Flanging

Flanging /ˈflændʒɪŋ/ is an audio effect produced by mixing two identical signals together, one signal delayed by a small and gradually changing period, usually smaller than 20 milliseconds. This produces a swept comb filter effect: peaks and notches are produced in the resulting frequency spectrum, related to each other in a linear harmonic series. Varying the time delay causes these to sweep up and down the frequency spectrum. A flanger is an effects unit that creates this effect. In some cases the two signals will become so close that it almost fades away to oblivion called "sucking air." It has also been called the "Darth Vader effect."

Part of the output signal is usually fed back to the input (a "re-circulating delay line"), producing a resonance effect which further enhances the intensity of the peaks and troughs. The phase of the fed-back signal is sometimes inverted, producing another variation on the flanging sound.

Origin

Flanger (railroad)

A flanger clears the space between the rails, generally of ice and snow. This is important because if allowed to build up, it could seriously impede the motion of the train or even derail it. The flanger blade is lowered below the head of the rail, and so must be raised when the flanger comes to a switch or grade crossing. In regions were flangers are often used signs are posted alongside the tracks to alert the operators of this necessity. There are 2 different blades that go up and down (one that throws snow/ice to the right and one to the left).

Flanger (band)

The Flanger project was founded in 1997 by Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart) and Bernd Friedmann (aka Burnt Friedman), who have both been active in the music business since the early 1990s. The two musicians met up to program their first album Templates at Mira Musica, Santiago de Chile in 1997. Their musical goal was to generate their own vision of non-repetitive, organic and extremely complex music that is far removed from the well-trodden paths of techno and other established styles of so-called contemporary music.

Templates was released the following year (1999) on Ntone, together with separate 12-inch pressings of several tracks. Clearly electronic, it moved beyond dance or electronic formulas, tapping into the spirit of exploration that characterised jazz during the '60s.

The success of this debut album convinced Flanger to do a second LP, which was recorded in Santiago de Chile, in March 1999. Entitled Midnight Sound, this was released on Ntone November 2000. Also referred to as Midnight Sounds. Midnight Sounds was the original title (and project name) for this album, but its originally intended label, KIFF SM, shut down before it could be released. The release of Midnight Sound prompted Uwe Schmidt and Bernd Friedmann, who are renowned for their very special shows, to consider the idea of live Flanger presentations. Although their Fall 2001 Tour was recently postponed, they are still planning a series of live appearances around the world.

Modem

A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a network hardware device that modulates one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information for transmission and demodulates signals to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used with any means of transmitting analog signals, from light emitting diodes to radio. A common type of modem is one that turns the digital data of a computer into modulated electrical signal for transmission over telephone lines and demodulated by another modem at the receiver side to recover the digital data.

Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given unit of time, usually expressed in bits per second (symbol bit/s, sometimes abbreviated "bps"), or bytes per second (symbol B/s). Modems can also be classified by their symbol rate, measured in baud. The baud unit denotes symbols per second, or the number of times per second the modem sends a new signal. For example, the ITU V.21 standard used audio frequency shift keying with two possible frequencies, corresponding to two distinct symbols (or one bit per symbol), to carry 300 bits per second using 300 baud. By contrast, the original ITU V.22 standard, which could transmit and receive four distinct symbols (two bits per symbol), transmitted 1,200 bits by sending 600 symbols per second (600 baud) using phase shift keying.

Hayes command set

The Hayes command set is a specific command language originally developed by Dennis Hayes for the Hayes Smartmodem 300 baud modem in 1981.

The command set consists of a series of short text strings which can be combined to produce commands for operations such as dialing, hanging up, and changing the parameters of the connection. The vast majority of dial-up modems use the Hayes command set in numerous variations.

The command set covered only those operations supported by the earliest 300 bit/s modems. When new commands were required to control additional functionality in higher speed modems, a variety of one-off standards emerged from each of the major vendors. These continued to share the basic command structure and syntax, but added any number of new commands using some sort of prefix character – & for Hayes and USR, and \ for Microcom, for instance. Many of these re-standardized on the Hayes extensions after the introduction of the SupraFAXModem 14400 and the subsequent market consolidation that followed.

Modem (disambiguation)

A modem is a device that encodes and decodes digital data transmitted by a telephone or other analog communications system.

Modem may also refer to:

See also