I wish I had been able to sneak good stereo recorder into a 1A ESS telephone switch. These had electronic computerized control, but the call-path was all electromechanical, and the sound of relays opening and closing all around was otherworldly. A typical ESS machine might occupy several thousand square feet, so you could walk through it and hear the activity all around you.
During the day when call volumes were high, it was cacophony. I've heard it called a "typewriter factory", just a blur of clicking and clacking.
But at night, as the call volume slowed, you could pick out individual calls. A line-relay here as someone goes off-hook, no more sound while they dial (most everyone was touch-tone by this time), but as soon as the control interprets the digits and determines a call path, it's time to set up the path! Junctor frames for some reason had much larger relays, and several of these would fire in rapid succession, followed by a smattering of other relays between the line equipment, the junctor, and some other frames I don't remember.
If you stood in the right place, you could hear the progress of the call as it physically rippled across the machine, each section of the path first switching to a test circuit to make sure it was healthy, then on to the actual circuit, giving and odd staccato double-click sound to each action. Once the call was over, everything would tear down, and all the relays would relax at once.
It's one of the most magical sonic environments I've ever been in, and I've never gotten to share it with anyone.
Can't imagine a whole room of them, but I did have the pleasure of hearing this sound at the InfoAge museum in New Jersey. Wondering the building at the vintage computer fest last year I heard the clacking and poked my head into the room and ended up having a pleasant conversation with a man restoring the equipment
I asked where he learned to repair them and he simply said, I have one that works, and one that doesn't work, so I'm just going through and finding out what's different
Here's a short clip I took of the restoration in progress:
Yes, that's three generations earlier. (Step, panel, crossbar, ESS.) Pulse-dial machines have the property that you can hear the number being dialed by the number of steps advanced in each selector. The sounds are similar, but different.
The ESS could handle pulse-dial as well, but the pulses only went as far as the subscriber's own line-equipment frame. And most subscribers had gone touch-tone by the time I was there in the 90s, so hearing pulses in the LE was a rarity. Regardless of how the dialed digits came in, the call routing computations were all electronic, which allowed vastly more flexibility. With ESS, you could do traffic-aware routing, you could have non-hierarchial trunking, and you could introduce a whole set of CLASS features like call-waiting and auto-callback. (Plus the machine was much better at diagnosing itself and dropping a trouble-ticket, which considerably reduced maintenance overhead.)
But regardless, what's common to both the SxS in your video, and to the ESS, is that the call path is set up with relays. In the SxS those are stepping relays, aka selectors, and they make the distinctive counting rhythm at each step. In ESS by contrast, they're plain relays (I don't know a term for expressing how plain), which means they're mechanically simpler, smaller, and much more reliable. And each one only goes clack as it pulls in, or thunk as it releases, a single action rather than a counting rhythm.
With the previous systems, a given call might take 20 seconds to dial, and those same 20 seconds to set up the path, the operations are one and the same. So the action of the individual selectors is in lock-step with the subscriber's finger turning the dial, and the dial spring returning it while pulsing out the dial signals which directly drive the relays miles away.
In a pulse-dial office, you hear a lot of clicking all the time, and that's typically several call setups happening all at the same time, overlapping. Each stretched out over 20 seconds or so, starting randomly when subscribers pick up the phone and begin to dial. The "intensity" of the clicking associated with any given call is low, because it takes so long for the action to unfold.
If it's a very slow night in a pulse-dial office, you can hear a single call working its way through the machine, first the hunting of a line-finder as they go off-hook, then digits coming into each successive group, physically establishing the call path across the floor. You can walk through the machine and follow it as it happens.
With ESS, the dialing happens first, the same 20 seconds if the subscriber is using a rotary phone, or more like 2 or 3 seconds on touch-tone. In either case, all the digits are absorbed and interpreted by the central control computer, which decides when enough digits have been dialed to take some action. (Since landlines didn't have a SEND key, the dial-plan had to be structured in such a way as to "know" when the dialing was complete, simply by what had been dialed.)
