The Surprising Musicality of a Telephone Line Simulator
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- Опубліковано 4 бер 2023
- NOW A PLUGIN: www.audiothing.net/effects/li...
Of all the instruments in my studio filled with many obscure things, this is the one that draws most peoples attention: the vintage telephone line simulator by Axel Electronics. It looks rather disco for a piece of test equipment, with its Battlestar Galactica golden color. In this video I put it through its many surprising musical applications.
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Thanks for all the hard work together with Audiothing to make these rare gems available for everyone!
Of all the plugins you've been involved with, this is my favorite one. It has that fragile feel I'm looking for in most plugins but rarely find. The distortion from the 2nd nonlinear dist is beautiful. Well worth the money on my iPad.
I'd like to imagine a bunch of serious engineers sitting around designing this for 'The Phone Company' and then hanging out after hours doing this.
I was just entertaining the same thought. The company believed it was investing in novel telecoms test equipment, but the guys who designed and built this unique module were clandestine ambient analog glitch groovers -- decades before lesser mortals invented that particular genre.
Back in the 50s and early 60s engineers figured out how to get mainframe computers to make music by splitting off lines to peripherals such as printers and writing code such that the signals to the printer line would make tones. The IBM 1401 computer was known to be used for this, and Johann Johannsson made an album called "IBM 1401 A User's Manual" dedicated to his dad who was an engineer on it back in the old days.
Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan kinda did similar things in the Philips Physics Laboratory. If you search for those names you'll probably find the music they made and some pictures of their studio.
@@RCAvhstape Daisy, daisy... give me your answer true...
@@traildoggy LOL the 1401 isn't quite that advanced but still funny.
In 1973, a whole 50 years ago, I was a junior engineer assisting with trials of 24 channel PCM for long distance telephony, a whole 1.5Mb/s over analogue lines (UK). The techie guys from "Headquarters" were very interested in things which would affect the quality of the transmission. They used something similar to inject impulse and pseudo-random noise, and to change other characteristics of the line. They then checked the quality of the decoded audio, only 8 bits sampled at 8kHz but enough for voice. It's so long ago I can't remember what the equipment was, but I'm sure it wasn't this one. I do remember a lot of very expensive Wandel and Goltermann test kit being around.
Thank you for this information! I know W&G has a similar unit, which allows you to adjust the distance travelled with filters.
W&G makes one, and there was an official Western Electric one as well. The communications lab at Georgia Tech had a rack of line simulators from Northern Telecom.
That 8 bits would not be a linear amplitude, but something called “µ-law” or “A-law”, which is a logarithmic encoding. This gives a more consistent S/N over a greater dynamic range. which is better for voice. It is still used for digital telephony today.
I remember having to test for quantization distortion using a 1k, 16 down tone (-16dbm) inserted at the originating end and measured at the receiving end with a meter having a special notch filter to cut the tone leaving any noise created by bad PCM encoding for measurement.
@@TesserId Quantization is interesting. With a simple signal (e.g. a sine wave), it’s “distortion”. But with a complex signal (e.g. a full orchestra playing), it’s “noise”.
These old warm analog noises do the same thing to me that certain music keys or chords do: They immediately bring out these positive emotions once had far in the past.
Wonderful sounds, my friend. I so appreciate you showing these devices, and the manner in which you demonstrate them.
Thank you, its my absolute pleasure!
A family member in Cali is making a significant income using some old test gear in mastering, funny thing is everything else is in the box, I was surprised he had never heard of Hainbach. 😱 Me I have an electribe with tubes and that is enough analog for me, we can hardly afford to turn on a microwave here in Sweden, but at least the electric company can profit from the poor folks misery in Ukraine.
You should definitely find someone to reverse engineer the schematics to clone this thing! It would be an interesting fx unit indeed
No doubt. Would it be legal do you reckon?
