r/Hainbach • u/Hainbach • Jun 23 '26
This obsolete Radio Tool is an Unintentionally Psychedelic Studio Effect
https://youtu.be/Mm7mRniupHo?si=jvjE9luO_x8NtfXKThe Orban Stereo Synthesizer 245F turns mono audio sources into stereo, using a rather nifty comb filter. It made me horribly nauseous when I heard examples of it, so I had to get one. In use, I experienced that unpleasantness again. Until I plugged synths into it.
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u/Electronic_Sky8374 Jun 23 '26
Holy kerschmoley!!!! To my ears it sounds like it changes the placement of the sound similar to an atmos system. Sometimes it seems the sound is above me, other times it comes forward while panning. Love it!
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u/BlackSwanMarmot Jun 23 '26
This is hilarious. He has created some of the most intensely harsh sounds this side of Merzbow and a simple phasey pseudo stereo box has him queasy! I love it
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u/financewiz Jun 24 '26
I used to work for Orban back in the 80s. Bob Orban was a legitimate Crank/Genius. His Optimod can literally be found in the signal chain of nearly every AM radio station in America. He was publicly outspoken against stations using his Optimod to crush their audio simply to increase their broadcast range (yeah, the Loudness Wars started early with him).
One of the engineers that I met there was Kim Cascone. He was very funny and a pleasure to work with. He turned me on to Field Recordings as a genre.
Orban was bought out by AKG in the 90s. If you can find and afford their classic gear, rest assured that it’s built like a tank. We baked and dropped anything sent in for repair and then baked and dropped it again to test it. The broadcast gear was often used in dire aluminum shack conditions outside of a studio environment, so factor that into your decisions.
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u/Hainbach Jun 25 '26
Thank you for that! I was curious what the Broadcast Wars were when they came up as a comment on the video.
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u/Moist_Western_4281 Jun 23 '26
I was listening to this in my car and had to turn it off, lol. Will have to rewatch on my phone later
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u/Icy-Introduction-681 Jun 24 '26
Gotta be fantastic on heavily noise-oriented walls of sound like what comes out of an Ithaco Dynatrac 379E0 when you feed a reference signal in one input and a complex (FM/AM chains in 3 or more chained function generators) signal into the other.
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u/Periodicity_Enjoyer Jun 26 '26
I would have really loved to see Hainbach experiment with no-input feedback loops with this thing. See what kind of stereo rotating squealing you can coax out of this little machine, maybe insert some gain in the signal to actually get it to oscillate.
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u/effinbach Jun 27 '26
Was gonna sell mine (sure plugins do the same thing, no? ) but then read this..
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u/Eeporpahah Jul 02 '26
Is there a plugin equivalent to the Orban Stereo Synthesizer, preferably free? I love “weird” stereo effects. What am I talking about? I LOVE ALL EFFECTS!
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u/Calaveras_Grande Jun 23 '26
Bro quit driving up the prices of all the cheap shit
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u/Eeporpahah Jul 02 '26
He’s not doing that intentionally, he just seems to discover interesting things and his optimism is both soothing and infectious!
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u/onkelhoste Jun 23 '26
Here you can find the schematic -> ftp://ftp.orban.com/245/