Wasteland Signal Mixer

Any periodic wave, however jagged, can be built by stacking sine waves at integer multiples of a base frequency — a fundamental plus its harmonics. Fourier's insight also runs in reverse: a complex signal, whether it's a voice, a radio broadcast, or wasteland static, can be decomposed back into those same sine components. The clarity score above is really an inverse of the reconstruction error between your mix and the buried ghost wave - the same kind of math a real radio receiver's filters use to strip noise from a signal, or a JPEG uses to compress an image into a handful of dominant frequencies.

The base-frequency slider sets the pitch — how often the whole wave repeats — while the three amplitude sliders only reshape it. Because every harmonic is an exact integer multiple of the fundamental, stacking them enriches the wave's character without changing how fast it repeats. That is why a flute and a violin playing the same note sound unmistakably different yet share one pitch: same fundamental, different harmonic recipe. To lock the ghost you must find both its pitch and its recipe.

The ghost signal is anchored by its fundamental at frequency 3, but your ears do not actually need it. Strip out the fundamental and leave only the higher harmonics, and your brain still hears that original low pitch — a quirk called the missing fundamental. It is why a tiny phone speaker that cannot physically move enough air for deep bass can still make you hear it, rebuilding the fundamental from the spacing of the harmonics alone.