About

It's hard to imagine there was a period in time where the most sophisticated computers ran on cassette tapes. This time in technological history has always fascinated me, and had me questioning how things would look (and sound)  if we still operated on that technology. This idea has been further explored in the interior of the spaceship Nostromo, On Alien, and with the Holotapes for the Pipboy from Fallout, in a sub genre of science fiction called Cassette Futurism. 

But if high end futuristic computers ran on loud magnetic tape, rather than silent microchips, how would they sound? Rather than take direct influence from any, one, particular franchise, this pack goes back to the most likely source, a tape player (and a scientific calculator), and records it with unorthodox microphones. A Contact Microphone, that records surface vibrations, and an Electromagnetic Field Recorder, that records electronic signals. These recordings are separated into three folders, UI Sounds, Granular, and Recordings.

UI Sounds

The selections in this folder take the original recordings, but are manipulated to sound more like UI interactions. Consisting of Alarms, Beeps, Clicks, Notifications, and Processing sounds.

Granular

Granular Processing is an audio effect that breaks sounds down into grains, and reshapes them based on modulated automations. However, the sounds can still sometimes end up sounding random. The files in this folder were put through a granular processing tool that takes multiple audio files of the original recordings, plays them at the same time, and manipulates them into bleeps and bloops.

Recordings

These are interesting tidbits of the original recordings, with little post processing aside from normalization.

Free Drones (Some Assembly Required)

For my own curiosity, I put some of the recordings through plentiful reverbs and delays. These are short environmental drones, and can loop if cross-faded together. You’re free to pick them up if that interests you.