Orrery — the bench recordShort entries from the bench: what arrived, what returned to service, what changed in the catalogue.https://orrery.dk/On the bench: MD-1 · MiniDisc (ATRAC).https://orrery.dk/record/2026-09-08-on-the-bench-md-1/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-09-08-on-the-bench-md-1/The flagship, and the sound of a generation's first "perfect" digital recorder: the gentle transient-softening and stereo-narrowing of ATRAC.Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTWhy a CD skips and stuttershttps://orrery.dk/record/2026-09-06-why-a-cd-skips-and-stutters/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-09-06-why-a-cd-skips-and-stutters/A scratched compact disc fails in stages — correction, interpolation, muting, and only last the stutter, when the transport itself gives up.Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTWhat ATRAC compression ishttps://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-30-what-atrac-compression-is/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-30-what-atrac-compression-is/ATRAC is the perceptual codec built for MiniDisc — a psychoacoustic model's opinion of what a recording needs, at roughly a fifth of the data.Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTOn the bench: 4400 · Quantization Analyzer.https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-28-on-the-bench-4400/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-28-on-the-bench-4400/The bench standard for characterizing bit-depth error, reborn as the archive's cleanest destruction tool.Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe engine we could not borrowhttps://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-23-the-engine-we-could-not-borrow/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-23-the-engine-we-could-not-borrow/Why the bench wrote its own MPEG-1 Layer III encoder, and where the source now lives.Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTWhy GSM calls sound underwaterhttps://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-23-why-gsm-calls-sound-underwater/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-23-why-gsm-calls-sound-underwater/The watery, half-swallowed quality of a 1990s mobile call is not a bad line — it is RPE-LTP, the GSM codec spending 13 kilobits a second on vowels.Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTOn the bench: 3310 · Full-Rate GSM Codec.https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-18-on-the-bench-3310/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-18-on-the-bench-3310/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.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe record opens.https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-15-the-record-opens/https://orrery.dk/record/2026-08-15-the-record-opens/Orrery keeps a public record now — short entries, exact dates, the work only.Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT