Orrery — Copenhagen

The catalogue

Every restoration receives an Orrery catalogue number — OR-0001 onward — assigned in the order Orrery restored it, regardless of which original brand it came from. The catalogue is a single chronological record of the archive's work. OR-0001 is the Halvyn reverb that started everything.

Salo Oy Salo, Finland · 1991 – c. 2004

OR-0023 effect Ser. CU-9426-0173 1994

Salo 3310 — Full-Rate GSM Codec

The everyday voice of 90s GSM: the watery, half-swallowed, faintly robotic sound of a mobile call, and the workhorse of the whole Salo line.

OR-0024 effect Ser. EM-9538-0140 1995

Salo 8210 — TDMA Buzz

The flagship, and the most recognizable artifact of the era: the "da-da-da—dun-dun-dun" interference a GSM handset induced into nearby speakers and guitar pickups.

OR-0028 effect Ser. LN-9207-0033 1992

Salo 2110 — POTS Telephone

The landline anchor and the oldest voice in the house — narrowband, companded, with dial tone in its bones.

OR-0029 instrument Ser. RG-9312-0245 1993

Salo 3210 — Monophonic Ringer

The pre-polyphonic ringtone: a single tinny voice picking out a melody through a piezo buzzer — the sound of a phone in 1994.

OR-0030 instrument Ser. RG-9948-1130 1999

Salo 3510 — Polyphonic Ringtone

The next generation — a handful of cheap FM voices playing a MIDI-style ringtone through a slightly-better-but-still-tiny speaker.

OR-0031 effect Ser. DM-9805-0532 1998

Salo 5610 — Dial-Up Modem

The sound of getting online: the dial, the carrier tones, and the scrambled training screech of a 56k handshake.

OR-0032 effect Ser. VX-9640-0088 1996

Salo 6210 — Vocoder

The classic robot voice, from the house that owned the codecs.

OR-0033 effect Ser. HF-9922-0261 1999

Salo 6310 — Speakerphone

The half-duplex speakerphone: the pumping echo-canceller and the voice-switching that clips whoever's quieter when both people talk at once.

OR-0034 effect Ser. AM-9330-0074 1993

Salo 2170 — Answering Machine

"You have one new message." Microcassette or early-digital voicemail grunge — narrowband, companded, and worn.

Tekura Oregon, USA · 1979 – c. 2001

OR-0012 effect Ser. Type 4400 · Ser. No. 00417-A 1988

Tekura 4400 — Quantization Analyzer

The bench standard for characterizing bit-depth error, reborn as the archive's cleanest destruction tool.

OR-0013 effect Ser. Type 2200 · Ser. No. 01138-B 1990

Tekura 2200 — Signal Decimator

The sample-rate side of destruction, with the honesty an instrument demands: it lets you choose clean band-limited decimation or the aliased kind, deliberately.

OR-0014 effect Ser. Type 1601 · Ser. No. 00092-A 1992

Tekura 1601 — Jitter Reference

An instrument for injecting clock jitter in measured amounts — as an effect, a subtle, frequency-dependent smear and shimmer that most tools can't make.

OR-0015 effect Ser. Type 3100 · Ser. No. 00461-C 1994

Tekura 3100 — Perceptual Codec

The lab's generic perceptual coder, with the masking model exposed on the panel — a measurement framing of the "lossy compression" sound, tunable from transparent to obviously crushed.

OR-0017 effect Ser. Type 5150 · Ser. No. 00318-B 1991

Tekura 5150 — DAT Reference

The clinical companion to Yumeo's consumer DAT: 16-bit that is almost, but not quite, clean.

OR-0020 effect Ser. Type 4200 · Ser. No. 00589-B 1985

Tekura 4200 — Distortion Analyzer

A THD reference that adds exactly the harmonics you dial — measured distortion as a precise, clean harmonic generator.

OR-0021 effect Ser. Type 1200 · Ser. No. 03014-A 1982

Tekura 1200 — Noise Reference

The lab's calibrated source: white, pink, and band-limited noise at exact levels, plus test tones and correct dither.

OR-0022 effect Ser. Type 1100 · Ser. No. 00776-A 1989

Tekura 1100 — Response Analyzer

The swept-sine rig that measures a system's impulse response — and then lets you play through it.

