100000 wops

EsonLinji

I recently had an idea that I'm trying to get going. I'm looking to get some technical advice and a few contributions from anyone willing.

First, the idea. In the third book of the Hitchhiker's trilogy, Life, The Universe, And Everything, there is a ship that makes a noise described as "the sound of 100000 people all saying wop at the same time". I want to know what that sound actually is. So I'm trying to get 100000 people to record themselves saying "wop" and send it to me, and I'll combine these into one big mess of a sound file.

At the moment I'm using GarageBand, but I'll probably upgrade to something a bit more serious as this gets going. I think I'm going to want to use something like the "make Rym and Scott smarter" filter that adjusts the length of silences to help sync up all the wops.

So, if anyone wants to contribute, check out the site at http://100000wops.googlepages.com or just email your wop to 100000wops@gmail.com

Thanks.

Sail

Haha. Why not? I'll do it now.

Omnutia

When I'm back in windows (or miracle of miracles, linux sound works) I'll get you a wop. Wait for the Digg rush hour and post this. It might be popular.
As an afterthought, you should get some flash application to let people record directly to the site.

...

Dugg, and isn't that the sound of something suddenly appearing? For iirc, the Cricket ship just teleports around. Anyways, sounds awesome Good luck.

Neito

Dugg, and isn't that the sound of something suddenly appearing?

Yes. If I remember it right, the sound of it disappearing is 100,000 pows.

Rym

I'll warn you. Without careful dynamics processing, this is going to sound an awful lot like digital distortion. You'll need a lot of headroom, and I'd suggest you use panning extensively. A stereo-separation effect would do you well, as would a slight staggering of the beginnings and ends of the samples.

Also, sadly, the best way to get this is to record maybe 100 people. More than that won't make it sound any different. My advice would be to lie about how many of the voices you actually use, selecting only the well-recorded ones.

/reality ;^)