.

"What is that, Zildjian?"

"No, no, it's Hewlett Packard!"

[chim]

19 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

This reminds me of a few years ago when they demonstrated a proof-of-concept virus that could jump between computers acoustically.

There was a Radiolab episode that brought up side-channel attacks, meaning that you could glean passwords using hi-tech microphones aimed at the processor or even monitoring the power draw of a computer. Cool and a little creepy. I wouldn't put it past mechanical components like a HDD to have a number of quirky flaws, whether it's crashing from a Janet Jackson song or accidentally broadcasting your bitcoin wallet. 

[Alcofribas]

I have reason to believe brian tregaskin will soon weigh in on this

[auxien]

26 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

I have reason to believe brian tregaskin will soon weigh in on this

is it because he’s an Adam Neely YT watcher like me?

case solved supposedly, and it’s the bassline? unexpected if true.

[Alcofribas]

9 minutes ago, auxien said:

is it because he’s an Adam Neely YT watcher like me?

case solved supposedly, and it’s the bassline? unexpected if true.

correct 

[zkom]

An audio frequency causing trouble with a high precision electro-mechanical device like a hard drive sounds entirely plausible. And bass frequencies being the culprit sounds about right because their absolute amplitude is higher in music in general and they travel better in solids like in the laptop case and the components inside.

The part about removing the frequency is very vague but I would assume it's some kind of band-stop filter in the audio device's firmware. If it's in the Windows driver level or in the windows audio pipeline it should be possible to cause the crash by installing Linux and playing the song there.

Most resonance problems I've come across at work though have been due to electro-magnetic resonance.