PaweΕ ZadroΕΌniak presented the third edition of the Floppotron electronic orchestra, which generates sound using 512 floppy drives, 4 scanners and 16 hard drives. The sound source in the system is the controlled noise emitted by the movement of the magnetic heads by the stepper motor, the clicks of the hard disk heads, and the movement of the scanner carriage.
To increase the sound quality, the drives are grouped into racks, 32 devices each. One rack can play only a certain tone at a time, but by increasing or decreasing the number of devices involved, you can change the volume and simulate the sound of pressing the keys on a piano or vibrating a guitar string, in which the volume gradually fades out. You can also simulate various sound effects, such as vibration.
Disk drives handle low tones well, while scanners are used to reproduce high tones, the engines of which are capable of generating sounds with a higher pitch. Hard disk head clicks are used to generate sounds corresponding to different types of drums in MIDI (depending on the model, the disk may make a click of a different frequency or even ringing).
The system is MIDI compatible (it uses its own MIDI controller based on the Nordic nRF52832 chip). MIDI data is translated into commands that determine when devices should buzz and click. Power consumption averages 300 W, peaking at 1.2 kW.
Source: opennet.ru