Devo used this as a background element in their "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize" video, and the band explained this thing as "a weird thing made by Atari that just rendered Navajo blanket patterns on your TV"
CKT1138 i was scouring the comments just to see if anyone else knew this obscure piece of knowledge. Kudos. yeah we must have watched the same complete history of deevelution commentery. Good to see a fellow Devo fan. So cool to see the actual device he was talking about after all these years.
The intro always reminds me of when I was 16, and went over to a friend's house. His dad had had a ton of old stereo equipment out, including a large reel to reel unit with an enormous collection of 60s and 70s rock. He told me he was trying to clear out the garage, and planned on throwing all this stuff in the trash! I immediately asked if I could have it, and he said yes. Then he watched me turn into a kid at Christmas, inspecting the unit and marveling at the music collection. Not ten minutes later, he decided to keep it all. I should have kept my mouth shut, and just dug it out of the trash later.
Something like this hooked up to a massive projector would probably make certain concerts a lot more interesting. It'd be a pretty good way to quickly and easily make music-responsive lights.
@@2Guys1ControllerShow I think that would add to the effect tbh. I think it would be interesting to have it hooked up to a projector just on a wall for a party or something
I can imagine this might appeal to people who had a lot of house parties in the 70s but with TV screens being so small back then, the effect wouldn't have been as cool as one of those flashing Radio Shack type disco light toys. No, the real application would have been in public venues - discos, night clubs, bars, and mobile DJs etc. Imagine how awesome this would look on a video wall of the time, flashing away to Earth, Wind and Fire along with one of those Saturday Night Fever-style illuminated dance floors and the huge neon lighting rigs they had in the late 70s and early 80s :)
They didn't sell it to commercial/professional markets, they tried to but no one was remotely interested in either the audio industry or the hospitality industry. They sold thousands to individuals though. Goes to show the "logical" inference of somethings market isn't always right.
@@orangejoe204 when was that? By the time I knew what mp3s were in '98 I think Windows Media supported them. But it seemed Winamp remained the higher quality option for years until iTunes took over.
@@ewthmatth I might be remembering wrong. I've had a lot of beers since then, of course. lol But I remember pretty clearly that prior to mp3s there was no WinAmp and having it (in association with Napster) seemed like the Second Computer Age appearing right in my bedroom.
In addition to the content itself, one of my favorite parts of these videos are the old advertisements and magazine pages scanned or photographed in. It's a tiny, precious window into the past for a young'un like me.
Funny you mention WMP-right as Techmoan mentions its legacy being lived on in programs like Winamp or iTunes, he shows a screencap of a WMP visualizer! =)
I like that he does what he does for silly tech from back in the day. There's a real culture which has become increasingly popular of going back into the past and finding old games and tech and just trying them out. It's awesome!
Cool video! I see you got to use my "retro cassette" in a "retro manner"! Just lovely! :D
7 ปีที่แล้ว +37
Cool music, such a nice a track :) For others who are seeking for this specific song, it's "Aurora Borealis". soundcloud.com/eox-studios/aurora_borealis
kaza12345678 Thanks :) I use MOTU Digital Performer 8 and 9 as my main DAWs. Some songs were done in FastTracker2 and Cubase 3.7 and Roland MC-50 sequencer.
Devo used a Video Music screen as a background in the video for "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise". It appears again, connected to a vocoder, in the music video for "Beautiful World". Daft Punk also used a screen in their video "Robot Rock". The diamond pattern visuals from Video Music can also be seen in several scenes from the 1979 movie Over the Edge where the mute character Johnny watches the visuals in his bedroom. The same pattern also appeared in an episode of The X-Files (Season 1 Episode 7, "Ghost in the Machine") as part of a video surveillance system.
thank you for the great trip down memory lane.. l still find my self memorized by effects like this today. I especially loved all the old adverts you dug up
I had no idea Atari made a music video graphic machine! Thank you once again for doing these videos. You're got yourself a proper intro and outro now. It's shaping up to be a professional studio production. I know I've set it before, but you should have your own TV series. Thanks again!
Hey Techmoan, I really appreciate the epilepsy warning at the beginning. I have epilepsy, not photosensitive, but I really appreciate the proper warning for the epileptic community.
Techmoan You did a fantastic job with the warning, many major TH-cam videos I watch will go straight from a 1 second warning right into some strobing lights and colors- keep up the good work! I'm only 19, but love old tech; and you, LGR, The 8Bit Guy and Ashens just do such a fantastic job covering old tech I never got to experience myself!
What a fun time it was back then. Just in 1977 consider this: Atari releases the Video Music. Studio 54 opens. Saturday Night Fever premieres. The first Star Wars film. Apple launches the Apple II. Shame I was born exactly 20 years later.
