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How Engineers Create Artificial Sounds to Fool Us

80 points by d0ne 15y ago

patio11 15y ago
There is a secondary purpose for sounds on digital cameras: it makes it obvious to people in the vicinity that someone has just taken a photo. This is, indeed, mandatory in some places. I don't believe there is an actual law on the books, but government guidance in Japan is that if you make a camera or phone with a camera feature it has to loudly announce itself and it should be impossible to turn that off short of damaging the device. (This is largely to prevent sexual misconduct.) For example, if you turn down the volume to zero and set my phone to manner mode, it will ring on taking a picture loud enough to hear 20 feet away. Similarly, current model electric cars (Prius et al) are designed to run less silent in certain circumstances, mostly for the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists around blind corners. (I don't know if they shipped that one to the US yet.)
- gaius 15y ago
  Indeed. And the reassuring clunk of the car door is as much to get you into a calm frame of mind before driving as anything.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  I know that there has been some talk about it here, but there is no sound on my Android phone default camera app. Anyway is there a sound when you take video on yours? Because if not, it seems kinda pointless.
  - rmc 15y ago
    Ditto, my android doesn't make a sound if the phone is in silent mode
- lelele 15y ago
  My Nokia 5800, set to silent mode, does not make any sound, it just flashes. Just tried it indoors.
  - ramchip 15y ago
    Is it sold in Japan? I have a Sharp camera-phone, and in manner mode it does make a sound when taking any picture - except for the OCR and business card reading modes, in which it's impossible to save the image anyway. I found it inconvenient when I was at university and wanted to take the blackboard... I've seen silent regular cameras, though.
- fastfinner 15y ago
  I am a photographer and I know I'd hate this feature. It makes street photography a lot more difficult. I assume by sexual misconduct you mean someone taking pictures in the bedroom (as opposed to photographing women at the beach, which is public space - unless specifically prohibited). I feel that is too specific a protection to make the lives of legit photographers difficult. Instead, more severe punishments could be implemented to protect men and women whose sex videos are filmed without consent.
  - rmc 15y ago
    I assume by sexual misconduct you mean someone taking pictures in the bedroom More likely taking photos of someone in a semi-public place, e.g. changing rooms, on a train, in a café, etc.
  - sgk284 15y ago
    In Japan, groping women and taking pictures up their skirts is a very very common practice among men. That's why they have women only passenger cars on trains[1]. The camera sounds are there to deter this behavior. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-only_passenger_car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-only_passenger_car
awaz 15y ago
The engineers are NOT creating artificial sounds to fool customers. As the article describes, customers would not buy a good product just because it does not sound good (which means customers are fools). Engineers are designing the products knowing that their customers are fools.
- TeMPOraL 15y ago
  "sounds good" might be a part of a product "being good". I believe humans care not only about practical aspects, but emotions and broadly understood "user experience" as well - no matter how hard they try not to admit that.
- biot 15y ago
  People enjoy things that please their senses. This applies to cars, dating, software, food, and just about darned near everything. Perhaps on Vulcan everyone chooses strictly for logic, but humans base many decisions on such illogical concepts like how something makes them feel. I guess we're all fools that way.
  - robryan 15y ago
    Makes producing products/ services and marketing more interesting than if everyone acted in completely logical and rational ways.
- ugh 15y ago
  No one in this story is a fool. There is nothing wrong with wanting certain things sound a certain way.
  - awaz 15y ago
    I used the fool word in my reply to show that the story makes a wrong point. Engineers are being smart in Including the sound aspect, customers are being smart in paying attention to the sound as a cue. That means the author of the story is a fool :)
kleiba 15y ago
I live close to a pretty crowded street. Lots of trucks, cars, motorcycles. Besides the environmental benefit, one thing I've been looking forward to for years is the reduced noise that electric engines would bring about. Reading a sentence like: Nissan's new electric vehicle has a speaker fitted under its bonnet and a synthesiser in the dash to generate engine noise. makes me so aggressive, I cannot even tell you. I think when you've never experienced any other kind of car than a loud one, then yes, you will start relying on your ears when you cross the street. But I think that's just a matter of what you're used to. If cars always had electric engines from the beginning, do you think people would get run over all the time today? I don't think so, because they would have adapted. I think the transition from combustion to electric engines will be slow enough for people to adapt to them. And gosh, it would be such a niecer world with less car noise...
- Joakal 15y ago
  Wouldn't it be pretty easy to find the source of noise?
- Swizec 15y ago
  What about blind people? They rely pretty heavily on hearing the car. Or what about people walking down the street and a car creeping up on them from behind. It's scary having things rush past from behind if there is no warning. Let alone very dangerous. As much as you might think humans are awesome and only need eyes, fact is that as most other animals, when it comes to danger, we mostly rely on our ears. That's why phones ring. That's why fire alarms ring. That's why alarm clocks ring. Everything that needs our immediate and utmost attention ... is loud.
