HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data

10 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this commentary2 months2020–2024 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Recommended as an incisive look at the real potential and common misuse of data sonification, often brought up in threads on space sonifications.

Tantacrul examines sonification, the practice of turning data into sound or music, and critiques how scientists and musicians, including NASA and CERN projects, use it well and poorly.

“Tantacrul has a typically incisive video [1] about the real potential of sonification as a powerful technique for understanding data” (HN, 2022)

1 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 1 citations · Commentary

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@jw1224 Jun 2020 Strongly recommends
on HN thread MuseScore 4: Moving from notation software to composition software
As soon as I saw this pop up on HN, I thought “hey, MuseScore — isn’t that the notation software Tantacrul loves to hate?”. I’m not a composer, and I’d never heard of let alone used MuseScore before stumbling on his videos a couple of weeks ago. What a great surprise to see they’ve been listening to their critics! After finding his channel I slowly worked my way through watching all his videos. One of my favourites is about “sonification”, or creating sound from of data. Might be quite interesting to the HN crowd: [this video]
Creating sound from data
@omnicognate Aug 2022 Recommends
on HN thread New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix
Tantacrul has a typically incisive video [1] about the real potential of sonification as a powerful technique for understanding data, and its real artistic possibilities, vs the dishonest and arbitrary way it gets used to generate publicity. [1] [this video]
Real potential of sonification versus dishonest publicity use

Citations, criticism and jokes

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close