Robbie Rhodes wrote in 030318 MMDigest, "Definition of Self-Playing
Musical Instruments":

> name for our hobby concerned with "traditional musical instruments
> fitted with a mechanism that plays music stored as binary data."
>
> The high-tech phrase, "stored as binary data", [...]

A very abstract thought: Could "binary" be replaced with "discrete"?
For all I know, "binary" is totally correct -- the Welte concept even
used 4 binary rows to encode around 12 discrete levels of vacuum.

 [ Don't you mean the 16-level Duo-Art system?  -- Robbie

But -- does anyone know about any mechanical instrument using
non-binary storage, e.g., a barrel which has two lengths of pins,
or hole tracks with two or more widths of holes, or ??

In one respect, by the way, the stored data are analog: namely,
regarding their time resolution.  In principle, a hole or pin can be
placed anywhere along the time axis notwithstanding the fact that paper
rolls are, for practical purposes, punched along a defined raster.  But
this is not necessary: You can punch three holes at times 0, 1, and
"square root of 2", which makes them definitely "out of raster".

This has only changed with MIDI, which requires a defined time
resolution.

Regards

Harald M. Mueller
Grafing b. Muenchen
Germany

 [ Binary means two states, decimal means 10 states, and so on.
 [ Discrete means separate or individually distinct.  The Duo-Art
 [ control system of 4 binary channels counts by 16 (hexadecimal)
 [ to move the regulator arm through 16 discrete positions.
 [
 [ Robin Biggins demonstrated a musical box with two lengths of
 [ pins, which played loud and soft.  I don't recall the maker.
 [ The system could be called ternary: off, loud and soft.
 [
 [ I think J. S. Bach would have appreciated the quantization of
 [ his metrical rhythms, and the consistent reproduction enabled
 [ by quantized data systems such as MIDI and most American music
 [ rolls, which were routinely quantized for production.
 [
 [ I simply don't understand the fascination folks have with the
 [ "infinite resolution" implied by a recording machine which puts
 [ a pencil mark on paper, nor do I believe in the micro-step
 [ perforator process that claims to faithfully reproduce the data
 [ of those pencil marks.  -- Robbie