I think it's the loud-but-distant tone between the trumpet segments. It feels as if the track itself is... _breathing._ I really don't have any other words to describe it. It's like the sharp inhales of a desolate, empty city between sounding a desperate call.
For the longest time I thought it was just the citadel announcer voice repeating "alert... alert..." like it does in episode one. Little foreshadowing. Ah well, sound similar enough haha.
Exactly what I thought, too. Might be a fun thing to make for the HL2 Workshop. Use the original samples but replace Ooyayoolyah with the Combine Overwatch voice clips. A meaningless, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it change, but fun for those of us that always heard it that way.
I actually talked to Simon Mills, one of the guys who made the original samples. I told him about how “Is That The Door?” had gained kind of a cult following, and asked him if he remembered what the original sound was. We had a pleasant conversation and he told me he would look through his old material and see if he could figure it out. He never got back to me tho :(
Damn, that recreation reminds me of how surreal it was to hear the unfiltered Portal radio music for the first time. I've heard the isolated samples before, sure, but the recreation is spot on
I cut this from the original script because it’s unconfirmed, but it’s most likely an inside joke referencing Marc Laidlaw’s test map “ickypop”, which can be found in the 2003 leak.
GMan is something of a devil figure, always in the back manipulating things from the shadows, crows commonly symbolize death, usually long enough that they were put into coffins, I guess the idea with GMan on the boat was that the end of the Combine or Humanity is near? this is just speculation, Valve doesn't do symbolism but it's fun to think about
@@RiveroftheValley Ickypop itself is disturbing, but also kind of humorous, with the flying ichthyosaur. I knew of Ickypop very early on, so I always just assumed that the tv encounter was just remnants of it.
@@alienpilot11 what do you find that makes it disturbing? i went and watched it and it was kinda goofy, with the crow extracting gman like a comically cartoonish villain from a burning ship
@@adhdasdfroflxd123 Well it might actually not be in the original map, but on UA-cam it was accompanied by music that would fit a horror movie. And it sort of hit that uncanny valley effect.
I think this easteregg is one of the last remnants of half life 2 beta weirdness. The creepy music and the surreal image of Gman with a crow on a boat reminds me a lot of those weird hl2 beta maps like hazard01 or ickypop.
This just speaks to the genius of Kelly Bailey's soundwork. My personal headcanon is that the voice is Alyx. It's edited to sound more high pitched and it kinda sounds like her. Maybe it's a bit lore-bendy but I like to think It's her trying to communicate with Gordon after she was put in Stasis by the G-Man at the end of HLA. Both of them are yoked together by the Vortessence, which transcends space-time, just like G-Man.
I had a headcanon that the voice we heard is Alyx trying to warn Gordon about the future with the "Everyone is dead" telling him that they failed so she sends a message to the past for Gordon to try and change the future and maybe it was changed (Ending of Episode 2 vs Ending of HLA). Maybe it was the Alyx for several years in the future that was abducted by the Gman at the end of Marc Laidlaw's "Epistle 3".
Im heart broken, all these years i thought this was a super interesting piece of lore, like alyx sending help. But turns out… it was just “ooyoyoyoooyoooyahhyalle”
That Zero-G sample pack is incredible. I recommend it to any of yall who make music. Every time I look through it I find sounds I've heard from games and movies.
You forgot to mention Gman on boat with crow is an Ickypop the present in "beta" leak map created by Mark Laiwdlaw reference, probably as dev in-joke. Which kinda demystifies the whole thing because the map is super goofy.
with all the new hlx refrences apppearing in source files, a new half life game is definitely being developed when or if it gets released is a better question
I remember seeing a video with a high quality recreation of this track in Audacity two, three or four years ago. It had almost zero views, and that third sample was mentioned in the description. Though back then, no one had published the sample on YT or anywhere else for free and I wasn't really ready to buy the whole sample pack for, like, $20 or so, so I didn't even know whether I should believe the author. It made a lot of sense to me back then tho
Do you remember in call of duty world of wars you can hear zombies began spouting what sounds like to be the word "sam" it wasn't the intention of the creators and instead just meant to be a normal zombie groan that misheard by the players as "sam" and treyarch found it intriguing and so worked it into the game maybe valve work it into the storyline or something idk
I was taken away for a moment when I saw you uploaded this! I recreated the audio once, but it's now lost to time. It always felt so atmospheric. Great video!
