# IOTTMCO

Intuitively Obvious to the Most Casual Observer

## Visualizing audio hacks

The other day, an interesting hack came up on #archlinux:

echo "main(i){for(i=0;;i++)putchar(((i*i>>8&46&i>>8))^i&i>>13);}" |
gcc -x c - && ./a.out | aplay

It’s a quick one-liner that compiles a simple C program and plays its output as audio. Each byte of output will be treated as a new sample. The interesting part is the C program itself - the ith sample is produced by the expression

((i*i>>8&46&i>>8)^i&i>>13)%256

(The extra modulus at the end serves to discard all but the low byte.) This simple expression produces some very, very bad music - but my computer standards, it’s quite good, especially when you take into account the simplicity of the generator.

As a way of understanding this (and other simple hacks), I whipped up a simple visualizer, providing the FOutier transform as well as the actual audio.

In addition to the default, and the expressions suggested on that page, you might also try i*i>>11. Some “stable” tones are also interesting, like i << (i%6 - 5).