I ask all this, because I’d like to have better control over the audio quality of Ghost Box sessions. It’s advised to keep the recorder physically away from the Ghost Box, as to decrease interference caused by the recorder. An external Ghost Box is going to need a separate recording device to be able to record both the questions I’m asking and the results from the Ghost Box in one audio file. This is bad because the results from the Ghost Box are going to be muddled with my voice due to not being a direct line into the recording software. This means I’m going to have one audio file where the responses I get will have to be isolated from my own speech. Wow, what a mess. I have seen a few people already asking how to clean up Ghost Box audio. So, I’m looking for a more elegant solution.
So, my idea is this. Have two recordings going on simultaneously. One recording the direct audio input from a USB based AM/FM tuner dongle. The other recording through a regular microphone. The regular microphone will record my speech as I ask questions, as well as the Ghost Box playing. But, the other audio will record only the radio input from the USB dongle. Thus, the responses will be isolated to their own audio file that can be reviewed next to the microphone audio, but will be free of my speech and other room noise and thus be a pure sample.
I have used Audacity for some time now for simple audio editing work and am decently familiar with it in that respect. However, I am curious to see if there is any way to turn the program and the computer running it into a Ghost Box.
“A ghost box is a communication tool used by some investigators to speak to the other side. Typically, a ghost box is a modified portable AM/FM radio that continously scans the band. When on, it is believed to create white noise and audio remnants from broadcast stations that entities are able to manipulate to create words and even entire sentences.”
So, it appears to me, that at least a basic Ghost Box would simply be an AM/FM radio antenna that constantly scans the bands for white noise. I’ve looked at physical boxes designed for this, like the SB7, and it looks like standard features would also include being able to change the scan rate, as well as sweep forward and in reverse across the bands.
I see where there are USB based AM/FM tuners with an antenna that I can buy online. This would seem ideal. However, I am unsure of what the process would be to configure such a setup.
I’d like to create a situation wherein Audacity can record from the USB based antenna input as well as from a standard microphone simultaneously. I have no problem recording from a standard microphone. But, have never tried using a radio antenna like this and am unsure if Audacity has any built-in features to control scanning radio stations from such a device.
If so, can Audacity be configured to rapidly scan stations to create the white noise type of effect that these physical boxes utilize?
I’ve never purchased any AM/FM USB dongle before and am unsure of what drivers/other software might be needed to operate them. I am running a GNU+Linux system, It’s called Pure OS and it’s Debian based. So, driver compatibility might also be an issue here.
Has anyone ever tried anything like this before? I mean, it seems simple. But, it might be more complicated that it seems. All I’m really looking to do is send an AM/FM audio signal in place of a Microphone to Audacity to record and then make it rapidly scan bands. If nothing else, I could always just launch a second instance of Audacity to record the standard Microphone. So, I don’t know, how hard would this be?
Would I be better of just getting a physical Ghost Box? It just seems like the ones I’m looking at are so basic. I havn’t seen any, to my knowledge, that would record the radio sound signal to internal flash memory to be isolated and extracted later via a USB cable as my standard handheld voice recorder does. So, as far as I can tell, the external voice recorded that’s catching my voice and all the other sounds in the room will be the only thing documenting the Ghost Box responses. This just seems like such a bad idea, as this could potentially corrupt the audio quality/integrity of the responses. (Such as me unintentionally talking over the responses and then not being able to go back and sort out my speech from what the box is saying.) Thus rendering the set up pretty pointless. There has to be some way of isolating the interview audio from the box audio. That’s why I was hoping I could set something like this up in Audacity on a laptop.