But once the computer decides to take action, it happens almost all at once -- a flurry of activity as relays throughout the call path are all commanded near-simultaneously. Most take two actions in quick succession: First, the section of the path being set up is connected to a test circuit of some sort, which checks that the relay contacts are clean, the path sounds good, no stray voltages are present, etc. Then in a blink, the test is released and the proven sections are connected to each other. The whole process takes well under a second.
So, in the ESS regime, the clicking associated with a single call happens in a very short burst of rapidfire clicks and clacks, and what you hear over time is numerous calls, unrelated to each other.
(With the exception if you're standing next to the line equipment frame of a subscriber using pulse-dial, where you'll hear 20 seconds of digits slowly coming in, no activity for this call is happening outside this frame, THEN once dialing is complete, there's the burst of rapidfire call-setup throughout the whole machine, just like any other call.)
The clicking in an ESS also has a positional component -- the call path still takes place throughout numerous pieces of the machine, and your stereo ears pick that up -- it just happens so fast, it's like someone tossed a whole tray of items into the air and they all return to earth at nearly the same instant, all around you. If it's a slow night, you can pick out all the clicks associated with one call because they happen so close in time. But you can't take a leisurely walk through the machine and follow that one call as it sets up. By the time your brain registers that anything is happening at all, it's over. A single aural phenomenon with a positional component, rather than a methodical sequence that plays out before the observer.
I'm surprised the sounds of a floppy (3½", 5¼", and maybe even an 8") are all missing. I'd argue that the insertion and lock sounds, and seek sounds are absolutely necessary, at the very least.
Good call, the sounds of a daisy wheel printer[0] and that of an IBM Selectric typewriter[1] would also be good entries.
Now that I think about, for completeness sake both 9-pin and 24-pin varieties of dot matrix printers should be included as they each produce a unique sound.
I'll add the specific case of the Commodore 1541 disk drive. The sound clacking and banging of that thing loading data is seared into my memory. Brrrrr-brrrrrr-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat.
I remember feeling the side of the case on an unresponsive machine to feel if the harddisk was seeking. It was often the difference between a reboot and a 'give it more time, it's just busy'
Even relatively new ones can be pretty loud. I used to have a little home server with an array of Hittachi Ultrastars and they would make quite a racket during ZFS scrubs.
I replaced 4x4TB disks with a 10T helium drive, and was shocked at the noise it made.
The build went from nearly silent to keep my wife up at night.
There is a certain thunk-thunk-thunk sound they make, which was awful, but I'm almost positive the 10T disk managed to resonate through the front panel and use it to make itself known. I don't think I can blame the disk for that second part.
I don't know what the point of recording all of these was when the person recording it noisily breathes or sharply inhales during several of them. It was probably a lot of effort to record all of these but it's sad to see that effort go to waste because of a bad recording setup.
I love that many of those sounds are still used in in modern movies. The seek sounds seem to particularly popular when in a NOC or during a hacking scene.
The best part is that I'm pretty sure the audio samples typically come from truly ancient full-height 5¼" stepper motor based drives.[0] The advent of voice coil actuated heads seriously helped quite hard drives.
This post reminds me this video monitor I used to own. When you turned it on, it would beep twice (with two different tones), and then say "O.K." in a robotic voice.
I always wanted to take a recording of it, but never found the time. Then I lost it when my basement flooded.
I also lost an old Commodore 1702 monitor. Apparently, they can sell for a few $100. Looks like CRT gaming enthusiasts want them.
....
Another memory: once on that Commodore monitor, and I don't understand how this happened, but I accidentally turned it into a Van Eck device. It picked up a ghost of the picture from a VGA monitor in a separate room. The way to get the picture to appear was by setting the refresh rate and resolution of the video card to some setting that was too high for the VGA monitor.
When on that setting, the VGA monitor would let out a high pitched wine, and the picture got all distorted.
My only guess as to how the picture was being transmitted was that composite video cable plugged into the Commodore monitor was acting as an antenna and picking up some radio waves being transmitted by the VGA monitor.
Yeah, the 1702 is a great display for the 8 and 16 bit eras of gaming and computing.
