Yandex recorded the sounds of retrocomputers

Every day, when the Yandex Museum is open, as an employee of the museum, I turn on all of our exhibits: computers and other equipment. Each device has no time to linger for a long time - it is not always possible to visually verify that the computer is turned on. Sounds help: I ​​remember the “correct” sound of each of the exhibits. In childhood, these sounds seemed magical. I thought - why not save the sounds of computers for history and add them to the museum website in order to revive the pages of the exhibits. I’ll tell you how we did it and what equipment we used.

After several experiments, I realized that we need special equipment and people who know how to use it. Try recording the sound of the system unit onto the microphone in the phone - the result will most likely be so-so.

Once Natasha Radina, then still an employee of Yandex, wrote to the museum’s mail. Natasha said that she is a member of the Guild of Interactive Audio Developers (GRIA). They are very kind to the sounds and everything that makes them. Natasha remembered the museum, its exhibits and also thought that many rich sounds live in them, which would be good to record, process and lay out in high quality. Just like the BBC, in 2018, it posted an archive of 16 thousand sounds available under the RemArc license.

Probably the best recordings would have been in the studio. But our exhibits are old, hard drives and fragile plastic are afraid of shock. Therefore, we decided not to transport them and record sounds right in the museum in the evenings.

How to collect sounds

The first time we gathered at 19:00, immediately after the museum closed. Yandex Museum and Store are located in the same room, but are closed at different times - we figured that at this time there will already be few visitors, and we will be able to start recording. We agreed in advance to turn off the ventilation so that unnecessary noise would not interfere. Together with the sound engineers we ran through the exhibits, made a list of what we will record.

On the day of recording, it turned out that it was still impossible to work while the store was open, due to the noise of visitors and sellers. Not only the sounds of the front door, but also the air conditioner, steps interfered. I had to wait until 22:00 when the store closes and you can turn off the air conditioners, close windows and doors. By the way, without ventilation and with closed windows the room quickly became hot, and when the windows opened, the noise of the street and cars, which could not be subtracted during the final processing, greatly interfered.

At first we planned to record all the exhibits in one evening, but in fact we had to meet twice more.

Equipment

Guild engineers were involved in equipping and arranging. Here's what they brought with them for the record:

1. Supercardioid microphone Sennheiser MKH 8050.
2. Two cardioid microphones Octave MK-012.
3. Sony PCMD100 .
4. Soundman OKM II Classic Solo.
5. (, ).
6. Zoom F4.
7. Sound Devices MixPre-6.
8. - .

To record a stereo sound signal, the ORTF stereo technique , invented in the 60s by the Office of Radio and Television of France (Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française or ORTF) on a local radio, was used. The essence of the method: two microphones of the same model, selected according to the frequency response with a cardioid directivity system, are installed at an angle of 110 ° to each other at a distance of 17 cm. In our case, Octave MK-012 microphones were used.


^{_{The location of the microphones in the ORTF method. The dotted line shows the pattern of cardioid microphones}}

The ORTF technique provides high-quality stereo sound that is as similar as possible to how we hear it (if you do not take binaural techniques into account). The shape of the pattern of cardioid microphones cuts off background noise well - this reduces the influence of the size of the room and allows you to position the microphones further from the source.


^{_{Recording the sound of starting, working and turning off the Quantum 4C}}

It would seem that we have two microphones for organizing ORTF, for which everything else is needed? Yes, you can leave the tracks from two Octaves, and we get an excellent computer record, similar to how a person would hear it. We have these tracks and you can always put them in such a standard file. But we thought: what if to make an expanded and more juicy record, adding tracks from additional microphones to it?

Therefore, next to the Octave MK-012 is a microphone Sennheiser MKH 8050 . It is supercardioid - the radiation pattern is narrower compared to the Octaves. The microphone looks towards the recording computer and it is necessary for the sound engineer to add more low frequencies and directional signal to the final recording.

The Sony PCMD100 stereo sound recorder is a little further than the main microphones and allows you to add volume to the final recording.

Binaural Stereo Microphones Soundman OKM II Classic Solomade in the form factor of the headphone-plugs, with their help often record binaural audio. These are omnidirectional, sensitive microphones with a flat amplitude-frequency response. In our case, they stuck to double-sided tape in the most sonorous parts of the system units, adding some zest.

Two receiving coils from Amazon, designed to record sound from old telephone sets, made it possible to record the electromagnetic radiation of the computer. One coil was most often placed on the keyboard, and the second somewhere on the system unit. With their help, it was possible to add to the record the buzz, squeaks and cod of electromagnetic waves produced by working components. True, it turned out that CRT monitors with their radiation at a frequency of 15 kHz (horizontal scan) clog all other electromagnetic noise, plus the squeak of some displays is clearly audible to the ordinary human ear, so the monitors were turned off when recording. From my work experience at the museum, I can recall visitors with good hearing who were unpleasant to be near some of the squeaking CRT monitors.

The recording of one exhibit lasted about a minute. At this time, the whole team froze and did not move, because the steps on the raised floor were very audible on the recording. Then the sound engineer Ilya listened to the track and, if everything was fine, the entire recording structure was carefully transferred to the next exhibit. Several times something big passed through the windows, from which the windows rattled and the low-frequency rumble very well got into the recording. I had to rewrite. It also turned out that during the recording, for some reason I want to talk, sneeze or trample on the spot.