For the record I would 100% buy one
@@ffunyman I know I'm late and there's now a vst plugin for it, but I'm pretty sure this is from the 1970s. Any patents that might've applied are now long expired
In fact, this line simulator is essentially a synthesizer in its own right, with oscillators, filters, noise source, and amplifiers. The original engineers just never conceived of its musical uses. Isn't it funny how some of the least musical things end up being the best musical instruments?
Something tells me these things are rarer than hens teeth. A full emulator would be sick for this.
It might be time to phone up AudioThing again.
master your tracks over transcontinental phone lines? :p
It was probably commissioned to be designed & built for one phone co, say, Bell Atlantic for example. a certain amount were made, for training and diagnostic purposes no doubt. and so yes, highly rare units I'm sure.
@@dbspecials1200 lol I just remembered having a field test handset to test line quality, a completely passive device, should have hooked it up to something but sold it for the leather case haha
@@yttrxstein4192 captain crunch! haha
this desperately needs to be made into a plugin with audiothing!
@Miles RS
Digital sucks for this. To doted.
you could call it the line simulator simulator
My dad was a telephone guy, used to take me to the big switching office where you would hear these enormous rooms full of relays clicking. Sounded like his job involved this sort of equipment so this is awesome.
ha my dad also took me to one of those rooms full of relays while he was a technician for telecom. im imagining now that a lot of dads taking their kids there to show off the cool clicking rooms.
I also have a Phone Dad!
@@savagemessiah. new dad guy just dropped
Were they really relays, or were they Strowger switches? The latter would go something like “CHUG-CHUG-CHUG” from 1 to 10 times in a row, depending on the digit you dialled. Then a pause and a different noise, then the next digit.
What a curious box. Great sounds, like singing bubbles.
This thing would sound awesome in your hands too.
Wow perfect description. Kinda genius
After hearing the 2nd half of this video, I reckon the manufacturer should've just called it 'Delia Derbyshire In-A-Box'
What an interesting and fantastic piece!
I love finding fun things in electronics. One of the o-scopes I used in the Navy could play a _Space Invaders_ type game if you pressed a sequence of keys. A shipmate found this hidden deep in the documentation that came with it. The game was called "Secret Test Mode" in the manual so of course he immediately tried it out. You had to figure out what knob to rotate to move the base and what button to press to shoot. And yes, back in the 80s it was really boring onboard a ship so we would find anything to read or watch.
That is such a beautiful story, thank you
When I worked at General DataComm in the 1970s, the Axel Line Simulator was part of my test bench for 208 B/A modems. We used these to simulate line noise and phase shift conditions to test the modem's ability to correct errors. Another tool we used in conjunction with this was the Sierra 1914 test set.
That lo-fi piano track was straight out of a horror soundtrack...gonna haunt my dreams!
i've been thinking about it for a while but i'll finally get the noises plug in soon, these sounds are too good!! thank you for making it available, also loved the track!
Very nice piece of equipment. Congratulations for having it and sharing this with us.
Really enjoyed the video.
Ears perked up with all the acid sounds this piece produced.
The low-fi filter was also especially pleasing.
Whenever you do a video on equipment that was never meant to make music, I find it an experience of wonder and awe of what you're managing to do with such things. Sonic exploration through constant experimentation is practically new and my favorite frontier, but still something if wrangled within the confines of a keyboard scale, can be extremely beautiful and rewarding. I await your next discovery, and play with things that are out of the ordinary.... Like going into "Buchla territory" like (or unlike) Morty Subotnick, or finding new and unknown electronic instruments as you have been.
Absolutely a big thanks for sharing. I didn't even know there was the Axel bank until i hit some buttons to refresh it. Now it's time to create too!
Wow, wow, wow. Truly amazing sounding. There's a warm humanness to it.
Oh man! This box would be another great Hainbach/AudioThing collaboration! And with it being so rare... Wow. It would be an instant buy.
That's so cool to find such a rare device, and it sounds absolutely delightful!
