# Final Project
## Collage Audio Workstation
Is there a way to hold sound as a physical object that you can cut, stretch and collage to make your own compositions? I often work with a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to create music from samples of my voice, instruments and other sounds.
*Fig. 1 - typical composition in a DAW, notice the colored strips and waveforms for the sounds.*
What if these sound clips could be printed out instead on paper as they were recorded?
Here is a sketch with them as bar codes:
*Fig. 2 - Sketch of how sound clips could work with bar codes*
We could use a simple receipt printer.
*Fig. 3 - DIY receipt printer project precedent*
It would be ideal if they were printed on paper of different colors, and that the feeling of creating the composition is like assembling a collage.
*Fig. 4 - Raffle ticket inspiration*
This project is limited by the print density of the printer, and the quality of the scanner to code and decode the sound clips from paper to digital audio. But how can the sound clips be represented on paper in a way that is visually easy for humans to understand, but readable by a machine? How much information needs to represented per inch to have a quality sound given print quality?
The [PhonoPaper](https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/phonopaper/) project shows how sound can be translated to printed paper.
From this project, you print out a piece of paper that looks like this:
The phonopaper system even shows that you can draw on your own sound compositions:
You can then scan the composition using a smartphone:
### Information Density of Sound and Paper
Here is a first sketch that describes some of the fundamental data density questions this project relies on:
|  |
|:---------:|
| *Trying to understand what hertz are, and min. resolution for sound clip on paper* |
### Problems with this project:
- It involves printers which we have been warned are difficult to work with microcontrollers.
- The quality of the sound is not good enough to be used as a recording station or DAW.