on the contrary, the video that gman is in on the TV (and I doubt its a security camera). Implies that Gman went back in time to show himself in some pre recorded tv show or movie
When I first heard it I went to investigate the source. However, it wasn't G-man that I saw on the television It was Goku (I installed a reskin on the workshop and it was very unsettling)
I like that the distorted trumpet melody is very close to "The Future Starts With You" from the Portal 2 soundtrack. I don't think it was on purpose but I like it as a motif
That’s probably my favorite spot in any Half‐Life game. The atmosphere there is impeccable. As I recall that’s when you’re running from the gunship, and the stillness and silence you find there always felt comforting somehow.
Strange... but if it did say anything, I think it would be saying "Counter-Resonant" or "Resonant Singularity". Which is what Overwatch says during the Citadels destruction.
thats not a voice, i think thats one of those sirens u hear throughout the game but echoing in low quality whatever it is its just one sound repeated over and over, it cant be words
I was wrong if it's the sound shown later in the video if that sound is a perfect match, then it is indeed a voice, but not one that's making real words
Nice, I used to do a bunch of this kind of stuff 10+ years ago when I was playing Source games a lot while learning sound design. To really set the timeframe, it was all stuff for TF2 and cleaning up/restoring/analyzing the audio files used in the Portal 2 ARG that was driving us all crazy.
This is a very specific thing in half life 2 that stuck out to me so hard I'm glad I found it and saw it for the first time organically wile playing my one and only playthrough of half life 2
Its very strange because ive been obsessing with radio1 and ghosts in the machine sample pack. As a matter of fact i have a copy on CD and i would have never in a billion years have guessed that its olyahoho or whatever. Btw great work on the recreation this sounds amazing!
Idk why I got recommended this video, but the same radio message can be heard in Half-Life Alyx. You know... the game about G-Man. It's clearly connected to him somehow.
I always used to believe in the theory that it's meant to be sirens from during the 7 hour war, and that it's a recording of the combine "hijacking" air raid sirens so people don't evacuate due to not recognizing the sound, and i heard the voice as saying "danger... danger..."
Honestly the music haunts me cause it reminds of something you'd hear during WW2 in the heat of a ruined city once full of life and peace but the war destroying it and its meaning.
Thank you, at least, for mentioning the absurdity of the gman sighting. I've seen plenty of people bring this encounter, and this sound file, up when talking about creepy Half-Life 2 stuff. But they all, for some reason, seem to intentionally ignore gman doing a pirate-themed photoshoot!
Ravenhold still make me scare a.f 😅 I dunno why,but the feeling every corner of that place Even the sound effect too The vibe really diferent from other place
Yeah this news was shared a year or two ago i remember. Because the audio was taken from a library or something like that, which was also used by a game that popularized it which was the first Postal game.
This recording can serve well as a muscial theme for The Combine. It is distorted, harrowing and unearthly, like The Combine itself, you listen to it, and you imagine the scale of horrors it brought to Earth, how many billions were killed, the atmosphere nearly destroyed, and how many were subjected to the fate worse than death. And which is worse - how many tens or hundreds or even thousands of worlds were subjected to this fate by them beforehand.
What’s crazy to me is this kind of sound is ambiguous now with stuff like the back rooms and analogue horror. A full 20 years ahead of the curve in tapping into that fear
I’d love a psychological horror segment of HL3 when we confront G-Man. I’m sure that’s when we’ll see who his “Employers” are. If we do see what they are, it’s not gonna be pleasant.
you can hear someone speaking to Gordon "Everyone's dead, Gordon. Everyone's dead" which is what i hear out of the audio Half Life was always the expert at making an uneasy, unnerving games like these, it's really cool
It honestly feels creepier now to me. Something with re reverb, or the fact that the audio effect used makes the voice sound like the combine overwater makes it seem to me like some surface level imitation. Like there’s some Eldridge being that some time in the future will be able to take over overwatch and imitate it to the point of using the combine soldiers as it’s own puppet. But as of Half Life 2, all it can handle is a crude mix of vowels and symbols that barely sounds human in the first place. Oh and, “is that the door” is a really fucking haunting name with the context of the audio.