  - Nitramp 15y ago
    Modern luxury class cars are already surprisingly silent, in particular when driving less than 50 km/h. That's exactly the speed in situations pedestrians or blind might be endangered. Doesn't seem to be too much of a problem yet.
    - 15y ago
d_r 15y ago
Another classic example would be the "tone" sounds you hear when entering digits on a modern cell phone. Completely cosmetic, but probably just makes sense for consumers. And there's just something pleasant about hearing those tones rather than a generic beep (or nothing.)
- Nitramp 15y ago
  Arguably these have a function; consumers got used to them from multi frequency dialing in the past, so if you're used to the tones it provides an additional source of error correction (for example to find that you pressed 5 twice instead of 52 which you intended). The frequencies are there for historical reasons, but they do have a purpose.
- ianterrell 15y ago
  On dialing they might be cosmetic, but the tones are still used to communicate with remote services. When the machine says "Press 1 for English," it's relying on getting the right tones (1209 Hz and 697 Hz in DTMF). Sure, they could be sent in the background without letting the consumer hear them, but they're still being generated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-frequency_signaling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-frequency_signa...
  - jwr 15y ago
    Except few modern devices actually transmit there frequencies in-band. They get encoded and sent out-of-band, then recreated (if needed) on the other end.
dmitri1981 15y ago
A friend of mine once worked in a cosmetics factory and told me that by far the biggest difference between a £5 and a £20 lipstick is that the more expensive one makes a satisfying click when you put the lid on.
- rmc 15y ago
  Market segmentation at work.
Silhouette 15y ago
My personal favourite one of these is the noise the ATM makes while you're waiting for your cash. The internal mechanism is almost silent in modern machines, but without some sort of audible feedback to tell them something was happening, customers reportedly started to assume machines were broken and walk away...
JonnieCache 15y ago
Interestingly, you can make a pretty good instant assessment of the quality of a piece of pro audio gear by its density relative to other devices of the same function. Denser is better, until you get up the the very top of the price range when density suddenly drops due to a switch in the tech used, eg. digital amps.
- ImprovedSilence 15y ago
  I'm curious as to weather or not this is sarcasm? I remember the owner of a small company that makes top of the line a/v equipment (the type of stuff Saudies wih oil money put in their private jets) come talk in one of my college courses. He showed us the inside of a case, and where they added weights on the inside, so it felt 'solid'. And thus sold it at a premeimum. p.s. I'm a horrible speller, Somebody make a keyboard app with a spell checker, eh?
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    It isn't sarcasm. Good quality pro audio gear weighs a ton. I know this because I've schlepped lots of it around. I've seen enough of it opened up to know that it doesn't have weights added to it. The kind of people who buy this stuff often open it up as soon as it comes into their possession, out of curiosity. Any brand adding weights to their products would soon be laughed out of the market. Good quality in this context doesn't necessarily mean audiophile sound quality, it means consistently high performance and low failure rates over many years of abuse. As I said, when you get to the really top end stuff, it stops holding true. Weight is the last thing to be optimised as you go upmarket. This is pro audio gear I'm talking about, not so called "high end" consumer stuff. I mean the stuff which has rackmounting brackets, not the stuff with a delicate finish. "Audiophile" kit is synonymous with snake-oil, as that guy who came into your college demonstrated.
ajb 15y ago
Another similar thing is voip phones. These don't bother transmitting if there is no-one speaking, but the other party will get worried that the call is disconnected if they don't hear any noise. So the other phone generates 'comfort noise' to indicate that all is still well. In fact, usually the comfort noise is generated to roughly match the spectral envelope of the real noise, so that when the silent party starts talking again, there isn't a strange transition in the sound of the underlying noise.
- eru 15y ago
  Don't GSM mobile phones work similar?
sltkr 15y ago
My favourite example of this is my iPod nano: it has a built-in speaker only to make a clicking sound when I use the (non-mechanical) clickwheel to browse through menus. The speaker is used for nothing else. If I have my earbuds in I can't even hear it. It only exists to say "click" whenever I scroll up or down a menu. Logically, there is no reason to include such a useless feature into an MP3 player. But apparently the perfectionists at Apple's design department felt the clicking sound of the mechanical wheel on the old iPods was an essential part of the user experience. And that's the difference between Apple and the manufacturers of cheaper clones.
blankslate 15y ago
As a motorcyclist, the sound of traffic is almost entirely a non-issue; I can wear canalphones with music at a volume where I can't hear any traffic noise, and still negotiate peak hour inner city traffic. But then, as a motorcyclist I pay more attention than just about any driver (including myself when I'm behind a wheel). For example, I'm never surprised by a vehicle suddenly appearing in my rear view mirror on a bike, because I move my eyes in a reflexive pattern between the road and both mirrors every few seconds. If you're really paying attention, sound is almost a non-issue on the road - but that puts you in a very small minority of road users.
djcapelis 15y ago
Hate the keyboard clicking sounds on iPads and iPhones. It's like the first thing I turn off.

