Title link takes you to more shots via this auction. Be sure to check them out. There are some great shots including a drawing of one, and a University of Illinois face plate.Details:
"This machine was manufactured in 1972. The HSL-II has 3 sine wave generators, a square and saw wave fuzz generator (awesome!), and a pink and white noise generator. These can be seen clearly on the far left of the HSL-II. The signal path flows from left to right and is patchable with mini-banana cables (included in the auction). There are 3 filters which allow patching through hi/lo/mid pass sections. There is a phase inverter, limiter, frequency counter (with a classic red LED display) , 4 attenuators (volume), 2 mixer sections, a VU meter, and a few mystery functions that affect the sound but that I am not qualified to describe. there is also a gate sequencer, so you can basically set two different lengths of tones to trigger as you desire. The sequencer is weird and rudimentary, but functions perfectly.Below are some long recordings of the HSL-II into a Deltalab Effectron Jr. digital delay. I ran this into a decent DJ mixer and into apple's Garageband. I clipped up the audio to make it a little shorter and give you an idea of a portion of the range that you can achieve with the HSL-II.
HSL-II sample one
Sound plays at beginning and towards the end - dead air in the middle
HSL-II sample two - plays fine
You cannot control the pitch from an external controller as of now. They were not designed for that. You can control the frequency manually, which in turn affects the perceived pitch, and believe me, with all 4 or 5 sound sources going through some delay and reverb, you have a wicked modular synth, sample source, drone machine....Silver Apples meets Aphex meets Eno.I spoke with a synthe technologiste who thought that there would likely be a way to add c/v control to the sound source circuits...I have included a close up of a single sine sound source...it is the one circuit photo that has had the color altered and sharpened to give someone some idea what they are dealing with if they are so inclined to pursue the c/v route. Alas, there are no schematics and I have searched high and low on the internets.
The cabinet is absolutely VCS3-esque. There are a few areas of flaky veneer about the edges, as can be seen in the photos.
Also...you can run audio through the filters and even do some sort of weird sonic destruction by patching the fuzz output into the same input as the audio source. There are many many routing capabilities. These machines have provided me with plenty of inspiration. I will be moving soon, so please look out for all sorts of audio related stuff."
MP3s backed up here.
The one via Must! who is the seller.
Ouch, mein ears!!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear the story of how it got from DeKalb, IL to Florida.
ReplyDeleteI went to first grade at NIU (in DeKalb, Illinois). I had trouble pronouncing words and they tested me with what I'm near certain was one of those to see if I had hearing problems. I guess I had speech problems that were quite noticable but didn't fit whatever textbooks therapists had. I also remember that University was really big into training teachers so they ran a private school with a couple classes of each grade on campus. I remember they had a fair amount of neat technology
ReplyDeleteI remember mainly it looked neat and didn't make a single interesting sound. I guess my most lasting memory was the probably stone age headphones they had weren't suitable for small children and it and the sounds were at least uncomfortable and the wait to set up was way long. I think I only remember it because I remember getting my ears pinched by the headphones. I don't think anything really hurt but it was no fun. Anyway that thing might be a cool gizmo to show off but it's somewhat pushing things to call it an "analog modular synthesizer".
I appreciate the fact that this gizmo is a device that was designed for testing hearing and aiding in speech therapy.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciate the fact that this gizmo is analog, modular, and capable of sound synthesis. It was not made for making music, but strangely resembles the layout and signal path of some very popular synthesizers being manufactured at exactly the same time.
Now that I am showing off one of these mf'ing cool gizmos in my recording, its an analog modular synthesizer. Booya.
It makes the sounds of pain!
ReplyDeleteI can't figure out why a hearing test unit would need multiple oscs or a low and high pass filter. Weird. Sounds bitching as hell. My Synthi VCS3 can't make sounds like that! Wish it had CV control, it'd be worth as much.
ReplyDeleteSynthesis? Give me a break. It's an audio test tone generator
ReplyDeleteNote that it's not called a hearing test machine but a hearing science lab. I think what's on it makes great sense if it's used for hearing perception studies. I agree that if one was merely testing for hearing loss some of that stuff makes no real sense, but if you were studying hearing perception you'd want those resources to hone in on what's going on. Note that a lot of the parameters have masked knobs presumably to to avoid mistakes when dialing things in and then writing down the numbers. Also since this thing has no resets the multiple sine generators and filters are probably just there to have several tones available to alternate. You know, which is louder, that sort of thing.
Anyway these can't be that rare if that guy has another and I remember at least 2 others on ebay.
I guess one would have to assume that whomever designed it had looked at synths
I think 4 in a few years is rare. We say that EMS Synthi's and OSCars are rare, but I've seen a buttload more of those on ebay by comparison.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to this synthesis thing, I have the accompanying 200+ page book for the Starkey, written by one of the guys who helped develop it for Starkey, and some of the titles of the sections start with "Synthesizing...".
Again, I appreciate the fact that you encountered this machine in a clinical setting as a child and it was used for testing and hearing perception, but I have the manual, and it says it's a hearing science laboratory capable of sound synthesis.
Wikipedia:
"Synthesizer as used in music, is a term derived from a Greek word syntithenai (synthesis) and is being used to describe a device capable of generating and/or manipulating electronic signals for use in music creation, recording and performance. A synthesizer is capable of generating and manipulating audio tones such as for example musical notes. Synthesizers can create an electrical signals needed to drive and play audio amplifiers. The tone is generated by electrical circuits which may have adjustable parameters (as in analog synthesizers), and can perform mathematical manipulation of signal using a microprocessor and digital signal processing (as in digital synthesizers), or by a combination of both methods."
I used the Starkey as "a device [to] generat[e] and/or manipulat[e] electronic signals for use in music creation, recording and performance." So I turned it into a synthesizer.
Slappa yo face two time and accept defeat. If you want to bid on it, there is still a day left.
I love you all. Goodnight.