It comes down to the CRT having a tight color mask and the monitor circuits doing a good job handling the signals. And having seperate color and intensity signals was a bit ahead of it's time. Everyone else got this as s-video.
It's not a collection of old sounds. It's a collection of "reimagined" sounds - old sound effects overlaid with random background music. Try "film projector" and "cash register". They both have music on top.
More useful: the BBC's free library of sound effects.[1]
I really enjoy the quirks in my auditory environment. The train whistle in the distance. The particular squeaks in my wood floor. The municipal fire alarm test at the fire station. The weird and unique noises that my old man of a car makes. Cars - even new ones - are pretty unique acoustically. I could always tell when my wife was driving up the street because of the distinct sound of her Honda CR-V.
That I enjoy these quirks means also that I have a sense of pending loss. How much longer will I be driving my 2004 Volvo for example? And I moved this year after 20 years in the same house and no longer hear the train or fire alarm test. Or the sounds of the birds.
But next month I will move from my short-term apartment back into a home that I purchased, and I look forward to getting familiar with its particular auditory quirks.
Here's a question: is this another thing we will lose when we all move to the metaverse? Game designers focus on stunning visuals but seem to neglect these nuances of the auditory realm.
> Game designers focus on stunning visuals but seem to neglect these nuances of the auditory realm.
Open world games are pretty good at this in my experience. Maybe I just got lucky with GTA and Zelda, they both had what to me feels like a rich soundscape. How else are you supposed to find all the random little things to interact with?
They often have background noise on a loop or loops and once you notice it’s annoying.
It should be possible to model things like a babbling brook using an audio generator instead of a loop and combine lots of those into a realistic soundscape.
Analogue communications gear used to expose the general population to the sight and sound of white noise. It doesn't happen any more, as digital gear mutes the audio or presents a blue screen. Most people no longer hear white (or coloured) noise in their life.
There's a certain fascination with seeing/hearing white noise, akin to watching a fire. It's seeing/hearing fundamental thermal or quantum processes in action. The sound of the universe.
It's funny that you talk about a nostalgia of analog sounds, I'm one step behind and miss the noises of nature, especially forest noises. Taking a stroll in the wood was the OG white noise in term of relaxation/well being. If you live in the city you're usually hours away from that, I bet we can already find teenagers who never experienced these noises in their entire life
Police and social workers have noticed that it's somewhat common with youths integrated into gangs often never leave the "safety" of their neighborhoods. Their encounters with the justice system may be their only experience with leaving their neighborhoods.
I can’t imagine a major american city that doesnt have good access to woods or mountains to be honest. All the major ones have some urban parkland. Did you have any in mind?
There are lots of parks, arboretums, and forest preserves where I live but very few places within them where you aren't subjected to sounds of traffic from nearby roads, trains, or from planes and other air traffic overhead.
Those sounds have the opposite effect on me: they make me feel uncomfortable. They remind me that there's an unknowable amount of life all around me, causing an uncomfortable uncertainty. Being in an actual forest is extremely uncomfortable due to climate, dirtiness, uneven terrain, animals, insects...
Werner Herzog was famously recorded in “Burden of Dreams” saying something like “This jungle sounds like death and decay. Birds here scream in terror. The terror of being alive”.
My favorite is from _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ by G. K. Chesterton:
----
"Poet, whose cunning carved this amorous shell, \
Where twain may dwell."
"The peculiarity of these fine though feminine lines," continued "Thunderbolt," "is, as we have said, that they praise the hansom cab by comparing it to the shell, to a natural thing. Now, hear the author of 'Hymns on the Hill,' and how he deals with the same subject. In his fine nocturne, entitled 'The Last Omnibus' he relieves the rich and poignant melancholy of the theme by a sudden sense of rushing at the end—
'The wind round the old street corner \
Swung sudden and quick as a cab.'
