Dial-up modem sound slowed 700% is 100% creepy

http://www.noisemademedoit.com/dial-up-modem-slowed/

by cdvonstinkpot • 14 years ago

88 37 14 years ago

lsb• 14 years ago

This is rather disappointing. The dial-up modem sound is digitally created, and a digital lengthening of each tone is much higher quality.

timdorr• 14 years ago

Yeah, they're attempting to do a time shift with some sort of echo-y dithering going on. Since it's digital, no dithering is needed!

jrockway2• 14 years ago

Indeed. The sound starts off with a dialtone slowed down 700x but pitch adjusted. Guess what, that's exactly equivalent to the real dialone. (Instead of recording it for 1 second, you record it for 700 seconds.)

This rest of the video continues in the same manner. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

jedberg• 14 years ago

It just made me sleepy, not creeped out.

dontstopnowbaby• 14 years ago

Creepy? I've seen, heard, and tasted worse thanks to the internet

Ygg2• 14 years ago

For some reason it reminds me of Broken Saints.

exolab• 14 years ago

Whales on a combination of LSD and steroids or extraterrestrials? Not sure...

jschulenklopper• 14 years ago

Sounds similar to the 'keening' sounds that whales make. What would the whale sounds speeded up to 700% decode to for a dial-up modem? :-)

dag11• 14 years ago

Not creepy.

Goladus4• 14 years ago

I agree but it does sound like music used by movies intended to evoke creepiness. It's because it sounds unnatural, far outside what we're used to hearing. Compare with, say, the Blaster Beam used by Jerry Goldsmith in the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_Beam

juiceandjuice• 14 years ago

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the picture on that blog was derived from a Shepard Fairey poster, which was derived from a Josef Müller-Brockmann poster about noise titled 'Noise Control' in 1960:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kzaoY-eKntI/S-2gf01XkPI/AAAAAAAAAD...

leak• 14 years ago

I didn't find it creepy at all. What were they expecting to find when they slowed it down?

tintin• 14 years ago

Even more amazing is Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch software that did the job! http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

JonnieCache• 14 years ago

Indeed that is a particularly nice sounding time stretch algorithm.

It sounds like a crystal forest on saturn.

konceptz• 14 years ago

As one who ran a BBS and was constantly listening to these connections, I was expecting(hoping) to hear something I could understand.

At 2x speed up I think I recognize this as a 56k negotiation. I started using cable around that time so I can't tell the difference between x2 and K56.

styluss• 14 years ago

Reminds me of FUture Sound of London - Dead Cities

jonsen• 14 years ago

So this is what those 700%-faster-clocked-brain extraterrestrials get when they are tuning in on earth.

babuskov2• 14 years ago

Any sound slowed 700% is creepy. It's just the human brain associating high-pitch sounds with fun, children speaking,, bell ringing and other "nice" sounds, while low-pitch is of thunder, big animals (predators) roaring, otherwise associated with danger.

Sharlin• 14 years ago

No, this is stretched 700% without affecting the pitch: http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

babuskov2• 14 years ago

I listened to it again, you're right. Sounds like a horror movie theme, maybe that's what gives the creeps. Although I have to agree with many others in this thread: it isn't that creepy, I heard much better ones.

EdiX• 14 years ago

The article claims the pitch is unaltered (ie. they slowed down the sound and pitch corrected the result).

raverbashing• 14 years ago

". It's just the human brain associating high-pitch sounds with fun, children speaking,, bell ringing and other "nice" sounds"

Not really, children wailing, nails on a blackboard and other high sounds are very bothersome

Yes, some high sounds are friendly, but not all

TeMPOraL• 14 years ago

> while low-pitch is of thunder, big animals (predators) roaring, otherwise associated with danger

Except most of the creepy parts here are high-pitch, not low-pitch sounds?

okamiueru2• 14 years ago

Also, Justin Bieber slowed 700% sounds like Sigur Ros.

okamiueru2• 14 years ago

I should add: it wasn't an original comment, and it is a bit true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QspuCt1FM9M

jawns• 14 years ago

If I slow something 50%, I would expect its speed to be halved. If I slow something 100%, I would expect its speed to be zero. Not quite sure how you can slow something by more than 100%.

cheald• 14 years ago

100% slowdown ("streched to 100% as long") would be half the speed. "Slowed down 700%" in this case means "stretched to 700% of its original duration".

jrockway2• 14 years ago

Next week on Hacker News: "Hey guys, I took a picture of my cat this morning"

Goladus4• 14 years ago

This is creative and unusual. Sound design is an interesting and relevant topic.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

Interesting, yes. Relevant to Hacker News... debatable.

But I agree with jrockway - pictures of cats should result in immediate banning (unless it's something like http://placekitten.com/).

jws• 14 years ago

Most of the time is the initial identification tones, followed by the line equalization phase where the modems are sorting out the exact response of the line. The sounds near the end that are sort of like white noise are the data transfer.

Part of the creepy is that the modems are using pitches that are not harmonically related. That is anti-musical (unless you are way out on the fringes) and denies you the ability to pigeon hole the sounds.

conorwade• 14 years ago

Am I the only person who thinks the Lost intro music when they hear that? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MiwoDpbcdk

ar4s• 14 years ago

Woke up a few minutes ago because I couldn't sleep (3:19). Hello Day!

Dial-up modem sound slowed 700% is 100% creepy

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