Weapon Overheat

How it's made

Source

an energy weapon's emitter coil running past its limit. Three things happen in sequence: the coil spools down (a whine), coolant steam is dumped through a vent (turbulent noise), and the hot casing contracts (sparse metallic ticks).

Whine

a sine plus a weaker octave-and-fifth partial, 2.4 kHz falling to about 300 Hz over 1.3 s on an accelerating curve; a slow 6 Hz wobble of 1.5 % stands for the unstable field. It fades before the end.

Steam

white noise high-passed at 1.5 kHz and band-shaped around a vent resonance (3–6 kHz, Q ≈ 0.8) that sinks as pressure drops; a drifting amplitude flutter of about 25 % gives the hiss its uneven texture. A short 90 Hz pressure thump with a pitch drop opens the vent at 0.02 s.

Ticks

6–10 contraction ticks from 0.35 s on; each one is a 1 ms noise burst exciting small steel modes (2.5–6 kHz, 40–90 ms). The gap grows by about 20 % per tick (cooling slows) and the level falls.

Envelope

the whine and thump lead, the hiss swells within 0.12 s and decays over 1.5 s, the ticks sit in the tail; everything is gone by 1.8 s.

Variation

`rng` shifts the whine start, tick timing, tuning and strength; presets change which layer leads.

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