Short Circuit Pop

How it's made

Source

a shorted contact flashes into an arc; a 0.3 ms attack and 18 ms broadband burst form the pop.

Body

a compact component adds a damped 240-480 Hz pressure pulse and weak 1.8/3.1 kHz casing modes; these die in 35-75 ms, without the long low-frequency roll of outdoor lightning.

Layers

hot plasma is filtered noise at 1.3-8 kHz, cooling toward 2.2 kHz; current ripple at 120 Hz and irregular 45 Hz noise flutter break the sizzle into a rough, non-tonal sheath.

Events

9-31 contact restrikes, each 1-6 ms, occur in irregular clusters over the cooling tail; high-passed micro-impulses add finer crackle beneath the larger, progressively weaker sparks.

Envelope

the pop leads; sizzle peaks at 8 ms and drops steeply, then fades by 0.52 s by default. A 35 ms final closure and DC blocking prevent cutoff artifacts. The sound is dry and centred.

Variation

seeded noise, restrike timing, bandwidth and strength vary independently. Controls set cooling time, arc brightness, contact instability and component body. Presets model a small board fault, a sharp fuse rupture, a sputtering loose contact and a heavier power-component failure.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.