"Here the distinction is obvious. 'Daisy Daydream' thinks it a great compliment to a hansom cab to be compared to one of the spiral chambers of the sea. And the author of 'Hymns on the Hill' thinks it a great compliment to the immortal whirlwind to be compared to a hackney coach. He surely is the real admirer of London. We have no space to speak of all his perfect applications of the idea; of the poem in which, for instance, a lady's eyes are compared, not to stars, but to two perfect street-lamps guiding the wanderer. We have no space to speak of the fine lyric, recalling the Elizabethan spirit, in which the poet, instead of saying that the rose and the lily contend in her complexion, says, with a purer modernism, that the red omnibus of Hammersmith and the white omnibus of Fulham fight there for the mastery. How perfect the image of two contending omnibuses!"”
The first use was in Neuromancer by William Gibson, in 1984, referring to a classic analog TV showing gray-white static.
Modern digital, smart, auto-tuning TVs will show an error message rather than static when there's no signal available [1], so later authors have used modified homages like:
"The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel." in Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Growing up I assumed it was some kind of electronic malfunction, produced either by the TV or by our own radio comms.
It wasn't until I saw this Drunk History with Jenny Slate that I learned the noise is the cosmic background radiation, the ongoing "ohm" of the big bang.
I've seen it used by YouTubers as a divider - a scene change / particularly jarring jumpcut would have a ~half a second of white noise (+ accompanying "TV snow" visual) as transition effect.
petrol pump
grinding gears
TV channel changing
radio station tuning
audio cassette rewinding
respectful disagreement
complete sentences
licking a stamp
their voices
birdsong
breath
I've not heard the sounds made by this in 20 years, and I know they're still used, but its a sound that is specific to suburbia, and only specific regions in the country.
Another sound that comes to mind from my childhood is the sound that a manual push mower made when being used (or for that matter a gas powered reel mower).
My current music project is based around building up layered droning sounds using cassette tape loops. I’ve been using AM radio tuning noises and modem noises. A big part of my influence has been finding old, obsolete, extinct sounds and making them come alive again.
Adjacent to this, a catalog of forgotten smells. A little harder to curate.
Uncatalyzed exhaust fumes
Oily exhaust fumes
A neighbourhood full of Wood fires (still common in some places, but maybe not forever)
New car smell has changed over time, because interior materials have changed
As for sounds, one for me is weekly air raid/fire early warning siren. At least, the type of siren is different now.
My dad had a Zenith he no longer used, I loved winding it up and firing the shutter. After hearing exactly this sound from the childhood, I immediately remembered how things were back then, thank you.
When I was a kid I had an aging Commodore 64 and a stack of disks with pirated games. Loading games was a slow process, you'd often wait full minutes for your game to load (and this was the fast option, tapes were far worse), hoping against hope it would all work right. It would often make this sudden GROAN noise when trying to read that I assume was a sudden seek.
And when it would fail, it would make this GROAN CHK CHK CHK CHK GROAN noise. No idea what it was, but it was etched into my mind as "this load isn't going to work, this game-disk might be dead".
That failure is the "extinct sound" that's been etched into my memory.
The 1541 was too cheap to include a track-0 sensor, so when the drive didn't know where it was, it would just seek backwards against its mechanical stop, the maximum number of tracks, thus guaranteeing that wherever it had been, it was now at track 0.
Read errors would cause it to repeat this routine.
You can find 1541 videos all over youtube, including repair videos, many of which include this sound as part of the drive initialization and diagnostics.
The 1541 went through several generations and could be built with mechanisms from several different manufacturers, which will change the timbre of the sound. So will the table that the drive is sitting on, for that matter.
I didn't see any, but I have my own. About 10 years ago, I got a 17" Dell CRT, manufactured around 2005. Sticking a live microphone underneath it was one of the first things I did.
Benn Jordan (The Flashbulb) has a series of videos where he goes to remote locations to record ambiance without noise pollution, a disappearing sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1i_ECeB2fo
Although I appreciate the look, I'd rather have a normal-scrolling website.
IE, don't list all the sounds in a tiny box with scrollbars, (that's then inside of a longer page that scrolls). Just list them on the website without any kind of intermediary scroll box.
This reminded me that I need to record a few sounds from my '90s car while I still have it: the clunk of the manual locks, the ka-chunk of the tape deck, and the whirr of the automatic seat belts.