What a wonderful machine 😁 thanks for sharing it with us!
So amazingly beautiful sounding. Childhood memories from Italian Horror Film Classics log the 70’s and 80’s
I think it actually was "digital data transmission", that "date" was a typo. My guess is that this was used for testing prototypes of modems, which do, indeed, transmit digital data over noisy phone lines. This would be a way of testing your company's new modem for adverse conditions it would experience in the field.
I agree. It was for development, not for maintenance or repair. So I agree with those who say this is probably as rare as hen's teeth. Maybe one per modem manufacturer.
Really enjoyed this thanks! What a great find!
Never seen a line simulator like this, most just add filtering and attenuation. This is cool. And gold!
For 13.7 billion years, the universe evolved towards its ultimate destiny: the mating of the Axel Electronics Telephone Line Simulator Model 771 with a softly spoken German sound designer.
IT IS ACCOMPLISHED! HAIL THE BLEEP! 🙏
cue mushroom clouds
Klaus Schulze would be jealous.. and proud of him!
Great vid, Sir. I always feel like I am visiting an old friend when I watch your vids. Great work!
Man you are always getting into the coolest things. I appreciate you.
This is my favorite kind of gear, where the crazy sounds it makes are all secondary characteristics that weren't intended in the design, but they are the most valuable asset they have all these decades later.
Hi Haini :-) Thank you for all your videos, it's always interesting to watch them.
One of the phenomena this device simulates is known as group delay. Essentially that means that different frequencies will travel at different speeds along a telphone circuit, depending on the characteristics of the circuit. When circuits went between cities on High Frequency coaxial cable links the filters in the HF system would introduce group delay and equalizers would be added into the circuit if it was allocated to carry data. This was also true of circuits that were routed as audioon purely copper cable routes. For voice transmission group delay made no difference, as far as I remember. I still have an old HP Group Delay Analyser under the bench in my garage. Circuits were allowed certain limits before they were deemd unsuitable or in need of equalistion. We never had one of these line simulators. I suspect they were used by designers of test gear and equalisers, not humble technicians, like me, setting up and testing circuits. We also tested for frequency response, impulsive noise and psophometric noise.This Axel simulator seems to mimic most of these charcteristics.
Wow! in love with the sound of the processed pianoooo
That sounds lovely! I’m inspired to make some fun noisy stuff again now!
I imagine Dr. Doolittle and St. Francis talking to the animals, watching Hainbach in his garden of devices..:::
I'm glad you all met up!💚💚💚🐾🐾🐾
Wow, that is the neatest thing! Thanks for sharing, Hainbach!
what a wonderfull machine! It sounds marvellous. The new mixer looks interesting.....and the new Studio setup.....
Thank you! I spend weeks getting the setup right. video incoming!
@@Hainbach really looking forward! Thanks for sharing all of this!!
Some of those sounds remind me of short wave sounds... like numbers stations espionage stuff. Very trippy! I like the built in limiter. 😄
Lovely bit of kit!
Hainbach that is the most OG piece of gear I've ever seen, good on you.
I came here from the plugin video lol. What a beautiful synth and piece of gear! I gotta pick up Lines and run it through a bunch of multitap delays and stuff haha
Man, it'd be so cool if someone modelled this. I hope this inspires some plugin maker to get ahold of one of these or some other linesim
tousands of them, alot of similar oscillator
Haunting machine indeed. Splendid!
Possibly one of my favourite video titles I’ve ever seen, definitely top 3
Thank you!
Ha! I loved this one. Twisting the old test gear to make cool electronic music, it's soooo you (or LMNC, of course) :). Nice piece of kit, I like its aesthetics too. A peek inside, please.
It's so easy to get sucked into it, right? A synth in itself!
Lovely mixing console too. The real deal! Reminds me of the CENRiT / Fonia SMP850 I sometimes worked with back in my campus radio days.