I'm getting a little emotional with the capturing of the setup because it is very good music and it reminds me of the time when my best friend showed me Infected Mushroom and then later some electrowave. I'm gonna have to send this music to my best friend when I get the chance. It's beautiful.
one of my favorite things! We used one here in Ohio for additional video enhancement for our 'installation parties' (raves) in the 1990s...Anthony Dandrea (who owns an arcade in Portland) was the guy who introduced me to the Atari Video Music...and when used with television feedback? MAGIC. :)
That could easily be one of my favorite end of video puppet skits you've ever done - a genuine LOL IRL. Also I was impressed to see Curt's book in the video - I know him of old and have fond memories of the time one of his displays almost killed me at a PhillyClassic. Yes, FOND memories! It's a good laugh now looking back.
there used to be a radio station (i believe in new York) that would run a TV broadcast using this visualizer alongside the audio of their radio broadcast, though their TV station shut off in 2021 as it was still analog, which is a broadcasting format that is no longer in use there's footage of the channel & it's shutoff online, it was the WVOA 87.7 radio's analog station
When I went with my parents to Sears, I would hang out in the electronics section and play with things. What I liked and asked for as a Christmas present was Atari Video Pinball. What I ended up getting was Video Music. I suppose the pinball machine was sold out. Last time set it up and used it was 20-25 years back when setting up a TV/Audio system. I sold it on ebay soon after. Thanks for the reminder of what it was like. I had wondered if the little malformations in the top of the shapes was a defect in my unit, but it looks like yours had the same look. And yes, I just pushed the auto buttons and let it go when using it.
Am I the only one who misses the wood and plastic cases for electronics? Or wood and any material, for that matter. Back when I was arrogant enough to think I could build my own analog synthesizer I was actually planning on using wood paneling.
I hate the move away from wood and silver. Past the 1970s, everything became black monoliths which were hard to tell apart. I think the Natural Sound receivers from Yamaha in the late 70s were exceptionally beautiful. The Black and silver beauty of a Marantz 2265 is hard to beat. I still gawk at the line of Realistic receivers from their catalogs from the late 70s.
Your video brought back old memories... We still have our Atari Video Music that was modified to have a composite video output, not RF. For three years on weekends, we used our AVM on a local cable TV channel playing music requests. Our program was called "MidNite Lite". It was an instant success with the kids and community watching our local channel.
It's odd because it's such a low-fi visual from that chip (obviously to our eyes 40 years later, even the clunky Atari VCS graphics mesmerized me at the time) yet it actually works and grabs attention when playing alongside that music. I wonder if any DJ bought one and then had to lug a massive tv with him to his gigs only to quickly rue his decision...
Thank you so much for the epilepsy warning at the beginning of your video, it saved me having to go to hospital. I wish more youtubers were as considerate as you.
Yes, I had one when they first came out and quite honestly I bought it as a curiosity.I found it a little simplistic even then. The best use I got from the unit was at halloween when I would play my Vincent Price record with the lights off and the shades drawn to give the harsh screen frying display some dispersion. But it ended up in a thrift shop well before the next year. Thanks for showing it and justifying my quick separation.
I had one of these Atari music visualizer when I was a kid. It sat under my Atari 2600 and was hooked up to my stereo and television. I would listen to my Sesame Street record and watch the neat colourful patterns. I was really young when I got it given to me by a neighbor because they didn't use it and thought because I was so young I might like it.
In the early days of the Playstation I think it was Psygnosis who created a program which was on a CD stuck to a gaming magazine. it did much the same thing but had some incredible 3D graphics bouncing along to whichever Music CD you chose to play.
the original ps1's (big square grey ones) had a built in visualiser you could use while playing cd's and the face buttons of the controller would change the effects and stuff. Sony removed it from the PsOne for some reason.
I have one of these. I went to Burstein Applebee in Kansas City to buy equipment and parts to set up a car stereo repair shop for Car Tunes of Columbia, Missouri. They had a big pile of them with a sign that they were free with a $500 purchase. Even the most stoned of my friends got bored with it quickly and went back to watching the picture from one TV channel while listening to the sound from a different channel, which every once in a while has a weird overlap to the highly stoned.
I think I love this? Imagine a timeline that predicted the EDM scene and we got a whole lineage of hardware based visualizer devices alongside synthesizers through the 8 and 16 bit eras.
Better yet, imagine if they'd had the smart idea of putting this functionality on a cartridge for the 2600 / VCS. I can't imagine it would have been difficult or expensive.
Some older analog TV stations (I saw a video of a radio atation that was on 87.7 fm and channel 6) used this visualizer until the very end of analog TV!