But there is so much left. The credit-card roller cachunk-cachunk when the carbon was pressed into the card at every cash register station. The sound of a floppy spinning up. The ding of an old-fashioned gas pump.
The whine of a tube TV flyback transformer!
If smell can conjure up long-forgotten images and experiences, what of sound? It has to be a close second.
Lots of Native American languages are "endangered," such as Salish. You can find videos of elders speaking it but most younger tribal members don't bother learning it outside a few words.
One that comes to mind but is absent from the list is a 2-stroke diesel (plenty of samples on YouTube nonetheless); then again, that's mostly an American thing and the list appears to be UK/Europe themed.
You hear a slow rise low tone to a quick medium tone to a slow fall of a low all in a span of 1-2 seconds of the degaussed built into every CRT monitors since 1974.
I look forward to the day this site includes then-obsolete city sounds of leaf blowers, car alarms, cars that honk the horn whenever getting in and out, ear-shattering truck backup beeps... :)
I’d like to add to that list: [gas/ICE] motorcycles, modified car exhausts, pretty much any small gas engine (power washers, snow blowers, generators).
Leaf blowers I’m afraid are here to stay, but the electric ones make a less annoying sound at least.
They'll get banned in the rich enclaves and immediately outlying wealthy suburbs and once those people are satisfied the movement will lose momentum because no other demographic has this problem high enough up on their list of problems to be actionable. And in 100yr when we all manipulate leaves in a different way because it's "just better" people will wonder where the obscure law came from.
The reason for a slow migration is because the vast majority of gardeners and gardening companies only have gas powered leaf blowers, electric still don’t have the ability to run all day without at least 10-20 batteries, and electric doesn’t move as much air. As time goes on the tech will get better, the richer areas banning gasoline will encourage gardening companies to move to electric (and at a pace that won’t bankrupt them), and gas ones will die out.
Yeah, for a lot of consumers battery-powered lawn tools like weed whackers have gotten pretty good. I know for me the reduced maintenance and fiddling is a overall win for something I don't use all that often even if it's not quite as powerful and I can't always run it for as long as I would without recharging. (Though I could get another battery if I really cared.) But for a yard crew that's on the clock and may be working most of the day, the tradeoffs are a lot different.
Oddly enough the wealthy suburbs are the ones where there are the most leaf blowing going on. Desire for manicured landscapes + money to pay for lanscaping services that normally service commercial properties = small armies of leafblowing workers deployed all over the place.
My neighborhood is a mix of income levels; those who do their own lawn use smaller equipment, and they use one at a time. The wealthy ones have a crew of 6-8 people with a loud mower, multiple weed whackers/trimmers and multiple leaf blowers all at the same time. On the noise level, I measured it to be as loud as a jet airplane taking off—except it lasts a whole hour.
And don't forget that these same demographics have a large hand in the economic and regulatory situation that makes only highly efficient and mechanized professional landscaping viable.
I'd respect these people a lot more if they'd acknowledge and accept the tradeoffs but it really rubs me the wrong way when people say we need nigher minimum wages and then turn around and complain that their landscaper is forced to go all in on mechanized efficiency.
It doesn't have to take off everywhere to solve the problem. When enough wealthy people don't want ICE leaf blowers, the market will change and they'll become more scarce.
Motorcycles have exposed engines, so there's nothing to muffle the sound, that's true. But Honda and BMW are somehow able to make fairly quiet engines, while Harley and Yamaha seem to revel in making the loudest contraptions possible.
I ride a Harley and have ridden a few other bikes and can tell you a little more about this.
First off, the exposed engine isn't what makes a vehicle loud, unless you count the valve train noise and primary chain noise which honestly is negligible compared to everything else. What makes a Harley loud is the fact that it doesn't have a resonator muffler but basically a pipe with a baffle. Example of a resonator muffler: https://www.quadratec.com/sites/default/files/knowledge_base.... Example of a motorcycle muffler: https://thekneeslider.com/images/hddynamicexhaust.jpg
Second, a modern stock Harley tops out at 79 dB which is below the EPA requirement of 80 dB. This is no louder than a modern car. In California specifically this is also enforced and you can't (to a first approximation) register a vehicle that exceeds this (CARB regulation).
