dBm25 - the art of power starving talk by Ralf Schreiber

The Art of Power Starving or how to make dead battery music It has been known since the early days of music electronics that electronic instruments somtimes produce strange sound artifacts during power on and off. Also, that battery-powered devices change their sound or even behave completely differently at the end of their battery life. In recent decades, this has led to the development of instruments in the experimental music electronics scene that deliberately exploit this effect of “power starving”. The insertion of a variable resistor between the (stable) power supply and a sound generator, which can be a simple oscillator, is widely used. This variable resistor, also known as a “dead battery potentiometer”, simulates the increasing internal resistance of a battery during progressive discharge. This means that power starving can be set reproducibly, even with mains-powered instruments or instruments fitted with new batteries. Alternatively, solar cells were also used to power the