Hi everyone. I am a brand new owner of a Kasina, and I wrote to Andrew in support with some unusual questions about combining short excerpts of several Kasina sessions, similar to what Saswing did with his spectrastrobe sampler here: http://www.mindplacesupport.com/foru...ectra-sessions. I will paste in my questions and Andrews answers below in case any one has some further ideas on how to go about this:
Here is what I wrote to Andrew:
I really like the track "Audio Illusions" in the Audiostrobe folder because, as I mentioned, it has a lot of musical interest, mostly because the music changes a lot as the track plays. I was thinking of making my own "mix tapes" made up of short segments of the various tracks on the Kasina, as well as tracks I have downloaded from the forum and soundcloud. So for example, I could start with 20-30 seconds of a quiet peaceful piece from the meditate category, and then segue into 20-30 seconds of a more upbeat piece from the mind art category, followed by 30 seconds of one of the pieces I downloaded from the forums, and so on. I would use an audio editor like Audacity to combine the excerpts from several tracks into a single mp3.
So my questions are:
1- If I take shorter excerpts from the Spectrastrobe tracks, will the spectrastrobe encoding still work to control the lights? Or is the spectrastrobe encoding located all at the beginning of the complete (long) tracks?
2-If the spectrastrobe encoding is distributed throughout each track, then do you think I can overlap two Spectrastrobe tracks....i.e. fade out the older track and fade in the newer track kind of like how a DJ does it at a dance party? Or will that confuse the Kasina to have two sets of spectrastrobe instructions playing at the same time? If I need to, I could just fade the first track out completely before fading in the second track. But it could be nice to have the tracks overlap for more continuity.
3- And what about combining Audiostrobe and Spectrastrobe excerpts in the same "mix tape"? Will the Kasina be able to sense the change of encoding and automatically switch from say audiostrobe to spectrastrobe and back?
I will completely understand if you do not know the answers, as these are not the usual kind of questions. I just find that after a minute or two of peaceful forest sounds, I am ready for something different (even just a slight change to ocean sounds or binaural beats can help keep it from being monotonous). Again, that is why I like the Audio Illusions track because the musical content shifts around a lot. I am hoping I can create my own combination tracks using the sessions that have already been created for the Kasina. Thanks for taking the time with questions from a new user of the Kasina!
And here is Andrew's reply:
I'm glad to hear that you were able to download some of the free tracks and are looking to expand your collection.
To answer your questions:
1. SpectraStrobe and AudioStrobe are encodings that happen in real-time within the tracks. Editing the sessions should not affect the existing encoding signals, however, I would highly recommend that you use an editor which can edit the .mp3 files directly without decompressing and recompressing. The de-compression/re-compression procedure may introduce anomolies in the encoding, or reduce the quality of the encoding.
If you must decompress, then do it to a .wav file and do not re-encode the file to .mp3 after editing. The file will be bigger, but you won't lose any quality or encoding that way.
2. You should give it a try and see how it works. Best way to find out is by experimenting.
I'm sure others would be very interested in your findings and perhaps others have done the same thing. Why not register at the forums and discuss what you're doing? Others may be able to suggest ideas and/or learn from what you are doing. I think it's a great topic for the forum.
Enjoy!
If anyone has any more ideas or suggestions, please chime in. Thanks!
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