I was one of the lucky owners of this device. Have to say that I loved having this running on my TV while chilling out in my bedroom! Yes, I was an Atari fanboy!!!
+Techmoan I really enjoy watching your videos, the way you show to us the results of your investigation is pretty good, no boring at all. I do see an improvement on each video you make, keep the good job!. And before I forget, keep the muppets at the end of your videos, they do rock!.
Hi, I must admit that you make me aware of a lot more of equipment and music formats that I never knew existed or that I have forgotten about. Your videos are very informative and entertaining. I find this device interesting but I prefer the eq vu equalizer style. I look forward to your next video. Cheers.
Thats an interesting little effect. I can imagine a lot of clubs in the era projecting that onto a wall behind the DJ somehow. It seems very responsive.
Mat comes across as a very well spoken and very well informed presenter who makes "mini movies" such as this. For myself, from the other side of the pond, I thank you for the obvious work that is needed to attempt and wildly suceed to make such good content. Thank you Mat, and may you and yours have a wonderful day. Steve
So here in the US, a low power radio station that shared the same frequency as the television channel 6 (Franken FM) in Syracuse New York, WVOA, was using one of these Atari C240 up until last month. Since the band of 87.7MHz is technically a television frequency, the FCC mandated that these radio stations transmit along with the audio some sort of video signal. This could be anything, some stations would just transmit the weather information while others would just do free domain videos without their corresponding audio and you would only hear the radio station instead. In July, the FCC mandated that these low power stations to cease transmission in analog whether or not they already transitioned to digital. It still fascinates me that they used the Atari C240 all these years and never dawned on me that it was the same gadget you had demoed 4 years ago.
Anyone remember the CD player/music visualiser that was built into the original PlayStation? Man, I loved that. Especially when I was in a... "relaxed" kind of mood. I still use Winamp with the Milkdrop plugin for the same purpose these days. :)
I could run my guitar and bass setup into my studio monitors and the monitors into the atari. It would be awesome to jam some funky envelope filter bass with this in the background. I love this thing. Thank you for showing us.
(I'm posting on behalf of my husband, his father made this machine). "This is how I ate as a child. Father's first patent that made money. They sold it in about '75, to an un-named buyer that they later found out was Atari."
I remember going to the local electronics store as a kid and seeing this thing. Even for a tech obsessed youngster such as myself it was merely a neat curiosity rather than a must-have. Brings back some cool memories though - thanks for sharing.
"All it did was play back coloured patterns on the TV screen and there were not many people who wanted that" This is the "Commodore Amiga" of HiFi separates.
25 years later I was using high end pc's and winamp vizualisers to mimic that exact same effect, ahead of its time by far. This looks so much softer too. Good find.
At 12:50 you said Winamp. I used to listen to Ceredwen's Yng Ngolau Ddydd and watch "pretty dots" which was one of the Winamp visualizations of perhaps the Milkdrop plugin... or maybe it was The Gates of Annwn.
Can I just quickly say, another reason why Techmoan is one of only three Patreon’s I give to; as well as brilliant writing and presentation, he actually researches things from sources other than Wikipedia! Keep it up I say!
I'm glad we live in a world or people are hand-building custom videos synthesizers and other products similar to this visualizer. I've bought a few from people all across the globe and thoroughly enjoy using them in tandem with my analog synths at live gigs. Thanks for this video as always! And now I'm off to eBay!😋😉
I can imagine back in 1977, two friends are playing "Pong" for an hour and get bored. Then one says "do you have anything else cool to watch?" Then you whip out this thing and the seizure party started!
I used to have one of these also. Good memories. Also in top of my TV I had a "circular music visualizer" that was basically like the POV spinner that you have for your title cut, but you fed audio into it and it was, in essence, a circular oscilloscope.
Wikipedia is as reliable as encyclopedias according to major researchers who found around the same about of errors in Wikipedia and encyclopedia brittanica
Interesting idea indeed :D as the programmer behind it, I can share the story about it's conception. At the time we were indeed looking to expand on products such as the Razzle Dazzle. It seemed obvious that the effects of a number of those products could be achieved by a single device. We also had a number of floating banana ocean pants book semi-rigid number space time Germany doors with red mince blended over main greeting cards, and left round dirt carnival toad strips.
I used to have a program that did similar for the ZX Spectrum. The trouble is that if the output of your audio device was going into the Spectrum then you couldn't plug it into your hi-fi at the same time. I would need a signal splitter. It was inconvenient in the same way this Atari device is.
jezzvideo The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color-Computer had a cartridge that did a similar function, and could be switched to a bar-graph display as well. All audio input had to come through the cassette-tape drive, which was great if what you wanted to graph was on cassette. I still remember watching the highest-frequency meter not even budge, until we put "Cum & Feel the Noiz!" by Quiet Riot in... What laughs!