Its still a nice choice by Kelly to use that sample "Is that the Door" because it sounds like a laugh-track you'd hear on a TV is going on. I guess maybe that's the point, a play on the popular phrase on game shows 'what door is (blabla) behind'
fun fact: the piece of audio with the trumpet sounds actually like a recording of a recording, the note section could be a jingle, or a "loop" playback, but I can hear some sort of ambient reverb, because when played backwards, the reverberation sounds clearly inverted. that suggests me that the "loop" or jingle has been put on play while re-recorded with a mic, lowering the overall quality. I's used generally as an expedient to produce some lo-fi audio.
The distorted trumpets thing freaks me tf out. Activates my fight or flight response or some shit lmao.
I think it's the loud-but-distant tone between the trumpet segments. It feels as if the track itself is... _breathing._ I really don't have any other words to describe it. It's like the sharp inhales of a desolate, empty city between sounding a desperate call.
@@Dingghis_Khaan it sounds like agonal breathing
Your "some shit" is your adrenaline ready to pump all over you, and yeah that trumpet thing is freaky af.
It feels like a warning.
It feels rather soothing to me, nostalgic too.
I always thought it sounded like the overwatch radio voice
edit: combine overwatch, not the blizzard game lol
exactly! I believe it's a heavily distorted "Anticitizen one" voice line by overwatch
FUCKING SHOOT ME TO DEATH
@@SAENICSAENIC bruh
@@SAENICSAENIC ???
@@SAENICSAENICoverwatch is the name of the transhuman branch of the combine military.
For the longest time I thought it was just the citadel announcer voice repeating "alert... alert..." like it does in episode one. Little foreshadowing. Ah well, sound similar enough haha.
Kinda does
This was my first thought as well
Same lol
on the money
Exactly what I thought, too.
Might be a fun thing to make for the HL2 Workshop. Use the original samples but replace Ooyayoolyah with the Combine Overwatch voice clips. A meaningless, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it change, but fun for those of us that always heard it that way.
No... It can't be... It can't be
Ooyoyoyeyeye nooo
lalilulelo
@@quaddamage7765 The la-le-lu-le-lo?
@@Whovian1156
NO, THAT IS NOT SOLID SNAKE!!!
@@battlefieldnerd1002Do you know what day it is today?
@@nexieadr No, why tho?
I'm sorry but all the buildup for Ooyoyoyeyeye is too fucking funny
I find it scary
*But creativity. Also That very impressed. And also that is spirit how created like human voice.*
joel
that sort of things is what I really wanted to get developer commentaries on
I actually talked to Simon Mills, one of the guys who made the original samples. I told him about how “Is That The Door?” had gained kind of a cult following, and asked him if he remembered what the original sound was. We had a pleasant conversation and he told me he would look through his old material and see if he could figure it out. He never got back to me tho :(
Time to follow up ;)
How long ago was that?
_It got to them_
@@shellydrelly September of 2023
it sounds like my old door alarm when the batteries are low
Damn, that recreation reminds me of how surreal it was to hear the unfiltered Portal radio music for the first time. I've heard the isolated samples before, sure, but the recreation is spot on
Interesting, but why the G Man stands on the boat like the ferryman to the underworld is still a mystery.
I cut this from the original script because it’s unconfirmed, but it’s most likely an inside joke referencing Marc Laidlaw’s test map “ickypop”, which can be found in the 2003 leak.
GMan is something of a devil figure, always in the back manipulating things from the shadows, crows commonly symbolize death, usually long enough that they were put into coffins, I guess the idea with GMan on the boat was that the end of the Combine or Humanity is near? this is just speculation, Valve doesn't do symbolism but it's fun to think about
@@RiveroftheValley Ickypop itself is disturbing, but also kind of humorous, with the flying ichthyosaur. I knew of Ickypop very early on, so I always just assumed that the tv encounter was just remnants of it.
@@alienpilot11 what do you find that makes it disturbing? i went and watched it and it was kinda goofy, with the crow extracting gman like a comically cartoonish villain from a burning ship
@@adhdasdfroflxd123 Well it might actually not be in the original map, but on UA-cam it was accompanied by music that would fit a horror movie. And it sort of hit that uncanny valley effect.
Something secret steers us both. We shall not name it
Far distant eyes...
@spookd8700 ...look out through yours
Ooyoyoyeyeye
Hi saverino person
@@WaterboardedDriftwood hi?
