Voices from vehicles

January 11, 2021 8:54 AM

Using lag-free analog electronics and an FM transmitter, Alberta's "Luminous Voices" perform choral music together from their cars.
posted by fantabulous timewaster (9 comments total)

Always satisfying to watch a good idea spreading.
posted by flabdablet at 9:08 AM on January 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

Analog will never die... awesome!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 10:47 AM on January 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

I had seen the previous post so I skipped this one this morning. Then I went in and watched some of the videos. Really nice.
And they were still outside in Alberta in December.
posted by MtDewd at 11:35 AM on January 11, 2021

Not being able to stand-up must annoying for most choir singers.
posted by rh at 11:43 AM on January 11, 2021

Haven't watched yet, but is the technology of the future basically 1978's Mr Microphone from Ronco?
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:24 PM on January 11, 2021

Not being able to stand-up must annoying for most choir singers.
IME a lot of things about it aren't optimal, but it's better than the alternative.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 3:10 PM on January 11, 2021

Beautiful!

It reminds me a bit of how digital goggles are slowly taking over analog in FPV flying, but for a long time only analog UHF video transmitters were up to the task. I wonder if the pandemic spurs audio companies to produce similar low latency digital recording tools.
posted by Popular Ethics at 4:39 PM on January 11, 2021

This would be a cool idea for HAM radio, except the FCC prohibits music on amateur frequencies unless incidental to retransmission of manned spacecraft transmissions. I guess you could do spoken word.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:14 PM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Regarding ham radio, there's a bit of a discussion here about what constitutes music.

My understanding is that the prohibition on 'music' in the amateur radio service is intended to prevent *broadcasting*, and as such it may be just fine for people to 'communicate' by singing harmony (if they're observing all the other rules about station identification &c.). I bet it hasn't been tested, though.
posted by jpziller at 3:26 AM on January 16, 2021