Most Harley you hear that are loud use aftermarket muffler or full exhaust systems (larger diameter, no catalytic converter, etc.) which are labeled as "for closed course only" because they aren't street legal. Still, motorcycles by and large can outrun cop cars so nobody bothers pulling them over. Also, most police officers don't carry dB meters to be able to determine if after you registered the vehicle you swapped the exhaust system.
Now for the reason: yes it makes a huge difference in the feel of you on the bike. The sound is half the equation. And no that doesn't justify bothering all your neighbors, but it is a visceral feeling you can't get any other way. Some people want it and will break the law to get it.
The good news for you is that bikes are getting quieter and more efficient and most people are realizing the effects of hearing loss from long term exposure to loud exhausts. However you will never get everyone to stop: there will always be a small minority that wants a loud vehicle and people who don't participate in this activity will always have a hard time understanding why.
If you want to have an experience, take a week off, rent a muscle car, and ride it cross country on a road trip. It'll be life changing, I promise.
I was passed by particularly loud Harley just yesterday and was wondering this exact question (and had no idea where I could even post such a question). Thanks for the detailed explanation!
Happy to help and/or answer other questions. Also /r/motorcycles and /r/motorcycle are great resources on Reddit though you’ll certainly get some bias there.
It has nothing to do with the exposed engine. 99% of the sound comes from the exhaust, which is built do be quiet (destructive interference) or loud (constructive) of exit gases. There are 300 hp cars that are quieter than 50hp motorcycles because of that
I was really looking forward to not hearing ICE sounds everywhere. But alas, scary stories about "silent" cars means we'll have to live with that for a while longer.
That's funny, I havent heard a car alarm in over a decade - I just assumed that car manufacturers stopped rolling them out after consumers kept going to garages to dismantle them.
I am with you on leafblowers. I've heard they cause less damage to the ground than a rake, but the annoyance factor is high.
I'm still waiting for the deliverance of whisper quiet cargo trains, or cargo trains that blast some noise cancelling factor as they pass, or hell, a separate underground line just for cargo.
>or cargo trains that blast some noise cancelling factor as they pass
I do agree with the op's list, but i do find cargo trains particularly rhythmic, and very soothing. When out cycling and a railway barrier drops, everyone gets delayed. I forget I'm cycling. The longer the train, the better.
There's a guy with a 20-year-old Mitsubishi Galant with a car alarm that goes off constantly on my block. I've never worked up the courage to ask who he thinks would actually steal his POS.
NYC, for example, outlawed car alarms years ago, as it was a complete nuisance. Some are still grandfathered and some are probably illegally installed. I hear them sometimes, but it's pretty rare.
When I was younger and lived in Jamaica (Queens), there was this particular TALKING car alarm that was very touchy and drove me up the wall.
They may have banned after-market alarms, but factory-installed car alarms are standard on pretty much every new car in the past 10+ years anyway. I still hear those go off on occasion in NYC.
When I was living near San Jose, the mockingbirds all sang the song of the car alarm. Over time, as the original songbird was no longer everypresent, the song got corrupted. I'd love to hear what it's gotten to now. Although, not at 2 am, ugh.
During the day when call volumes were high, it was cacophony. I've heard it called a "typewriter factory", just a blur of clicking and clacking.
But at night, as the call volume slowed, you could pick out individual calls. A line-relay here as someone goes off-hook, no more sound while they dial (most everyone was touch-tone by this time), but as soon as the control interprets the digits and determines a call path, it's time to set up the path! Junctor frames for some reason had much larger relays, and several of these would fire in rapid succession, followed by a smattering of other relays between the line equipment, the junctor, and some other frames I don't remember.
If you stood in the right place, you could hear the progress of the call as it physically rippled across the machine, each section of the path first switching to a test circuit to make sure it was healthy, then on to the actual circuit, giving and odd staccato double-click sound to each action. Once the call was over, everything would tear down, and all the relays would relax at once.
It's one of the most magical sonic environments I've ever been in, and I've never gotten to share it with anyone.