I think this easteregg is one of the last remnants of half life 2 beta weirdness. The creepy music and the surreal image of Gman with a crow on a boat reminds me a lot of those weird hl2 beta maps like hazard01 or ickypop.
it's like a tiny homage to what could have been
It is ickypop
Love the HL2 Beta weirdness
Randon trivia: "is that the door?" was also used in Postal (1997) in the central park level.
And silent hill I believe…Though I don’t remember which, where and when.
Also used in 28 days later
@@DionneDionSilent Hill: Shattered Memories in the song “Ice.”
It's been 20 years, and this game amazingly still makes me feel something
I know exactly what you mean, it has a certain vibe to it I love
This just speaks to the genius of Kelly Bailey's soundwork.
My personal headcanon is that the voice is Alyx. It's edited to sound more high pitched and it kinda sounds like her. Maybe it's a bit lore-bendy but I like to think It's her trying to communicate with Gordon after she was put in Stasis by the G-Man at the end of HLA. Both of them are yoked together by the Vortessence, which transcends space-time, just like G-Man.
creepy asf
I had a headcanon that the voice we heard is Alyx trying to warn Gordon about the future with the "Everyone is dead" telling him that they failed so she sends a message to the past for Gordon to try and change the future and maybe it was changed (Ending of Episode 2 vs Ending of HLA). Maybe it was the Alyx for several years in the future that was abducted by the Gman at the end of Marc Laidlaw's "Epistle 3".
Non-zero chance that Valve will some day retcon it.
It sounds like a desperate transmission. It could have something to do with the borealis as well.
It was literally the same thing that happened with the whispering room in Silent Hill 2
it sounds like the overwatch voice to me
It is, looks like its foreshadowing the aftermath of destroyed Citadel
These audio samples are also used in other games aswell
yes, silent hill 2 and max payne 1, amongst a few others
Postal 1 is a notable example
DMC1
Shattered memories
Im heart broken, all these years i thought this was a super interesting piece of lore, like alyx sending help. But turns out… it was just “ooyoyoyoooyoooyahhyalle”
iggy
Title has ".mp(3)", thus this is indisputable evidence of HL3's imminent announcement.
I can't get this tune out of my head..
Hi walter
"That's you all over"
@@jaibonaparte You're talking to yourself again..
Oh. I would have guessed a sample from a cold war number station. It sounded like a female voice saying "7" to me.
that would be very cool if it was
It sounded like glados's voice actor
That Zero-G sample pack is incredible. I recommend it to any of yall who make music. Every time I look through it I find sounds I've heard from games and movies.
You forgot to mention Gman on boat with crow is an Ickypop the present in "beta" leak map created by Mark Laiwdlaw reference, probably as dev in-joke. Which kinda demystifies the whole thing because the map is super goofy.
why did they add a shitting itchyosaur
@TT-uc3pq AFAIK it was just Mark Laidlaw teaching himself Hammer editor scripting lol
i always thought the voice was just the public intercom of City 17 added in for a cohesive ambiance effect
with all the new hlx refrences apppearing in source files, a new half life game is definitely being developed
when or if it gets released is a better question
I don't watch any half life stuff and this got recommended to me for some reason. Clear sign this video is about to explode
I always thought those sounds in the second half of it were Combine radio chatter.
Valve fans keep eating with the uncompressed radio music
I remember seeing a video with a high quality recreation of this track in Audacity two, three or four years ago. It had almost zero views, and that third sample was mentioned in the description. Though back then, no one had published the sample on YT or anywhere else for free and I wasn't really ready to buy the whole sample pack for, like, $20 or so, so I didn't even know whether I should believe the author. It made a lot of sense to me back then tho
I'd honestly prefer it being overwatch voice, it sounds identical.
But oyouuoyouoyu is also cool, I guess.
Do you remember in call of duty world of wars you can hear zombies began spouting what sounds like to be the word "sam" it wasn't the intention of the creators and instead just meant to be a normal zombie groan that misheard by the players as "sam" and treyarch found it intriguing and so worked it into the game maybe valve work it into the storyline or something idk
I was taken away for a moment when I saw you uploaded this! I recreated the audio once, but it's now lost to time. It always felt so atmospheric. Great video!
on the contrary, the video that gman is in on the TV (and I doubt its a security camera). Implies that Gman went back in time to show himself in some pre recorded tv show or movie
The G-Man hijacks the Jay Leno show
When I first heard it I went to investigate the source. However, it wasn't G-man that I saw on the television
It was Goku
(I installed a reskin on the workshop and it was very unsettling)
this implies that the boat with gman is somewhere in the map
Yeah you can easily find it by just nocliping @@Todija
@@Todija Yes, most screens in half life 2 don't play videos, they just show footage from a room somewhere on the map. Like the dr breen broadcasts.
