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Obsolete Sounds

191 points by benbreen

by shit_game

2 subcomments

I love seeing art like this. Using things that are forgotten, obscure, unused, insignificant, or otherwise inconsequential is an ethos unto its own. Obsolete technologies are becoming exponentially rare; I unfortunately passed up an auction for an Osbourne 1 just this week and I'm regretting it more every second since.
I desperatey search thrift stores for anything I can find that isn't the generic consumer garbage that plagues the US; smart tvs, ISP-issued modem/routers, terrible dvd players, "media centers", other smart garbage. Really, any kind of digital circuit that isnt a dumb interface to media is sacrilige in my search. This has become all but a moot point because things like CRTs and other obscure electronics are all picked off at the donation point and then sold online because they've been indentified as valuable or "retro", or outright thrown away because theyre considered too old for anyone to ever give a shit about.
There is a disturbing situation regarding old technology right now where only a very, very specific subset of technologies are considered valuable to a very small, specific subset of consumers; this means that things like CRTs are shipped off to warehouses to be catalogued and sold on online auctions, and their accompanying hardware is being thrown into dumpsters because theres no immediately correlated market for this hardware. For the first time in about 10 years I saw two VCRs at a thrift store (a Quasar VHQ-40M and some lesser generic garbage). This was the first time I had seen a VCR for sale IRL since going to a pawn shop that has since been demolished; the man running the store said I could keep it for free because the person who pawned it was a crackhead and he didn't even know if it worked, but if it did, he wanted me to come back and pay him $10 for it. Lo and behold it worked perfectly, so I went back and did.
I've noticed just this week that both of the thrift store companies I frequent have stopped stocking VHS tapes; I don't know if this is because they have decided they're to be thrown out, sold online, or refused as donations. The last VHS tapes I've bought were Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Austin Powers in Goldmember.

by Cockbrand

0 subcomment

I can't believe nobody had nitpicked the obvious mistake yet: there never was an iBook Duo. The 68k Apple notebooks and the early PPC ones were called PowerBooks, so the correct naming is "PowerBook Duo 230".

by rbanffy

5 subcomments

I was looking for typewriter sounds and several of them are "artistic renderings" that are completely useless as a form of documentation.

by lemoncucumber

0 subcomment

I thought this was going to be about phonemes that used to be part of English but aren't anymore (e.g. all of the vestigal "gh"es in our spellings that used to represent the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative but are now either silent or pronounced as another phoneme).

by binaryturtle

3 subcomments

Needs a recording of an Amiga reading in a floppy disk... and the floppy drive just waiting to be feed. Those were the sounds! :)
(The interface on the website is a bit confusing to use, IMHO)

by stavros

0 subcomment

This is great, but why is there an echo? It's prominent and it didn't let me enjoy the nostalgia as much as hearing the actual sound would have.

by nilslindemann

0 subcomment

It took me a few clicks to figure out what played those sounds. The background images of the play buttons aren't helpful in visually clarifying their function. Otherwise: Good idea, keep it up!

by buildsjets

1 subcomments

When I was a kid, I could hear the sound the of the flyback transformer on the CRT TV from anywhere in the house. None of the adults could. 15.7 kHz. Now obsolete both due to the lack of CRTs, and degradation of my hearing from heavy metal concerts and jet engine exposure.

by ljlolel

0 subcomment

I just made a new audio format that makes sharing sounds easier on mobile https://hxtube.com

by BugsJustFindMe

0 subcomment

Toilet flush as obsolete sound is an interesting future.

by wan9yu

0 subcomment

Love projects like this – we obsess over preserving images and video, but soundscapes vanish almost unnoticed.

by jonplackett

0 subcomment

The Philips Coffee grinder is quite intense with Airpods on. Feels like my head is the grinder.

by wolandomny

0 subcomment

The sounds sort of lack, but the idea is beautiful

by adolph

0 subcomment

I'd like to track down this sound for my sisters and me: Old Library Card Punch Machine. Finding the old library smell too would be a plus.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Library/comments/unek0c/old_library...

by aledevv

0 subcomment

Ahh... what memories... the legendary Pac-Man of the 80s (video games category). I was a kid, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

by Hnrobert42

1 subcomments

I wonder if it should include the sound of insects. Sigh.

by burnt-resistor

0 subcomment

I was hoping for fax machine, 56K modem, 300 baud modem, US public pay phone ringing and coin deposit, princess phone ring and dial, rotary phone dialing, 9-pin printer, and 24-pin color printer.

by Pxtl

0 subcomment

My personal "obsolete sound": The sound of an old C64 floppy drive failing a read.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JroA0Ap7zGU

by naikrovek

0 subcomment

> a brand new form of listening
bro go away from me with that crap. nothing has been invented, here.

by aaron695

0 subcomment

[dead]