Wow Hainbach I just love your video composition!
Thank you Simon!
Man that thing makes a recording studio drool 🤤 ❤
Wow.. that's actually really cool.. I'm an old phone phreak.. so Im loving this!
Thanks Hainbach, for this detailed equipment review. My geeky comment? That Gefell mic you are using sounds great on your voice!
Throughout the 1990s I used a Microtech Gefell M 71 daily, doing commercial voice over sessions for national & local clients. Smoooooth sound with good definition in the high freqs!
It is lovely - very "documentary" and clear
WOW how beautiful in every way
This thing is amazing! Isn't it interesting, though, how you can get such a distinct and maybe new vibe from a particular arrangement of the same old synthesis/signal processing building blocks that you already have an abundance of in your modular platform. Like there's abolutely nothing novel at all in the *components* of the Moog DFAM, and of course I already have them all in my modular (many times!) but somehow it still successfully leads me down different paths
Enjoyed very much. Thanks.
It has the most beautiful sounding noise 😍
Thanks so much. I really am blown away by this. Those engineers that designed this line simulator probably were synthesizer DIY types that convinced the phone company management that they really needed this unit for line testing when it really was more like an "Avant-garde" modular synthisizer they can play with at lunch or after hours. LOL Very inspiring !
Sometimes you have to take a cool idea and build what seems like a boring version of it to test problems. This is a nice mixture, I think!
This title instantly brings back memories of my early days with modular synths (I'm dating myself lol, I mean like 7-8 years ago hehe), when I happened to patch a square wave to an oscillator's pitch cv in, and it sounded like the most clearcut telephone ring signal I've ever heard. Very cool device right here, would fit right in among any modular kit.
Also, good point about limiters in feedback patches - very literally getting into the field of cybernetics at this point btw lol.
Wow you have a lot of analog. That's fantastic!
8:08 Wow, this type of music has an amazing feel to it. I'm not sure what that feel is, or if it even exists, but it's amazing for sure.
Thank you! It will be released on the Greek Label "Silence in Sound" soon
Great demo of a remarkable device. The effect introduced from 2:06 sounds rather like ring modulation to me, imparting a more metallic timbre. The resulting tones are reminiscent of some of Tristram Cary’s experimental soundtracks.
I heard ring mod-like sounds too! The overdrive was rather nice as well.
It’s a very effective treatment - the sum and difference tones of ring mod, plus the additional harmonics generated by overdrive. The early Dalek voices for Dr Who benefitted from the gritty distortion possible with the valve-based ring modulator used at the time.
When I discovered this channel a while ago, I had no idea that this is also the lab of a crazy scientist. I love it.
I love your mixing console.
Very interesting. Thanks you for demonstration. I like this possibilities music electronika.
Sounds as beautiful as it looks.
Wow I love the sound of the piano running through that thing. Sort of sounds like some kind of amplitude modulation happening.
Sounds better than a lot of Eurorack modulars! Greets from the neighborhood! 🍀
Can I just acknowledge the awesomeness of Hainbach’s sweaters?
Very VERY intersting... Thanks for sharing.
What a fabulous device!
Just googled for your new plugin and I ended up here, even better 😅
This thing is solid gold!
Damn fun look this one! Lovely sounds you get out of it.
Sounds Great !!! Now send it over to AudioThing that we can all soon have a try :P what a lovely machine :)
There has either to be a project made that is replicating the old unit, bit by bit or taken into the now with altered components, but still retaining its old style, i mean holy moley that is cool !
If there are any schematics that came with it, dear hainbach, please release them or post them to some forum like diygroup or so, so the diy community as a whole can go crazy with this... maybe develop a pcb or atleast understand better what is going on in there. Too cool to die and it would be sad if only a very limited group is able to play with it.
:)
Nice find !
I have posted the patent, there are the schematics but as usual no values
@@Hainbach Thats a pity... But very very nice that you did that ! There could be a real shematic around... atleast i would think that... i mean there has to be a service manual somewhere. The question is, who can be asked for something like that...