@@Todijaof course it is, (besides alyx in the room before highway 17) everything that show up in a screen is part of the map out of bounds
Hey, I heard you're pretty strong!
I've always thought it's an intentional hidden message foreshadowing future events saying "Dead, Gordon, they're all dead" for years 😂
*To me, it seems like a summary of what happened during the 20-year combined world occupation.*
I always hear is as "Can you hear me...Gordon?"
I like that the distorted trumpet melody is very close to "The Future Starts With You" from the Portal 2 soundtrack. I don't think it was on purpose but I like it as a motif
2:34
even while playing backwards it sounds "normal"
This is equally as obscure as the windchime ambience in that one area of I think root canal? In any case these small touches are always fun to find.
That’s probably my favorite spot in any Half‐Life game. The atmosphere there is impeccable. As I recall that’s when you’re running from the gunship, and the stillness and silence you find there always felt comforting somehow.
100% sure, it's just one of the overwatch city voices cut up and distorted.
I always looked for people talking about this but never have until this video
creepy stuff. gives me mad “everywhere at the end of time” vibes.
I could hear “help, help, help”
Strange... but if it did say anything, I think it would be saying "Counter-Resonant" or "Resonant Singularity".
Which is what Overwatch says during the Citadels destruction.
thats not a voice, i think thats one of those sirens u hear throughout the game but echoing in low quality
whatever it is its just one sound repeated over and over, it cant be words
i agree
I was wrong if it's the sound shown later in the video
if that sound is a perfect match, then it is indeed a voice, but not one that's making real words
4:31 PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
what?
needs WAY more views
It kind of sounds like the evacuation recording that was broadcast over Chernobyl, or just a generic recording of a train station announcer.
The second sample reminds me of jonny greenwood's arrangements on Kid A and the live versions of climbing up the walls
just sounds like "red? red. red? red. red? red."
what color should we paint the walls in the apartment buildings
sus???
The song called "Ready Ready 15728" from the conet project seems to be the sample of the voice used, not entirely sure though.
what about the ravenholm intro music? that also has a weird voice in it
Yeah that one part with the crow in it (if that's what it is) and i think it kinda intermingles zombie sound there, though i'm not sure!
I always think that meaning is not necessarily always intended or conciously added. I think people still can interpret it as they wish.
The first part of the track is 'Distorted Trumpets' a sample from Zero G's 'Altered States'
There's more to this, I wish this didn't end in a cliffhanger too.
Never knew about that third audio sample. I never thought it was anything other than gibberish tho. Good video.
Nice, I used to do a bunch of this kind of stuff 10+ years ago when I was playing Source games a lot while learning sound design. To really set the timeframe, it was all stuff for TF2 and cleaning up/restoring/analyzing the audio files used in the Portal 2 ARG that was driving us all crazy.
no like actually the voice sounds like the overwatch voice
its just the overwatch voice is direct and has a bit of a reverb so does the ooyayooyah
So many videos on this topic and finally I see a proper answer
radio 1 was also in Half Life Alyx. As background ambience feed that I think is supposed to sound like the overwatch.
i just played through hl2 again and saw this thing for the first time yesterday
This is a very specific thing in half life 2 that stuck out to me so hard I'm glad I found it and saw it for the first time organically wile playing my one and only playthrough of half life 2
radio1.mp3 sounds like one's worst fears coming true. The paranoia of anxiety finally materialized
What about the voice that people say is the voice of a dying cosmonaut?
So glad this is being discovered and rediscovered. HL2 is timeless! Enjoy y’all 🙏🏽
If I walk outside during a quiet snowfall and hear Radio1. Then it's over for me
1:35 Peanuts Anyone?
Central park
Thank you. I love analyzing stuff like this.
Its very strange because ive been obsessing with radio1 and ghosts in the machine sample pack. As a matter of fact i have a copy on CD and i would have never in a billion years have guessed that its olyahoho or whatever. Btw great work on the recreation this sounds amazing!
