Excel beeps

[Bill Ballard]

At 9:04 PM -0800 1/2/03, Jason Kanter wrote:
>Please give it a try...
>...........
>..  jason kanter . jason.kanter@wamu.net . jkanter@rollingball.com
>
>>  At 4:06 PM -0800 1/1/03, Jason Kanter wrote:
>>  >Anyone know how to program Visual Basic in Excel to produce x beeps
>>  >per second?
>>
>>  I could write it as a loop in my database.
>>
>>  Bill Ballard RPT
>>  NH Chapter, P.T.G.
>>
>>  "Trust me, you've got all the equipment, You just need to read the manual"
>>       ...........Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde"
>>  +++++++++++++++++++++
>>

What it would involve is a unit of sound (.wav or .aaif) say 1/30 
long. Then set up a "counter" variable to cycle things through the 
correct number of loops, and one for the number of bps desired (not 
nec . a whole number). One you've set the number of bps you want t 
hear, that deterimnes a timed loop, in which the period is the 
inverse of the bps. Whatever the period of the beat rate (and that 
could even be input as +/- ¢ with an anchor frequency), the time 
consumed by the 0.033 second sine wave .wav  would remain constant. 
For 2.5 pbs, it would be 8.25% of the 0.4 sec period.

That's how I would do it. I have no idea whether the database app's 
connection to the OS would have its own inefficiency. 'Puter 
telephone dialing involves a delay of 4 sec between execution and the 
internal modem dialing out. It's not just my database, it's the Palm 
Desktop's phone dialer behaving that way too.

Whether or not I could do it might or might not be useful to you. I'm 
sure you don't have the Mac OS, and even if if polished up the 
beat-rate generator real swell, it would still be just a database 
file required the app to run it. The cross-platform version of this 
database does exist, but the value of such a eat-rate generator would 
probably be far less than the price to you of the database to run it. 
(Although for $50, I could register a run-time file distributed only 
by the database's web site.)

I agree it would be a fun project. Say, you wouldn't need this this 
to be learning arual tuning by any chance? <g>

Mr. Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"I gotta go ta woik...."
     ...........Ian Shoales, Duck's Breath Mystery Theater
+++++++++++++++++++++