If you know your noise rock from your industrial, your ambient noise from harsh noise wall, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy the chaotic screeches of an ethernet cable plugged into a Eurorack module. If not, you might find it a little cool anyway, like I do.
As spotted by Hackaday, creator Wenzellabs recently showed off their NSA Selector, a Eurorack module with two Ethernet ports and an audio output. Effectively, any bits on the detected network will be sent to the output.
Wenzellabs makes it very clear that this is not an audio interface. It doesn’t format that sound into an MP3 or WAV file, which can be easily digitally converted into something else. They said, “All traffic is forwarded from one network jack to the other unmodified. It’s just tapped, intercepted to convert it to audio.”
A Eurorack module is a physical format used in modular synthesisers. With the modern resurgence of modular synthesisers, even the likes of Roland have reinvested in the format.
Though the NSA Selector doesn’t make the most pleasing of sounds, there is some room here for creativity, and the chances are that if you care about modular synth, you already have some of that drive already.
Notably, Wenzellabs tests the synth out in a few key areas. At 28 minutes, they scroll around in Google Maps, with the port making a sharp noise every time they move around. Given that the audio matches the bits, the higher the workload, the more aggressive the sound. In the browser and mobile game 2048, at the 25-minute mark, they manage to get a full-on drone as the page is loading ad elements. This is arguably the most ‘usable’ sound in a more traditional musical sense.
Wenzellabs loads bitmaps at one point, which means you can create images that use resources in a specific way to project certain types of sounds from the Eurorack. They edit the images to make them larger and differently shaped, and open them from a remote machine, which gets different results from the synth. None of it sounds particularly appealing, but they do sound unique. Making weird sounds is one of the biggest reasons people like modular synth.
After approximately 4 seconds of what I can only describe as ‘the drill at a dentist’s office’, Wenzellabs says, “Isn’t it great?” Yes, Wenzellabs, it is.
If you want to give it a go yourself, you can buy the NSA Selector (kit for $97 or fully assembled for $110) via their shop, Lectronz, and they’ve posted a tutorial on how to assemble it yourself.
If anything, it will make you more aware of the hours you spend doomscrolling if every time a video pops up on your feed, you get a small screech from your ethernet port. If my internet habits are anything to go by, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
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