from Hacker News

Museum of Endangered Sounds

by mike_esspe on 8/1/14, 9:50 PM with 31 comments

  • by Theodores on 8/2/14, 6:26 AM

    I wish I could add the 'Samsung Whistle' to this list:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5h411OcttA

    Every time I hear it on public transport (never anywhere else) it gives me terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side. I wish this sound to be extinct.

    There is also some incoming mail sound on Mapple computers that I am spared at the moment - probably because all the Mapple products near me have upgraded to Zirconium Mountain Frog (or whatever it is) - but that sound seemed against what you would really need for concentration and productivity.

    Some of the legacy sounds in this gallery were rather good - the Nokia sound wasn't thrown together, neither was the Windows 95 startup sound.

    There are reasons for this, for instance, with Windows 95 'multi-media' was A Big Thing. Before then a sound card wasn't what you would have on a machine used for business porpoises, plus, before plug'n'play, you would have to spend at least a day installing it in such a way you still had some of your 640K free. With Windows 95 and the Altec Lansing speakers that came bundled with your PC It Just Worked.

  • by fallinghawks on 8/2/14, 1:28 AM

    That was fun, although several were not quite like the ones in my memory.

    One of the sounds that I'd like to hear again is that little triple "dit" you would hear on a radio when a cell phone was nearby. I never knew exactly how it was made -- undoubtedly the network saying hello to the phone -- or what that sound was called.

  • by mturmon on 8/1/14, 11:52 PM

    This made me think of Bernie Kraus's work: http://www.wildsanctuary.com

    He goes to remote natural areas and records what they sound like. It's relaxing and can be fun atmospheric sound to listen to.

  • by jaunkst on 8/2/14, 3:28 AM

    The tetris song has been permently engraved in my mind since childhood. The only one out of place is the Nokia phone sounds, we all know they will still exist long after humanity's demise.

  • by copperheart on 8/2/14, 1:38 AM

    Great idea! Bookmarked and eager to hear what new sounds are added in the future. I've got a similar idea for a 'video game systems and computers of yore sound museum' which so far includes several years worth of sound rips and snippets from the TI-99 4a, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Commodore 64 and many arcade games. Not too sure about the legality regarding copyright issues or fair use, though.

  • by isomorphic on 8/2/14, 6:59 AM

    403 Forbidden.

  • by DanBC on 8/2/14, 10:44 AM

    This is great!

    I'm making a list of things that I did in my childhood tha the future people (mostly my child at the moment) will think are odd or bizarre.

    The best one so far is the lack of mobile phones for each person; we just had a landline per house. And even then that was a party line shared between different homes so you couldn't always make or recieve a call.

  • by septerr on 8/1/14, 10:32 PM

    Nice. Some of the sounds didn't seem to work (like the typewriter).

    I have a similar idea jotted down on my things-to-make list :) My idea is to create a library of sounds that are part of our daily life today, not necessarily things that have disappeared or are rapidly disappearing. Like a shutterstock of sounds :)

  • by ANTSANTS on 8/2/14, 12:46 PM

    This is really cool.

    My one gripe is that it uses the crummy Atari 2600 version of the Space Invaders sound effects, when the analog-synthesized arcade soundtrack is the one that everyone remembers.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KKr9pz9j2g

  • by llllllllllll on 8/2/14, 4:30 AM

    Try simultaneously playing "Typewriter", "Vinyl Turntable", "VCR Rewinding", "Windows95 Startup", "Pac-Man", and "Dot Matrix Printer".

    It's beautiful. Reminds me of some of my favorite futurebeat music.

  • by nlh on 8/2/14, 1:00 AM

    Nice. Hearing the dialup sound got me nostalgic and I found this site, which was intensely satisfying:

    http://goughlui.com/legacy/soundofmodems/index.htm

  • by thristian on 8/2/14, 4:02 AM

    I recognise most of those, but what the heck is a Eurosignal?

  • by digita88 on 8/4/14, 5:06 AM

    403 Forbidden! Uh oh.

    On another note though, I was thinking that this could easily translate (no pun intended) to endangered languages

  • by m0skit0 on 8/2/14, 3:17 PM

    403 Forbidden from Spain?

  • by chasing on 8/1/14, 11:01 PM

    Nice. Good presentation.

  • by jcliff on 8/2/14, 2:33 AM

    loved the dial up modem one. what a throwback.