Thank you for putting links into all your references and music that you used. The Outro music was very moving to me, and I really enjoyed Anders music too.
when I was a kid, yes in the 1970's, I had a portable disco record player, it had that prismatic plastic with lights behind it and man did I get a flash of nostalgia when you showed those stand-alone devices with the same design to them. It would flash and pulse the lights to the music and it was the coolest thing in the world. I think my mother still has it in her attic somewhere. I should ask her to send it to me. great video, I also wish she still had my old Pong but she threw out all my atari stuff and pong games I had left back east.
I've never heard of this before. As soon as it was described, though, it brought to mind my old Atari Jaguar CD unit. Of all the music visualizers I've seen, it was my favorite.
Devo used this as a background element in their "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize" video, and the band explained this thing as "a weird thing made by Atari that just rendered Navajo blanket patterns on your TV"
CKT1138 i was scouring the comments just to see if anyone else knew this obscure piece of knowledge. Kudos. yeah we must have watched the same complete history of deevelution commentery. Good to see a fellow Devo fan. So cool to see the actual device he was talking about after all these years.
Danny Stine Devo fans are always happy to find other fans, and I am no exception, duty now for the future!
CKT1138 And now we are bothTecmoan fans as well! Coincidence?
I was seeing if anyone had mentioned this haha
I had one of these until a snowball ran down a hill and smashed it.
OMG I miss this thing!!! We had this in the living room as a kid and I loved playing with it!
The intro always reminds me of when I was 16, and went over to a friend's house. His dad had had a ton of old stereo equipment out, including a large reel to reel unit with an enormous collection of 60s and 70s rock. He told me he was trying to clear out the garage, and planned on throwing all this stuff in the trash! I immediately asked if I could have it, and he said yes. Then he watched me turn into a kid at Christmas, inspecting the unit and marveling at the music collection. Not ten minutes later, he decided to keep it all. I should have kept my mouth shut, and just dug it out of the trash later.
Ha! Well, at least you inspired him not to junk great equipment and music!
@@skylined5534
I suppose so. Good optimistic take honestly. Thanks.
Something like this hooked up to a massive projector would probably make certain concerts a lot more interesting.
It'd be a pretty good way to quickly and easily make music-responsive lights.
A 100% completely low resolution blown up on a projector? Are you insane
@@2Guys1ControllerShow I don't know, it would work well at a concert playing music from the late 1970s-early 1980s.
@@2Guys1ControllerShow I think that would add to the effect tbh. I think it would be interesting to have it hooked up to a projector just on a wall for a party or something
@@davidgoeller5843 I agree. The chaos of colors would just add to it.
I presume you haven't been to a nightclub, then? EDIT: or gig!
Back in the early 90s myself and friends would spend entire evenings listening and watching stuff like this. And I still think its quite good lol
The Milkdrop plugin for Winamp is still my favorite music visualizer ever. It remains incredibly powerful even today.
Same here, best effect on old television's
I can imagine this might appeal to people who had a lot of house parties in the 70s but with TV screens being so small back then, the effect wouldn't have been as cool as one of those flashing Radio Shack type disco light toys. No, the real application would have been in public venues - discos, night clubs, bars, and mobile DJs etc. Imagine how awesome this would look on a video wall of the time, flashing away to Earth, Wind and Fire along with one of those Saturday Night Fever-style illuminated dance floors and the huge neon lighting rigs they had in the late 70s and early 80s :)
@Please Complete All Fields Maybe not video walls, but projectors were popular and affordable, I reckon, to the more popular music clubs in the 80s.
They didn't sell it to commercial/professional markets, they tried to but no one was remotely interested in either the audio industry or the hospitality industry.
They sold thousands to individuals though.
Goes to show the "logical" inference of somethings market isn't always right.
"Atari Video Music: it really whips the llama's ass!"
... wait
Ah, WinAmp.... back when Windows Media Player hadn't been updated since Win 3.1 and literally had no idea what the hell an mp3 was.
What's amazing about WinAmp is that it's still updated, I use it surprisingly often
Mmmmmmmm ,llamatron.
@@orangejoe204 when was that? By the time I knew what mp3s were in '98 I think Windows Media supported them.
But it seemed Winamp remained the higher quality option for years until iTunes took over.
@@ewthmatth I might be remembering wrong. I've had a lot of beers since then, of course. lol But I remember pretty clearly that prior to mp3s there was no WinAmp and having it (in association with Napster) seemed like the Second Computer Age appearing right in my bedroom.
