The Los Angeles Metro Gold Line train runs 20 feet behind my back patio and its noise pollutes my space a hundred times a day. Since I can’t get rid of it, I figured why not do something fun with it!

The idea is to install a microphone outside and feed the sound into a system that will apply effects to the sound and broadcast the altered waveforms within the loft from a dedicated set of speakers. After telling a few folks about this idea I got turned onto the wonderful H__R iPhone app and thats exactly the sort of audio mangling I had in mind. If it had an API I would just dedicate a used iPhone to the project but I guess I’ll use PureData or Max/MSP to do the job instead.

I didn’t want to have an obvious computer interface laying around the loft just for this but the project requires some kind of control system to provide a means to fiddle with the audio alteration. Something that will allow me or guests to change the major program, and adjust its parameters.