Yumeo Japan · 1985 – c. 2005

OR-0035 effect Ser. M-2170534 1994

Yumeo MD-1 — MiniDisc (ATRAC)

The flagship, and the sound of a generation's first "perfect" digital recorder: the gentle transient-softening and stereo-narrowing of ATRAC.

OR-0036 effect Ser. D-1183902 1990

Yumeo DAT-7 — DAT Deck

The consumer DAT deck — pro-adjacent 16-bit, but voiced for the living room, and distinct from Tekura's laboratory reference.

OR-0038 effect Ser. P-0489150 1999

Yumeo MP-3 — Perceptual Coder

The specific sound of a low-bitrate MP3 from the file-sharing era: swirling cymbals, joint-stereo collapse, and pre-echo.

OR-0039 effect Ser. R-0412783 1993

Yumeo RV-1 — PureDigital Reverb

The reverb baked into a consumer deck's DSP chip: short, metallic, sparse — the unglamorous "grit era" of digital reverb, and a lovely lo-fi space.

OR-0040 effect Ser. F-0092233 1991

Yumeo HF-1 — Sampler Filter

The onboard filter character of a consumer digital instrument — either smooth analog warmth or the zippering of an early digital IIR, your choice.

OR-0041 effect Ser. K-0330512 1995

Yumeo KM-1 — Karaoke Machine

The living-room karaoke deck: pull the lead vocal out of a record, drench a microphone in splashy reverb, and shift the key to fit your range.

OR-0042 instrument Ser. G-1420788 1993

Yumeo GX-1 — PC Sound Card

The DOS-game sound card: OPL FM synthesis and a gritty 8-bit sample DAC.

OR-0043 instrument Ser. V-2891043 1992

Yumeo GC-16 — Game Console

The 16-bit console chip: FM-plus-sample voices with the specific bit-depth, rate, and built-in echo of the era's game hardware.

OR-0044 effect Ser. H-0455192 1990

Yumeo PT-1 — Home Computer (Tracker)

The demoscene machine: 8-bit sample playback resampled hard off its root, four voices, and the buzzy click of a mismatched loop point.

Halvyn United Kingdom · 1983 – c. 2008

OR-0002 effect Ser. 6000/B031 1988

Halvyn G-6000 — Gate Reverb

The iconic truncated-tail sound — the dense burst that stops dead — plus its reverse.

OR-0003 effect Ser. 4000/B112 1990

Halvyn D-4000 — Digital Delay

Clean-ish repeats that degrade in steps — the digital counterpart to tape, where each pass loses resolution in quantized increments rather than a smooth rolloff.

OR-0004 effect Ser. 3000/C019 1993

Halvyn P-3000 — Pitch Shifter

Warbly, formant-broken hardware pitch shifting — great for detune, thick doubles, and deliberate breakage; not a clean modern shifter, on purpose.

OR-0005 effect Ser. 2000/A088 1995

Halvyn T-2000 — Time Compressor

Early time-stretching pushed past its limits — the smeared, underwater, spectral-glass texture, and a freeze that becomes a drone engine.

OR-0006 effect Ser. 1200/D004 1998

Halvyn A-1200 — Auto Retune

The late-90s robotic pitch-snap — the "Cher effect" — as an effect rather than a corrector, with retune time all the way down to zero.

OR-0007 effect Ser. 9000/A012 1994

Halvyn R-9000 — Digital Reverb (flagship)

The top of the range — the reverb that made Halvyn's name, denser and deeper than the R-8000, with the parameter set engineers guarded like recipes.

OR-0009 effect Ser. 7000/B061 1992

Halvyn E-7000 — Digital EQ

The studio's digital equalizer, coefficient artifacts and all — the slightly brittle, slightly glassy sound of early digital filtering that engineers either loved or fought.

OR-0010 effect Ser. 2500/A008 1990

Halvyn X-2500 — Exciter

The presence-and-air box — the psychoacoustic enhancer that made things sit forward.

OR-0011 effect Ser. 3200/C022 1996

Halvyn H-3200 — Harmonizer

Intelligent, diatonic pitch harmony — the multi-voice harmonizer that built chords from a single line and defined a certain 90s lead sound.