[ih] Internet sounds

[Stephen Casner]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2022, Toerless Eckert via Internet-history wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 11:34:13AM +1200, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> > > For me, the first "sound" that I would definitively associate with
> > > the Internet specifically is Carl Malamud's _Internet Talk Radio_
> > > program from 1993.
> >
> > "On June 24, 1993, the band Severe Tire Damage was the first to
> > perform live on the Mbone."
> > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone#History)
> >
> > But there was audio and video using early versions of VIC/VAT before
> > 1993. I was in a transatlantic teleconf at UCL in 1991, and I seem to
> > remember remote audio in the very early days of RIPE (1989?).
>
> Same here. Alas i do not remember the exact dates, but the first sound
> "across" the Internet for me was most likely VIC/VAT conferences too.
> MICE project @UCL for example was quite active.  I think to remember
> that the "places all over the world" channel also had audio
> and of course my later boss was at NASA posting NASA TV to the MBone.
> think We also quickly "commercialized" the MBone ourselves to replace
> actual monthly business travel in our region (bavaria).

If we want to take packet audio transmissions as examples of Internet
sounds, then the earliest dates would depend upon one's definition of
"Internet".  The initial packet voice experiments over ARPANET started
in 1974.  That audio in CVSD and LPC encoding suffered from various
artifacts.  The 1978 ISI movie spearheaded by Danny Cohen and titled
Digital Voice Conferencing includes a soundtrack in the LPC encoding.

During the June 1982 program review meeting at Lincoln Lab there were
several demos including a four-party conference with participants on
the Packet Radio Net, the Wideband Net and LEXNET at Lincoln.  I don't
remember if any of that was recorded, but Cliff Weinstein might.

Later in the 1980s packet video was added and the implementation of
video conferencing over the Wideband Net stabilized to the point that
unrelated groups used it for distributed meetings.  But by then the
sound was not unique to Internet.

The first IETF audiocast was from San Diego in March 1992.  This was a
precursor to the MBone with an ad-hoc set of IP multicast tunnels
connected to the DARTnet as the core network.  vat and NEVOT were in
use.  Some of that might have been recorded, but it was 64kbps mu-law
audio, same as long-distance telephony, so again the sound was not
unique to the Internet.

Some initial slow-frame-rate video was included for the next IETF in
Cambridge, MA in July 1992.  The name "MBone" was coined at the end of
that meeting when we set a goal to keep the ad-hoc multicast tunnels
operational between meetings and to improve their organization.  Over
the next couple of years the nv program was the first MBone video tool
to be used widely, then later VIC.

                                                        -- Steve