An Audacious idea!

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ChrisGreaves
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An Audacious idea!

Post by ChrisGreaves »

Now this is exciting.

I have begun dabbling in macros in Audacity 3.1.3, and while I continue to wallow in Turing Machines, work on my Turing Machine interpreter is suspended while I devote my energy to Audacity Macros. Then I thought: Why not combine the two interests?

In essence, a Turing Machine is an abstract machine that can read and write from/to an infinitely long paper-tape, and can move about that tape reading values back. In programming terms we might describe it thus: Move head to Right and report on what is there; Move head to Left and report on what is there; Print a Space, or a Zero or a One. Not much to it, eh? But we all use Turing Machines every day, for a Turing Machine is a Computer Program, and all members of Eileen’s Lounge use computers (else, how could you be a member?)

The smart ones among you can stop reading now, because you have seen where this is heading.

Audacity doesn’t use paper tape, or even magnetic tape. It uses “tracks” which can be thought of as magnetic tape, but are actually RAM memory, of which I have only 4,000,000,000 bytes at 8 bits each. Sadly.

But Audacity can record "tones” in a variety of frequencies (440cps, 880cps and so on), and one can select specific portions of a track. So I pondered, “Why not record tones of 0, 440, or 880 cps in one-second blocks along the track? Audacity can read them back, so if 0 cps represented a <space> and 440cps represented a <zero>, and 880 cps represented a <one>, then I could read and write zeroes and ones along a tape. Not infinite, I grant you, but pretty long, and at a sample rate of 44100 Hz and an export rate of 128 kbps in mono, well (counts on fingers), I figured if I stored data in chunks not of one second but of 1/10th or even 1/100th of a second (I don’t have to listen to it, do I?) and used not 0/440/880cps as values but instead used 0/1/2 cps (well, obviously that wouldn’t work if I were recording 1n units of 1/100th of a second, but the concept is sound (nice one, Chris!). Well!

I could fit a LOT of Turing Machine tape into four gigabytes of RAM. More if I manage my own swap files (500GB).
What could I do with such a machine? Well, my copy of WORD2003 is a file "WinWord.exe" which at 12,022 KB should be doable as 96,176,000 bits.

Once I write a simple Turing Machine interpreter in Audacity I could have my own copy of Word2003.

Let Microsoft try to upgrade me THEN! :evilgrin:

Cheers
Chris
An expensive day out: Wallet and Grimace