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Dial Up Modem Handshake Sound - Spectrogram

Bitcore1 HN recommenders · 2014–2024
3.6M views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2013-02-10

A spectrogram visualization of the sounds in a dial-up modem handshake, with an annotated image explaining each noise. It shows how the handshake's tones map to the negotiation steps.

Linked as a nostalgic and clear way to see what the modem handshake is doing, and as an example of sounds people can recognize.

Networking & internet infrastructureInformation theory & signal processingHistory of computing

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8 comments from Hacker News

@draugadrotten2014 · in “Scientists can use their ears instead of their eyes to process data more rapidly”

I grew up with the bleeping chirps of software loading from 300bps modems and "turbo" C64 tape recorders. I could easily recognize different games from the sound they made when loading, and it is trivial to recognize the various modem handshakes. [VIDEO] [LINK]

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@Fuzzwah2015 · in “The sound of the dialup, pictured and explained (2012)”

After reading the explanation I went back and watched this youtube video again and it made more sense to me: [VIDEO]

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@DiThi2015 · in “The sound of the dialup, pictured and explained (2012)”

In this link [VIDEO] you can hear an additional sound pattern at the end that is not explained in the article or the image, but I remember hearing it every time I connected via modem. Can someone explain what it is?

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@whoopdedo2016 · in “Thanks for Trumpet Winsock”

Did you know each manufacturer had a unique sound for their v90 handshake? This one sounds like a Lucent WinModem. (Based on listening to the sounds here[1]. Yay for RealAudio!) The USR/3Com modems were two "bongs" (four if the higher speed failed). But I was always fond of the Rockwell sweep[2]. Of course, required reading is HN favorite Oona Räisänen's excellent analysis of a modem handshake. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO] [3] [LINK]

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@muxator2017 · in “The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)”

3d spectrogram: [VIDEO] Animation of the picture illustrated in this article: [LINK] If you live with someone >= 30, turn up the volume and wait for him/her to appear at the door for a nostalgia moment...

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@Piskvorrr2018 · in “Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone”

Does this sound look familiar? ;) [VIDEO] In other words, if M2M handshake works, switch away from voice.

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@tpmx2022 · in “Earbirding – How to Visualize Sounds”

Here's a 3d visualization of a dial up modem handshake sound apparently made using iZotope Ozone 5 (from 2011): [VIDEO]

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@jerf2024 · in “Scientists working to decode birdsong”

However, another major reason is that people have repeatedly gone seeking for language-like or human-language-level behaviors in animals, and repeatedly and consistently failed. It is also worth pointing out that detecting language is a great deal easier than understanding language. Something like [VIDEO] is reasonably recognizable as clearly some sort of language even if we have no (unassisted) human idea what it is saying. We can tell with quite high confidence that most animal sounds are not hiding some deeper layer of information content. Such exceptions as there are, like whalesong, take you back to my first paragraph, though. The idea that language is a uniquely human phenomenon may be "dogma", but it is also fairly well-founded in fact. It should also not be that surprising; had another species developed language first, they'd be the ones looking around at their surroundings being surprised they are the only ones with proper language, because they'd probably be the dominant species on the planet. It isn't a "humanist" bias, in some sense that humans are super special because they're humans, it's a "first species to high language" bias, which happens on this planet to be humans.

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