In addition to the content itself, one of my favorite parts of these videos are the old advertisements and magazine pages scanned or photographed in. It's a tiny, precious window into the past for a young'un like me.
This is the kind of obscure, old tech stuff I love this channel for! That and the puppets, of course.
Windows Media Player's distant cousin.
or Winamp's
Think of it as MilkDrop ver 0.0003.
Funny you mention WMP-right as Techmoan mentions its legacy being lived on in programs like Winamp or iTunes, he shows a screencap of a WMP visualizer! =)
g-force is better then milkdrop.
More like distant ancestor.
Great video about a silly device. Your documentaries about retro HiFi will be watched for decades into the future.
I hope you're right...it's a virtual museum that anyone in the world can visit.
I like that he does what he does for silly tech from back in the day. There's a real culture which has become increasingly popular of going back into the past and finding old games and tech and just trying them out. It's awesome!
Techmoan Make sure the future visitors replace the caps before they leave.
Techmoan its my favorite museum!
@@hezekiahramirez6965 😂
Cool video! I see you got to use my "retro cassette" in a "retro manner"! Just lovely! :D
Cool music, such a nice a track :)
For others who are seeking for this specific song, it's "Aurora Borealis". soundcloud.com/eox-studios/aurora_borealis
There were a lot of good tracks to choose from on the tape...I picked that one at random, but it worked out well.
Anders Enger Jensen awesome tunes
You're helping out a lot of my favorite TH-camrs! Thank you, and I'm always glad to see you appear in the comments too!
kaza12345678 Thanks :) I use MOTU Digital Performer 8 and 9 as my main DAWs. Some songs were done in FastTracker2 and Cubase 3.7 and Roland MC-50 sequencer.
Devo used a Video Music screen as a background in the video for "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise". It appears again, connected to a vocoder, in the music video for "Beautiful World". Daft Punk also used a screen in their video "Robot Rock". The diamond pattern visuals from Video Music can also be seen in several scenes from the 1979 movie Over the Edge where the mute character Johnny watches the visuals in his bedroom. The same pattern also appeared in an episode of The X-Files (Season 1 Episode 7, "Ghost in the Machine") as part of a video surveillance system.
Immediately thought of Devo when I saw this video come up, glad to see someone else did as well.
Takes me back to the days of getting mashed and watching winamp
braksator 👌🏻😂😂😂
And Winamp is still the best programm for playing back and organizing music, lol
It continues to whip the llama's ass.
Is winamp like the new visualizationa for windows media player ?
brx8r i
FYI: The track being played is "Aurora Borealis", and it's available on Spotify.
May I see it?
@@justsomeguywithkaminasshad7145 aurora borealis? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
@@rowe4x4 _auroraborealis…_
thank you for the great trip down memory lane.. l still find my self memorized by effects like this today. I especially loved all the old adverts you dug up
I had no idea Atari made a music video graphic machine! Thank you once again for doing these videos. You're got yourself a proper intro and outro now. It's shaping up to be a professional studio production. I know I've set it before, but you should have your own TV series. Thanks again!
They also did video phones, holographic game systems, medical systems (briefly).
You can see the full length version of the track featured in the video played on through the Atari VM here: th-cam.com/video/cNpt9Abnmf4/w-d-xo.html
Hey Techmoan, I really appreciate the epilepsy warning at the beginning.
I have epilepsy, not photosensitive, but I really appreciate the proper warning for the epileptic community.
After it made me feel a bit odd displayed on the large TV, I thought it better to be safe than sorry.
Techmoan You did a fantastic job with the warning, many major TH-cam videos I watch will go straight from a 1 second warning right into some strobing lights and colors- keep up the good work!
I'm only 19, but love old tech; and you, LGR, The 8Bit Guy and Ashens just do such a fantastic job covering old tech I never got to experience myself!
Yeah thanks!
You should not tell people that.
"epileptic community"
Are you for real? Not everything is a community smh.
Fun Fact: this machine was used in an analog Franken FM TV station before it signed off for good.
What a fun time it was back then.
Just in 1977 consider this:
Atari releases the Video Music.
Studio 54 opens.
Saturday Night Fever premieres.
The first Star Wars film.
Apple launches the Apple II.
Shame I was born exactly 20 years later.
I'm getting a little emotional with the capturing of the setup because it is very good music and it reminds me of the time when my best friend showed me Infected Mushroom and then later some electrowave. I'm gonna have to send this music to my best friend when I get the chance. It's beautiful.
Wow! Watching the patterns... It's like I'm living in the future!
