OR-0027
Salo Oy
Salo, Finland · 1991 – c. 2004
Ser. CN-9709-0512
1997 · effect
Issued as VST3 · AU
Restored 2025 from 1997 hardware.
Salo 8110 — Comfort Noise (DTX)
Salo 8110 · discontinuous-transmission reference · restored from unit no. CN-9709-0512 · Salo Oy, Salo, Finland, 1997
The restorer's note
The eeriest thing Salo made. When you stop speaking, your room does not remain — it is quietly swapped for a synthetic hiss that refreshes only now and then, so the silence itself seems to breathe and freeze. Unsettling by accident, and left exactly so.
Acquisition
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The plate
Listening
Listening
Demonstration recordings, prepared at the bench.
A near-perfect silence
Dry for six seconds; then the unit takes the line. Where the voice stops, the detector declares silence and substitutes its own estimate of the room — and this room is next to nothing, so the substitution is next to perfect. Update refreshes the estimate every 480 ms.
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The detector, advancing
Threshold is walked from −60 up to −20 dB: at first the detector cedes nothing; then the pauses go over to it; by the end it is taking the ends of words — handing back a frozen breath of each one in place of its decay. Noise Level stands at 80 %.
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Words, cut short
Threshold raised to −20 dB with no Hangover: the detector calls the end of every phrase early and hands it to the noise generator — the last breath of each word frozen and held rather than allowed to die away. The machine decides, a little too early, that no one is speaking.
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