The NOISFERATU is an open source generative textural sound synthesizer, or as creator [Robert Heel] puts it, “a sound designer’s dream and audiophile’s worst nightmare”.
NOISEFERATU offers 45 different sound algorithms grouped into five banks produce a dazzling range of evolving soundscapes and patterns that resist repetition or settling, each influenced and shaped — the word controlled does not quite apply — by a volume slider and a few hardware knobs.
So what does it actually sound like? Check out the video embedded below to give it a listen, it’s pretty trippy.
Hardware-wise NOISEFERATU is centered around the Seeed Studio XIAO SAMD21 microcontroller, takes power over USB-C, and has a headphone jack for sound output. We love the artwork on the dual-sided front panel, too.
DIY synthesizers based on logic chips have a long and proud history, and seeing the different directions people can go by incorporating microcontrollers is always a delight.
If NOISEFERATU’s experimental sound and noise sounds up your alley, the design files and code on GitHub have everything one should need to build one. Kits are for sale direct from the designer, as well.
This reminds me of an event way back when. The local FM radio station (KUNM) was broadcasting this weird noise. Made from a wire strung up in the local mall and connected to some electronics.
A few years back I found a CD of it: Music on a Long Thin Wire.
Of course, this also could be done on the cheap/fast with bunch of 555s.
I literally knew a dude in B’More (Baltimore) who did that – 555-induced auditory hallucinations. He was out of work living in a low-income place that was not tremendously well maintained overall (I’d say a LOT of parts of B’More have been gradually sliding towards the same fate), so he ripped a chunk of wood board from the basement, hammered copper-plate nails he found laying around in random fashion and connected control wires. Then he went outside, dug some soil worms and let them slighter between the nails. I forgot what he called the concoction, but the resulting audio was about the same in scope. Oh, when worms would dry a bit and stop conducting, he’d spit on the board. obviously, the control voltages were benign and no animal cruelty was involved, as he later put worms back where he found them.