ENGAGED: Switchboard Synth

ENGAGED is a semi-modular synthesizer built into an antique tin toy telephone exchange. Red handset on top. Rotary dial. Patch bay with cords. Four yellow push tabs. Flip the box over and the engineer's panel is waiting on the back.

Type a message and ENGAGED sends it in Morse code. That Morse code is your sequencer. The timing is real: a dot is one step, a dash is three, and the gaps are proper too. Each letter plays the note of the dial hole it sits under, so ABC is 2 and WXYZ is 9. The old phone keypad is the scale.

LIFT THE HANDSET: Handset up, the message transmits. Handset down, the voice is yours to play from MIDI, the dial or the BUZZ tab.

A DIAL THAT ACTUALLY DIALS: Drag to the finger stop and let go. It runs back at 10 pulses a second like a GPO rotary dial, and the pulses come out of a socket you can patch.
Dial out of this world while you are at it. 627 (M.A.R.) goes to Mars. 836 (V.E.N.) goes to Venus. 728 (S.A.T.) goes to Saturn. Each planet changes the sound. 999 brings you home and clears stuck notes.

PATCH IT OR LEAVE IT ALONE: Every socket is pre-wired inside, so ENGAGED makes noise with no cords at all. Push a cord in and it replaces the wire.
8 SEND sockets: OSC A, OSC B, LFO, ENV, TONE, NOISE, MORSE, DIAL.
8 RECEIVE sockets: PITCH A, PITCH B, CUTOFF, METAL, VCA, DELAY, DAMAGE, CLOCK, each with its own amount knob.

Hit OPERATOR and an exhausted operator jams cords in at random. Hit DROP and every cord comes out. Patch anything into CLOCK and it steps the sequence.

REAL UK PHONE TONES: The engaged tone and the ringing tone use true British timing. Patch them in as modulation. The line filter squeezes everything into the 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz band of a real phone line. Add static, 50 Hz mains hum, relay crackle or dial clicks.

THE SOUND: Two oscillators run into METAL ring mod, crosstalk, a filter that pushes to the edge of self-oscillation, DAMAGE drive with bit crushing and sample rate reduction, and a delay that runs away into self-oscillation near the top. Dirty on purpose.

FLIP THE BOX: The back holds the engineer's panel: LFO rate, attack, decay, glide, delay time, crosstalk, volume, line noise, planet, scale, root, octave and an oscilloscope. On an iPad on its side you can show the front and back at the same time.

- Standalone app and AUv3 instrument. In your host it shows as NOIDED: Engaged.
- Follows host tempo, locked to the bar. Standalone tempo runs 40 to 240 BPM.
- MIDI in on all channels: notes, velocity, pitch bend, CC 14 to 29 for all 16 front knobs, program change and MIDI clock.
- MIDI out: the Morse sequence as notes and your knob moves as CCs. Use it to drive other synths.
- 45 automatable parameters.
- 5 scales, 12 roots, plus or minus 2 octaves. Messages up to 24 characters.
- 30 factory presets plus your own. Your presets show up in your host too.

30 PRESETS

Dial-Up, Pocket-Dial, Hold-Tone, Ghosted, Wrong-Number, Voice-Mail, Cross-Talk, Wiretap, Dead-Line, Cold-Call, Disconnect, Phreaker, Party-Line, Telegram, Interzone, Trunk-Call, Rochdale-Exchange, Saturn-Drone, Nine-Nine-Nine, Rust-Relay and ten more.

BUILT IN ROCHDALE

www.noidedindustries.com
Requires iOS 15.6 or later.