The above microphones were connected to Zoom F4 and MixPre-6 recorders. Ilya then combined all the received records, working with additional tracks as an artist with paints, adding beauty and effects.

Video recording process:

What sounds were recorded

We were interested in the sound of waking computers: the noise of a fan, the crackle of hard drives, disk drives and keyboard keys.

Modern computers are quite quiet, because manufacturers are trying to reduce the noise level: energy-efficient CPUs, fans, the rotation speed of which depends on temperature, solid-state drives without moving parts. However, now users sometimes complain about the high temperature of the processor due to the low rotation speed of the coolers, as well as the squeak and whistle of the components of the CPU and GPU power supplies.

Among our exhibits, not everyone made any sounds at work. Many cheap personal computers of the 80s had low heat dissipation, and they were completely passive-cooled. In those years, noisy hard drives and drives were expensive, so home computers often did without them, using audio tapes to record and play programs.

In total, we recorded the sounds of ten exhibits:

• From the point of view of published sounds, my favorite exhibit is the first Yandex server . It squeaks and buzzes, the hard drive is working loudly, inside it, in principle, there are many sound sources.


 

•  Compaq Deskpro 386S has been targeted for business use. The 386S model was equipped with the Intel 386SX processor, modern at that time, and released since 1988. A desktop computer case, usually a monitor was placed on top of the system unit. On the record you can hear the noise of fans, the sound of acceleration and operation of the hard disk, the initialization of drives and squeaking during a self-test.


 

•  Robotron 1715 was produced from 1984 to 1989 at the VEB Robotron factory in East Germany. The processor is an 8-bit U880 (analogous to Zilog Z80) with a frequency of 2.5 MHz. The computer was not equipped with a hard drive, only floppy drives. The sound of cooling fans and the sound of the drive being heard on the recording.


 

•  DVK 3 and Quantum 4C . Dialog Computing Complex (DVK) is a family of Soviet computers in the mid-80s and early 90s. The DVK 3 computer is made in a monoblock type case with a connected drive unit. The Quantum 4C computer has a desktop type case. During operation, the noise of fans is heard.




 

• The  EU-1849 has been produced in Minsk for a short time since 1991. This computer was the only one manufactured in the USSR (and in the post-Soviet space) based on the Intel 286 processor. The case of the desktop type system unit, the monitor was also usually installed on top. On the record you can hear the noise of the fans, the sound of the hard disk and the signals of the self-test system. Separately, there is the sound of the game Paku Paku.



 

•  Spark 1030M - Soviet personal IBM PC / XT-compatible computer. It was produced since 1989 on the basis of the processor 181086, an analog of Intel 8086. The case is of the desktop type. On the record you can hear the noise of fans, acceleration of the spindle of the hard disk, the clicks of the keyboard and the sound of the speaker after starting the game Arkanoid. After shutdown, a characteristic (dissatisfied) crackle of a turning off hard drive with an MFM interface is heard.


 

• Soviet personal IBM PC / XT-compatible computer Neuron I9.66 was produced from the mid-80s to the beginning of the 90s. The computer is made in the form of two blocks: a processor and a drive block. Not equipped with a hard drive, loading was carried out through the drive. Each unit had a separate power supply and mains switch. On the record, the noise of the fans of the blocks and the squeak of self-diagnosis are heard.


 

•  Nyvka - Soviet personal 16-bit computer, partially compatible with IBM PC XT. It was produced since 1990. Most often used at industrial enterprises of the Soviet Union. Case type bigtower. The sound of fans is heard on the recording.


 

• The Facit N4000 tape reader / puncher has been manufactured by Facit in Sweden since the late 1980s in two versions: a punch and a punch reader. Designed to connect to a teletype or machine tool with program control.


 

• We recorded the sound of the keys on the Model F computer keyboard , which was produced from 1981 to 1994, first by IBM and then Lexmark. The Model F keyboard is a mechanical capacitive keyboard. When a key is pressed, a loud click sound (click) is heard, the moment the key is triggered is well felt. Our Model F is part of the IBM PC 5155 laptop, the sounds of which did not interest us, but the keyboard sounds very nice. Perhaps we will return to his sounds later.


 

• Also recorded the sound of the keys of the keyboard Electronics MC7004 , connected to the already mentioned DVK 3.


 

Sound engineers were very happy with the sounds, ran around the museum like children and pressed all kinds of buttons. They even recorded the fan noise separately - it’s boring for me, and then with the help of sound software they turned it into a tractor hum and used it for their own purposes. They also liked the sound of a flip clock - a Yandex souvenir eight years ago. Separately recorded creaky keyboards.

Download as files

For the readers of Habr, we have posted a collection of sounds on the Disk (in MP3 and FLAC).

UPD . And here is the first creation based on our collection:

---

Thanks to Natasha Radina , composer and sound designer, Ilya Smelkov , Maria Shcherbakova, Pavel Kovbasyuk and Ruslan Nesteruk for bringing this project to life. And to the collector of computer equipment Viktor Boyev - for helping with the exhibits.