Also love the fact you've used Anders Engers Jensens Retro Grooves tape, bringing 8bitguy and pals one step closer to the UK!.
one of my favorite things! We used one here in Ohio for additional video enhancement for our 'installation parties' (raves) in the 1990s...Anthony Dandrea (who owns an arcade in Portland) was the guy who introduced me to the Atari Video Music...and when used with television feedback? MAGIC. :)
Love the subject. Love the content. Loved everything. LOVED THE PUPPETS. Please never stop doing them! :)
A few local radio stations in the U.S that also broadcast through TV used this right up into this century.
I don't know why, but the end music always gives me goosebumps. and I love it.
That could easily be one of my favorite end of video puppet skits you've ever done - a genuine LOL IRL. Also I was impressed to see Curt's book in the video - I know him of old and have fond memories of the time one of his displays almost killed me at a PhillyClassic. Yes, FOND memories! It's a good laugh now looking back.
there used to be a radio station (i believe in new York) that would run a TV broadcast using this visualizer alongside the audio of their radio broadcast, though their TV station shut off in 2021 as it was still analog, which is a broadcasting format that is no longer in use
there's footage of the channel & it's shutoff online, it was the WVOA 87.7 radio's analog station
When I went with my parents to Sears, I would hang out in the electronics section and play with things. What I liked and asked for as a Christmas present was Atari Video Pinball. What I ended up getting was Video Music. I suppose the pinball machine was sold out. Last time set it up and used it was 20-25 years back when setting up a TV/Audio system. I sold it on ebay soon after. Thanks for the reminder of what it was like. I had wondered if the little malformations in the top of the shapes was a defect in my unit, but it looks like yours had the same look. And yes, I just pushed the auto buttons and let it go when using it.
Am I the only one who misses the wood and plastic cases for electronics? Or wood and any material, for that matter. Back when I was arrogant enough to think I could build my own analog synthesizer I was actually planning on using wood paneling.
I hate the move away from wood and silver. Past the 1970s, everything became black monoliths which were hard to tell apart. I think the Natural Sound receivers from Yamaha in the late 70s were exceptionally beautiful. The Black and silver beauty of a Marantz 2265 is hard to beat. I still gawk at the line of Realistic receivers from their catalogs from the late 70s.
Moog still makes synthesizers with wood sides.
Definitely not the only one. Woodgrain is kind of LGR's thing.
I love my old six switch Atari 2600 for that, retro cool!
Your video brought back old memories... We still have our Atari Video Music that was modified to have a composite video output, not RF. For three years on weekends, we used our AVM on a local cable TV channel playing music requests. Our program was called "MidNite Lite". It was an instant success with the kids and community watching our local channel.
It's odd because it's such a low-fi visual from that chip (obviously to our eyes 40 years later, even the clunky Atari VCS graphics mesmerized me at the time) yet it actually works and grabs attention when playing alongside that music.
I wonder if any DJ bought one and then had to lug a massive tv with him to his gigs only to quickly rue his decision...
One of the other commenters claimed his band did exactly that.
Thank you so much for the epilepsy warning at the beginning of your video, it saved me having to go to hospital. I wish more youtubers were as considerate as you.
Wow proper retro! Reminds me of the dodgy TOTP video effects in the early 70s. Fabulous bit of kit!
Yes, I had one when they first came out and quite honestly I bought it as a curiosity.I found it a little simplistic even then. The best use I got from the unit was at halloween when I would play my Vincent Price record with the lights off and the shades drawn to give the harsh screen frying display some dispersion. But it ended up in a thrift shop well before the next year. Thanks for showing it and justifying my quick separation.
8:35 it's like what you see if you close your eyes and press too hard.
wardrich haha true
Phosphenes
Lsd
I had one of these Atari music visualizer when I was a kid. It sat under my Atari 2600 and was hooked up to my stereo and television. I would listen to my Sesame Street record and watch the neat colourful patterns. I was really young when I got it given to me by a neighbor because they didn't use it and thought because I was so young I might like it.
In the early days of the Playstation I think it was Psygnosis who created a program which was on a CD stuck to a gaming magazine. it did much the same thing but had some incredible 3D graphics bouncing along to whichever Music CD you chose to play.
I remember that now....I used it a lot.
There was also Vib Ribbon.
LemonSlice Yes, I should have said two. I loved them.
the original ps1's (big square grey ones) had a built in visualiser you could use while playing cd's and the face buttons of the controller would change the effects and stuff. Sony removed it from the PsOne for some reason.
jedixo Yeah, that's the one I have.
I have one of these. I went to Burstein Applebee in Kansas City to buy equipment and parts to set up a car stereo repair shop for Car Tunes of Columbia, Missouri. They had a big pile of them with a sign that they were free with a $500 purchase. Even the most stoned of my friends got bored with it quickly and went back to watching the picture from one TV channel while listening to the sound from a different channel, which every once in a while has a weird overlap to the highly stoned.
