Salo, Finland · 1991 – c. 2004

Salo Oy

“Clear voice. Anywhere.”

Salo made the sound of the early mobile phone — not the handsets, but the voice inside them: the codec subsystems, the comfort-noise generators, the network-test units carriers used to simulate a call falling apart. During the GSM boom its gear sat in every Nordic carrier's test lab. When voice moved to software codecs, the market for dedicated hardware closed; Salo was folded into a larger telecom concern and wound down around 2004. Orrery acquired its algorithm sources and a pallet of surviving test units, and models the codecs bit-for-bit from them — including the parts that sound broken, because to Salo, broken was the assignment.

The Salo catalogue — 12 instruments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6210 — Vocoder

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

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

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

2170 — Answering Machine

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