Japan · 1985 – c. 2005

Yumeo

“Pristine digital clarity — the sound of tomorrow.”

Yumeo sold the dream of digital — the name itself comes from yume, dream. It made the consumer gear a person saved up for: CD players, DAT decks, and above all the MiniDisc recorders of the ATRAC era — the aspirational middle, the brushed-chrome deck with the glowing cyan display. Its advertising promised perfection, endlessly. Then the future arrived and deleted it: the MP3 made physical formats obsolete almost overnight, and the consumer division dissolved around 2005, still promising tomorrow in its last catalogue. Orrery acquired the format-processing IP and a shelf of pristine, barely-used decks — obsolete before they were worn out — and recovers the specific character of each dead format.

The Yumeo catalogue — 10 instruments

OR-0035 effect Ser. M-2170534 1994

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

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-0037 effect Ser. C-3090622 1988

CD-9 — CD Skip / Error Concealment

A failing compact disc: the interpolation, the brief digital silences, and above all the stutter as the disc gives up.

OR-0038 effect Ser. P-0489150 1999

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.