It's always interesting to see what you can harvest from random seeds planted on the noise floor.
Crossbar exchanges used Multi Frequency Code for internal signalling. One could plug an audio monitor into a marker rack and monitor the signals. It was very random but musical. Another bit of kit was the AET or automatic exchange tester which generated MFC tones. I still use recordings from one to this day.
Anxious to see you now get a Bradley Telcom Jitter and Hit Synthesizer, which was used for test phone lines with various sounds.
You are the mad scientist of music / sound engineering!
Holy cow, you got me at 2:06! Instant nightmare mode. ❤
This is magical
I remember watching this and hoping this would be your next Audiothing collab. Looks like it happened!
You need to build it as an app with Audio Thing, so we all can play with it 🤩😍😍
Incorporated in 1904 as General Railway Signal Company, started as a railway systems supplier, I didn't know there is a Jaimaca in New York, cool unit.
There is a Jamaica. It's in Queens in NYC, I'm pretty sure.
That is so creative. How did you even come up with the idea to use that for this? I mean, I have an entire electronics lab filled with instruments I've gathered for actual purprose, if I saw this (before I saw your video) I would have skipped something like this, but now - wow - I never knew how versatile a unit like that could be with music, that's actually awesome.
Oh I just went down a rabbit hole a few years back and now I find joy in using test instruments for music. Usually I just make a guess while looking at the front panel.
Enjoy finding one online😢
@@uremawifenowdave If anyone does, I would be surprised. This is a true unicorn
@@Hainbach How did you, yourself, find this unicorn Hainbach?
Interesting as always.
Back in the '80s, I was in charge of building telephone line simulators for a data communications company that were very similar to this.
Any chance of a circuit diagram? :P
Love the look and sounds! How about transforming this piece of equipment to the virtual realm?
It could be fun!
@HAINBACH Definitely would be interested, this has as much sound design capability as like Digitalis
You stole my words mate! Would make an amazing 'made by Hainbach" plug-in!👍
@@jeanbonnefoy1377 For sure, he should really look into this!
Back in college, in the late 70s majoring in electronic music at Grinnell College, I worked one summer for two brothers whose wealth came from their fathers invention of the tones for touch tones, I guess the whole Sounds behind that. Made frickin millions. Omaha. Western Electric. We used to see weird things around pawn shops in Omaha like this 45 years😢 ago.
If you can go inside and make a schematic, this would be fun to try and rebuild and market as a guitar pedal/synthesizer box.
It's amazing! I'd love to take a peek at the circuitry. Being probably from the 70's it shouldn't be hard to clone it I guess?
Sounds lovely! Would be great to see a VST version of this one
VSTS HAVE BECOME SO INSANELY GOOD, i WILL STILL OWN THE MOOGS AND 20 K SYNTHS FOR THE FEEL AND GEAR, BUT MAN THEY ARE GETTING CLOSE. (CAPS)
Inspiring indeed !
Well, now I know what I want from your next plugin. A full emulation of this, please.
Inspiring video, like always ! When you mentionned the Noises bank, I jumped straight to my computer to open my Noises plugin...and I cried 😂 I guess it's only available for your Patreons? Makes sense 😅
Ah I forgot to mention its the bonus content for people that have all the plugins I made with AudioThing. Sorry. Maybe we will make this one available from the site and a new one for the Hainpack. Will post about it.
@@Hainbach nice :-) Thank you !
That thing is wild!!
it sounds a great deal like solar EMF and Osc "birdies" on much of the shortwave bands!
This is really cool. I wonder if anyone was using it for no input mixing back in the day.
10 minutes later I still have no idea what it is I'm looking at or what this device is. But I love it.
I love this maschine!
So sick, when you started to loft the piano it got sooo evil lol
What an amazing device ❤
Quite amazing