I think I love this? Imagine a timeline that predicted the EDM scene and we got a whole lineage of hardware based visualizer devices alongside synthesizers through the 8 and 16 bit eras.
Better yet, imagine if they'd had the smart idea of putting this functionality on a cartridge for the 2600 / VCS. I can't imagine it would have been difficult or expensive.
Some older analog TV stations (I saw a video of a radio atation that was on 87.7 fm and channel 6) used this visualizer until the very end of analog TV!
TECHMOAN: Thanks for all your videos! Every single time a new video is there for me to watch, I feel like a 10 year old again. Cheers from Chile !
LOL !
I was one of the lucky owners of this device. Have to say that I loved having this running on my TV while chilling out in my bedroom! Yes, I was an Atari fanboy!!!
I feel like I need to be watching that with some 70s disco for the full effect
+Techmoan I really enjoy watching your videos, the way you show to us the results of your investigation is pretty good, no boring at all. I do see an improvement on each video you make, keep the good job!. And before I forget, keep the muppets at the end of your videos, they do rock!.
I actually like the muppets...
I do too!
The puppets are always on point !
I always wondered what actually goes on with those first few downvoters, now I know.... ;)
Indeed, I enjoy the puppets at the end.
Don't ever get shut of the bloody puppets mate.
I like them too, but I've given your comment a thumbs down to show you who's boss.
Hi, I must admit that you make me aware of a lot more of equipment and music formats that I never knew existed or that I have forgotten about. Your videos are very informative and entertaining. I find this device interesting but I prefer the eq vu equalizer style. I look forward to your next video. Cheers.
Thats an interesting little effect. I can imagine a lot of clubs in the era projecting that onto a wall behind the DJ somehow. It seems very responsive.
projected using what kind of technology?
betamax80 Projection T.V., of-course... Duh!
As long as Techmoan is around, there is no piece of retro tech that will be forgotten.
Quick call lgr /Clint
woodgrain!!!!!
Would not surprise me in the least if Clint picked it up for him at the Goodwill.
yea
James Wade I thought he already did and made a video
I think he is subscribed to this channel, so he will see if sooner or later.
Yep
These videos are so much fun and brilliantly produced, nice one TechMoan Man!
Am I crazy or did I just hear your voice recording on an insurance company helpline?!
😂
Mat comes across as a very well spoken and very well informed presenter who makes "mini movies" such as this. For myself, from the other side of the pond, I thank you for the obvious work that is needed to attempt and wildly suceed to make such good content.
Thank you Mat, and may you and yours have a wonderful day.
Steve
It really whips the Llamas ass!
So here in the US, a low power radio station that shared the same frequency as the television channel 6 (Franken FM) in Syracuse New York, WVOA, was using one of these Atari C240 up until last month.
Since the band of 87.7MHz is technically a television frequency, the FCC mandated that these radio stations transmit along with the audio some sort of video signal. This could be anything, some stations would just transmit the weather information while others would just do free domain videos without their corresponding audio and you would only hear the radio station instead.
In July, the FCC mandated that these low power stations to cease transmission in analog whether or not they already transitioned to digital. It still fascinates me that they used the Atari C240 all these years and never dawned on me that it was the same gadget you had demoed 4 years ago.
Anyone remember the CD player/music visualiser that was built into the original PlayStation?
Man, I loved that. Especially when I was in a... "relaxed" kind of mood.
I still use Winamp with the Milkdrop plugin for the same purpose these days. :)
I just mentioned that before reading other's comments..I basically said the same thing
That is such a clean looking circuit board. Amazing piece of retro tech, thanks for sharing.
"The colors... the colors...!!! I'm freaking ouuuuut!!!
---Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten
I could run my guitar and bass setup into my studio monitors and the monitors into the atari. It would be awesome to jam some funky envelope filter bass with this in the background. I love this thing. Thank you for showing us.
(I'm posting on behalf of my husband, his father made this machine). "This is how I ate as a child. Father's first patent that made money. They sold it in about '75, to an un-named buyer that they later found out was Atari."
Was he right about the drugs?
Vee Chee, maybe Robert Brown was her husband's father?
:D
I remember going to the local electronics store as a kid and seeing this thing. Even for a tech obsessed youngster such as myself it was merely a neat curiosity rather than a must-have. Brings back some cool memories though - thanks for sharing.
I would love to get hold of a modern HDMI version of this. With HD vectors
"All it did was play back coloured patterns on the TV screen and there were not many people who wanted that"
This is the "Commodore Amiga" of HiFi separates.
that device is incredibly ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ
25 years later I was using high end pc's and winamp vizualisers to mimic that exact same effect, ahead of its time by far. This looks so much softer too. Good find.
