EVPMaker was developed by
Stefan Bion who is an active member of the German
VTF,
the German equivalent to the AA-EVP.
As with all things related to EVP, you should
consider EVPMaker an experimental program. The
principles active in it are quite different from
what we find in a sound recorder. In the usual mode,
a prerecorded sound track, usually containing "live
voice" (human speech), is chopped into small pieces and the pieces are scrambled and
reassembled according to a random number generator.
The process is not unlike cutting a page of text
from a book into small fragments, shaking them up in
a container and then blindly picking pieces out one
at a time to assemble a new page. We think it is in that random
process that
the EVP occur as the entity opportunistically
selects bits of sounds to make a message. We are
referring to this form of EVP as "opportunistic EVP
formation."
There is precedence for psi influence over random
number processes in the work of the
Boundary Institute and others, so it is
reasonable to think that the communicating entity
can cause a similar psi influence to EVPMaker. The
problem is that the process produces a steady stream
of staccato sound which the operator must speak
over. In the example by
Margaret Downey, the EVPMaker output was
amplified in the recording made of the session, and
after the session was over. You can hear the
relative level of the EVPMaker output "behind" her
voice.
The length of each fragment is controllable by the
operator and it is possible to make the segments so
long that recognizable parts of the live voice can
be understood. This leads to more frequent EVP, but
our study has shown that this may be because it is
actually leading to more false positives--ordinary
sounds given meaning that they do not actually have.
As is illustrated in Margaret's example, Stefan has
introduced an allophone file made from a speech
synthesis tool. This file of small speech fragments
is used as the input in place of a live voice
recording, and consequently any words in the output
must necessarily be either fortuitously or
paranormally formed from the allophone. It is true
that some words may occur naturally but any
meaningful response to a question should be
considered deliberate.
Much more is known about transform EVP using a
standard recorder and background sound than is EVP
formed in EVPMaker, so we recommend that a person
new to EVP begins with the usual audio recorder and
background sound as described in
Basic Recording Techniques. Then after learning what
EVP is and how it typically sounds, we encourage
people to try new techniques, including EVPMaker.
Should I use Radio Sweep?
"Radio sweep" is a term describing a technique used
for EVP formation using a radio receiver. It has
been known for many years and is known as "swept
radio" in Europe. The tuning dial of a radio is
rapidly moved to cause bits of radio programming to
be output at the speaker as a staccato flow of
sound. The concept is that the resulting sounds will
sometimes be used by the entities to speak. We refer
to radio sweep as one of the opportunistic EVP
formation techniques, because the entity must depend
on a useful sound to be available as the channel is
swept.
There is very little documented study of this
technique offering evidence that EVP is actually
formed using this technique. The possibility of
attributing normally occurring sounds as paranormal
(false positive) is so great that the AA-EVP has
adopted the policy to encourage people new to EVP to
first learn how to record EVP using the usual audio
recorder as described in
Basic Recording Techniques. Then after learning
what EVP is and how it typically sounds, we
encourage people to try new techniques, including
radio sweep.
Amongst the causes for false positives is that in
some automated versions, the dwell time on a station
may be sufficiently long to allow three or four
words to be spoken by a radio announcer. This may
come about in localities in which a very strong
stations is detected on a relatively broad part of
the spectrum.
For research, the scientific community will
automatically discount examples made by any
technique using live voice. Since the AA-EVP is very
interested in research and teaching, there is little
choice but to avoided what is already "dead on
arrival" in the scientific community.
Another problem seen to occur is the tendency of the
practitioner to "story tell" or creatively describe
how a detected sound might answer a question or give
important information. For instance, focusing on a
string of voice fragments that might actually be
meaningless, such as: Question: "What day is
it?" Recording: "... ca ... to ... en ...da
... lv ... og ... ee" Story: "Today is the day to
love me., meaning that the entity thinks I should
love myself to love others." Note that "to" and "da"
are seen as "today," "lv" is seen as "love" and "ee"
is seen as "me." The other fragments are
conveniently ignore in this example because they did
not fit a good story. This is probably an extreme
example, but it is pretty close to what is usually
reported, and without further research to determine
whether or not such a story is warranted, the AA-EVP
has no choice but to discourage the use of radio
sweep by any but very experienced people.
There is one important consideration that
complicates our understanding of radio sweep. Most
techniques for EVP are actually novel ways of
producing audio-frequency sound energy for
transformation into voice in an audio recorder. In
most of the examples of radio sweep that we agree
are probably EVP, all have looked more like
transform EVP and the output of the radio sweep
process is just a novel sound source. Some describe
this as hearing the voice "ride above" the staccato
output of the radio sweep.
We cannot say that radio sweep does not produce EVP.
We can say that it produces way too many false
positives to be an acceptable tool for
transcommunication. A test apparatus that might
determine the effectiveness of radio sweep would be
to have a closed system of multiple allophone files
as an input to the sweep process, and have all of
this in a shielded container. However, the resulting
setup would look a lot like
EVPMaker or the
Paranormal Puck, so the one must wonder if the
effort would be worthwhile.