Idk why I got recommended this video, but the same radio message can be heard in Half-Life Alyx. You know... the game about G-Man. It's clearly connected to him somehow.
I always used to believe in the theory that it's meant to be sirens from during the 7 hour war, and that it's a recording of the combine "hijacking" air raid sirens so people don't evacuate due to not recognizing the sound, and i heard the voice as saying "danger... danger..."
I hear Gordon, Gordon, Gordon!
Alyx is possibly trying to wake up Gordon
Honestly the music haunts me cause it reminds of something you'd hear during WW2 in the heat of a ruined city once full of life and peace but the war destroying it and its meaning.
3:26 when they let the special kid on the load speaker
Lmao
Thank you, at least, for mentioning the absurdity of the gman sighting. I've seen plenty of people bring this encounter, and this sound file, up when talking about creepy Half-Life 2 stuff. But they all, for some reason, seem to intentionally ignore gman doing a pirate-themed photoshoot!
Always thought it said: Gordon, can you hear me?
Ravenhold still make me scare a.f 😅
I dunno why,but the feeling every corner of that place
Even the sound effect too
The vibe really diferent from other place
"So, do you really wanna know what the voice is saying?"
Nope, stopping here. I want the magic
I heard distorted trumpets.wav used in a commercial for Oak chocolate milk and I was so scared I died
Wow I heard that sound a thousand times never knew about finding that television around the corner
I was so on board with the theory that is was a Future Alyx trying to warn Gordon of something
"Is that the door?" was also featured in Max Payne 1 in the nightmare theme.
Yeah this news was shared a year or two ago i remember. Because the audio was taken from a library or something like that, which was also used by a game that popularized it which was the first Postal game.
This recording can serve well as a muscial theme for The Combine. It is distorted, harrowing and unearthly, like The Combine itself, you listen to it, and you imagine the scale of horrors it brought to Earth, how many billions were killed, the atmosphere nearly destroyed, and how many were subjected to the fate worse than death. And which is worse - how many tens or hundreds or even thousands of worlds were subjected to this fate by them beforehand.
It also sounds like "Gordon, can you hear me?"
I hear "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!" like calling for a help.
3:30 that is your average british church nowadays
What’s crazy to me is this kind of sound is ambiguous now with stuff like the back rooms and analogue horror. A full 20 years ahead of the curve in tapping into that fear
I always thought the voice was just the announcer from the City.
I’d love a psychological horror segment of HL3 when we confront G-Man. I’m sure that’s when we’ll see who his “Employers” are. If we do see what they are, it’s not gonna be pleasant.
you can hear someone speaking to Gordon "Everyone's dead, Gordon. Everyone's dead" which is what i hear out of the audio
Half Life was always the expert at making an uneasy, unnerving games like these, it's really cool
Great video, thanks for uploading!
I’ve always just heard “singularity” in a broken form
Great video! There's a baby with a briefcase in the elevator right next to the TV. I never see anyone mention that
"Is That the Door" reminds me of the loading music that plays in the origonal Postal 1
To me it sorta sounded like the overwatch voice but heavily distorted, like the TV was somehow faintly picking up its signal.
It honestly feels creepier now to me. Something with re reverb, or the fact that the audio effect used makes the voice sound like the combine overwater makes it seem to me like some surface level imitation. Like there’s some Eldridge being that some time in the future will be able to take over overwatch and imitate it to the point of using the combine soldiers as it’s own puppet. But as of Half Life 2, all it can handle is a crude mix of vowels and symbols that barely sounds human in the first place.
Oh and, “is that the door” is a really fucking haunting name with the context of the audio.
Its still a nice choice by Kelly to use that sample "Is that the Door" because it sounds like a laugh-track you'd hear on a TV is going on. I guess maybe that's the point, a play on the popular phrase on game shows 'what door is (blabla) behind'
fun fact: the piece of audio with the trumpet sounds actually like a recording of a recording, the note section could be a jingle, or a "loop" playback, but I can hear some sort of ambient reverb, because when played backwards, the reverberation sounds clearly inverted. that suggests me that the "loop" or jingle has been put on play while re-recorded with a mic, lowering the overall quality. I's used generally as an expedient to produce some lo-fi audio.