Here is an unprocessed recording of the Ether box. I connected it to my iPhone through an inexpensive analog-to-digital converter. A wav file was made using a recording application. The waveform looks quite unusual, as well.
Eight songs (will remain nameless) from an internet radio station that specializes in vintage background music being played through SDRSharp, software defined radio. The software radio tuner was set to capture directly from the computer sound card. Another bit of software known as a “virtual cable” was used to direct the sound from a media player or browser to the input of SDRSharp. The software tuner was set to upper sideband and de-tuned up slightly to create the dissonant effect.
Here is a recording made by a deceased member of Negativland, Richard Lyons, years before there was any thought of a performing group or band. It was during the time I first became friends with Richard, possibly in the mid-1970s. Richard told me later he made this using his Craig model 212 (two-twelve) portable tape recorder. Richard was even able to make a crude echo effect on this machine. Along with several “takes,” we hear Richard experimenting with recording bits from top 40 radio station KFRC in San Francisco.
I used an Audio Technica AT825 stereo microphone with a Rode “synthetic fur” windscreen. A Focusrite 2i2 audio interface with my inexpensive Dell laptop computer was used to capture the audio. Listen on headphones for a better stereo effect.
Audio Technica AT825 microphone with Rode “synthetic fur” windscreen
Then the audio was received from the virtual audio cable software and processed with multiple effects in VSTHost.
I didn’t put much thought into which effects were used or what settings were used on SDRSharp. Normally the SDR (software defined radio) software works with receivers like Airspy and Funcube, but it can also process audio files and treat them as if they were radio signals.
This is a recording from January 1988 of mobile phone calls. The cellular phone system was analog and could be eavesdropped on if you had a radio that could receive between 800 and 900 megahertz, frequency modulation, or FM. I had access to such a receiver as an employee of Televents Cable TV in Martinez, California. Many of the service techs were issued an AOR, model AR-2002 communications receiver with an antenna tuned to around 150 megahertz. During times when there weren’t many service calls, we would drive slowly through neighborhoods with our radios tuned to one of the video carriers of the “midband” cable channels listening closely for the distinctive “sync buzz” (very close to 60 hertz with lots of higher harmonics). If the noise was detected, that was “signal leakage,” cable TV signals radiating out from the cabling, acting like a radio transmitter. This violated FCC rules as it potentially could interfere with aircraft communications. We would then start looking for loose, corroded connections. Often the culprits were “F fittings.” We didn’t stop checking for problems until the signal was at an acceptable low enough level. I noticed the radios we were using for our work, the AR-2002, tuned up through 1300 megahertz. On my days off work, I’d take the receiver home and record cellular phone calls. I’m quite sure the radio I’m demonstrating in Sonic Outlaws is the company issued unit, before I bought my own.
Most of the calls are not complete because as people driving would get out of range of one cell tower and connect seamlessly to another, the frequncy would change. I did a lot of filtering and a liitle noise reduction to clean up the audio quality. The frequency range is from just under 200 hertz to a little over 4000 hertz with extra notch filtering at 120 and 240 hertz.