I would love to have one of these to run my synths through...
. . You get back from work and theres a new Techmoan Retro Tech Video . . . Life doesn't get better then this! . .
At 12:50 you said Winamp. I used to listen to Ceredwen's Yng Ngolau Ddydd and watch "pretty dots" which was one of the Winamp visualizations of perhaps the Milkdrop plugin...
or maybe it was The Gates of Annwn.
Can I just quickly say, another reason why Techmoan is one of only three Patreon’s I give to; as well as brilliant writing and presentation, he actually researches things from sources other than Wikipedia! Keep it up I say!
Love your puppet segments, Techmoan. They always give me a good laugh.
I'm glad we live in a world or people are hand-building custom videos synthesizers and other products similar to this visualizer. I've bought a few from people all across the globe and thoroughly enjoy using them in tandem with my analog synths at live gigs. Thanks for this video as always! And now I'm off to eBay!😋😉
I have both an Atari Video Music.... and a Teac A-3440 as pictured in the video logo.
Who's jealous?
Bought both around 1980.
This is actually really cool. I would be interesting in seeing what other sorts of effects modders have been able to get out of this thing.
WinAmp It really whips the llamas ass!
I always like looking at old electronic equipment and I also like your theme music.
I'm having Winamp visualization plug-ins PTSD 😱😅
I can imagine back in 1977, two friends are playing "Pong" for an hour and get bored. Then one says "do you have anything else cool to watch?" Then you whip out this thing and the seizure party started!
Hey bud cool TH-cam sub clock in the background :) kept waiting for it to tick over to 457930!
It did go up by five subscribers compared to the beginning of the video.
I used to have one of these also. Good memories. Also in top of my TV I had a "circular music visualizer" that was basically like the POV spinner that you have for your title cut, but you fed audio into it and it was, in essence, a circular oscilloscope.
I imagine a retro NYC dance club would pay $thousands for this box.
its probably now a win amp plug in ,,, crazy world really
why would any one ever want to skip the puppet skit? I always appreciate those skits at the end of videos :)
And that kids is why you should not use Wikipedia to do your final year dissertation.
smash461986 Thank you! This is about going to the library!
Wikipedia is as reliable as encyclopedias according to major researchers who found around the same about of errors in Wikipedia and encyclopedia brittanica
amount* not about
Interesting idea indeed :D as the programmer behind it, I can share the story about it's conception. At the time we were indeed looking to expand on products such as the Razzle Dazzle. It seemed obvious that the effects of a number of those products could be achieved by a single device. We also had a number of floating banana ocean pants book semi-rigid number space time Germany doors with red mince blended over main greeting cards, and left round dirt carnival toad strips.
I used to have a program that did similar for the ZX Spectrum. The trouble is that if the output of your audio device was going into the Spectrum then you couldn't plug it into your hi-fi at the same time. I would need a signal splitter. It was inconvenient in the same way this Atari device is.
jezzvideo The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color-Computer had a cartridge that did a similar function, and could be switched to a bar-graph display as well. All audio input had to come through the cassette-tape drive, which was great if what you wanted to graph was on cassette. I still remember watching the highest-frequency meter not even budge, until we put "Cum & Feel the Noiz!" by Quiet Riot in... What laughs!
Thank you for putting links into all your references and music that you used. The Outro music was very moving to me, and I really enjoyed Anders music too.
"Unfunny, childish and idiotic"? The puppets are always the best part!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
when I was a kid, yes in the 1970's, I had a portable disco record player, it had that prismatic plastic with lights behind it and man did I get a flash of nostalgia when you showed those stand-alone devices with the same design to them. It would flash and pulse the lights to the music and it was the coolest thing in the world. I think my mother still has it in her attic somewhere. I should ask her to send it to me. great video, I also wish she still had my old Pong but she threw out all my atari stuff and pong games I had left back east.
Hard to believe people paid $170 for this thing.
$100 in 1975 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $476.10 in 2019
Novel for its origins but a totally useless device.
I don’t see a bunch of successful things using the same idea to be a shot at Atari it just shows it was way ahead of its time.
Yea, but have you ever used the Atari Video Music... on weed?
You can put your WEED in there
Man, Atari really was far ahead of its time when it came to electronics, this thing being no exception.
subtly inserts Nintendo switch into shot....
I've never heard of this before. As soon as it was described, though, it brought to mind my old Atari Jaguar CD unit. Of all the music visualizers I've seen, it was my favorite.
i need this for my raves
Thank you for what you're doing. I always watch your videos before sleep
LGR will be all over this!
I'd love to pick one of these up, someday...I'm thinking the visual effects these produce would look awesome in an arcade!:)