Audio Archives - Nomadic Research Labs

As an engineer, one of the most absurd things on the Interwebs is the profusion of tech nonsense… wishful thinking, art projects presented as reality, and the industry of audiophile pseudoscience. I love stereo systems that are on the performance asymptote as much as any other paleogeek who grew up with vinyl, but I bristle…

by Steven K. Roberts Nomadic Research Labs A key requirement for my floating lab/studio was to have a digital piano aboard, but limited space dictates a deployment system that lets it stow away when not in use. I designed the console around this, and built a piano drawer that can handle a quarter-ton. It was important that the drawer…

This 1998 audio cassette turned up almost a quarter century after it was recorded, long-forgotten in a broken box. It is a treasure, with a colorful and engaging discussion of the meaning of technomad, along with commentary on how others were adopting this term that I coined back in 1983 early in my bicycle adventure.…

This was a delightful interview, and I wish I had taken a photo of Noah sitting on BEHEMOTH, holding a tape recorder and chatting with me. I had come to Washington DC to exhibit at Interop Spring (photo with Vint Cerf), and somehow ended up visiting NPR. Noah was so relaxed that my own nervousness…

In January, 1992, I spent a week in Southern California to exhibit BEHEMOTH at the San Diego Electronics Show. The visit included a flurry of local media coverage, but the best part was visiting Qualcomm… which had created the bike’s OmniTRACS satellite email terminal (including custom tools to stitch it between the console Macintosh and…

While we were in Orlando via school bus to display our bikes at the 1988 Hamcation (amateur radio convention), Maggie and I were interviewed by Leslie Brewington for a program called “The Computer Connection” on WKIS Newstalk 74. An old cassette of this emerged from the vaults in 2020, and was digitized for this archive.

I spent a delightful few days in Baton Rouge in early May, 1984 – visiting my aunt, staying with the mayor’s family, getting to know an interesting audiophile, and even having a bizarre cultural encounter that spawned a fun book chapter. Somewhere in there, WBRZ Channel 2 television got wind of my adventure, and this…

by Steven K. Roberts Computing Across America is the story of my technomadic adventures around the US, beginning in 1983 with the Winnebiko, continuing through the next 7 years with the Winnebiko II and BEHEMOTH… a total of 17,000 miles on the road as well as some epic geek layovers to upgrade the technology. An…

This wonderful relic from the dawn of speech synthesis is a 2-minute recording from Bell Laboratories, first published in 1962, showcasing the work of John L. Kelly and Louis J. Gerstman for the Visual and Acoustics Research Department. I acquired this 45 RPM soundsheet in 1966, in the 9th grade, when I began working on…

Posts Tagged ‘Audio’

Snapshots of Extreme Audio

Building a Heavy-Duty Piano Drawer

Technomads on ABC Radio National

BEHEMOTH on NPR All Things Considered with Noah Adams

Geeky Talk at Qualcomm

WKIS Radio interview – Computer Connection

WBRZ Baton Rouge coverage

Computing Across America Audiobook, chapter 1: The Idea is Born

Bell Labs speech synthesis – audio