A few weeks ago, Robbie Elias from 343 (makers of Halo) invited me to do a recording session along with Nate Marler (also from 343) using a couple of Elektrosluchs!
The glowing blue guys in the picture are the Elektrosluchs. They are capable of capturing electromagnetic sounds made by electronic devices by simply getting them as close to the source as you can. There's a lot of cheaper options to achieve similar results, but these specific ones are known to be some of the best at what they do. They capture the sound in stereo, with a great signal to noise ratio, and with a very extended frequency response. Plug them into your favorite handheld recorder using a simple 3.5mm cable and you're ready to go!
Robbie and Nate are pretty cool people, super chill to hang out with. Robbie was our host for this session, letting use his apartment, his recording gear, and most importantly, an amazing amount of cool electronic gadgets to record. Robbie also set up his super fancy camera to record the whole thing.
These are some of the things we recorded:
Super Nintendo, Original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Sound Devices 788, Sound Devices 702, 2006 Macbook, external disc drive, power drill, electric fan, OWC 4 bay hard drive, Gtech drives, Lacie drives, Seagate drives, Western Digital drives, and a few other hard drives from the stone age.
Here's a picture of just a few of these things, mostly the drives:
More stuff:
And of course a few samples of what the inside of some of these machines sound like!
WARNING - they can get pretty loud
We recorded about 12GB worth of audio at 24 bit, 96 kHz. A lot of really cool stuff in there that I'm excited to play with. I really recommend getting an Elektrosluch!
-Juan