80 points by d0ne 15y ago

There is a secondary purpose for sounds on digital cameras: it makes it obvious to people in the vicinity that someone has just taken a photo. This is, indeed, mandatory in some places. I don't believe there is an actual law on the books, but government guidance in Japan is that if you make a camera or phone with a camera feature it has to loudly announce itself and it should be impossible to turn that off short of damaging the device. (This is largely to prevent sexual misconduct.) For example, if you turn down the volume to zero and set my phone to manner mode, it will ring on taking a picture loud enough to hear 20 feet away. Similarly, current model electric cars (Prius et al) are designed to run less silent in certain circumstances, mostly for the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists around blind corners. (I don't know if they shipped that one to the US yet.)

gaius 15y ago
Indeed. And the reassuring clunk of the car door is as much to get you into a calm frame of mind before driving as anything.
tomjen3 15y ago
I know that there has been some talk about it here, but there is no sound on my Android phone default camera app. Anyway is there a sound when you take video on yours? Because if not, it seems kinda pointless.
- rmc 15y ago
  Ditto, my android doesn't make a sound if the phone is in silent mode
lelele 15y ago
My Nokia 5800, set to silent mode, does not make any sound, it just flashes. Just tried it indoors.
- ramchip 15y ago
  Is it sold in Japan? I have a Sharp camera-phone, and in manner mode it does make a sound when taking any picture - except for the OCR and business card reading modes, in which it's impossible to save the image anyway. I found it inconvenient when I was at university and wanted to take the blackboard... I've seen silent regular cameras, though.
fastfinner 15y ago
I am a photographer and I know I'd hate this feature. It makes street photography a lot more difficult. I assume by sexual misconduct you mean someone taking pictures in the bedroom (as opposed to photographing women at the beach, which is public space - unless specifically prohibited). I feel that is too specific a protection to make the lives of legit photographers difficult. Instead, more severe punishments could be implemented to protect men and women whose sex videos are filmed without consent.
- rmc 15y ago
  I assume by sexual misconduct you mean someone taking pictures in the bedroom More likely taking photos of someone in a semi-public place, e.g. changing rooms, on a train, in a café, etc.
- sgk284 15y ago
  In Japan, groping women and taking pictures up their skirts is a very very common practice among men. That's why they have women only passenger cars on trains[1]. The camera sounds are there to deter this behavior. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-only_passenger_car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-only_passenger_car

awaz 15y ago

The engineers are NOT creating artificial sounds to fool customers. As the article describes, customers would not buy a good product just because it does not sound good (which means customers are fools). Engineers are designing the products knowing that their customers are fools.

TeMPOraL 15y ago
"sounds good" might be a part of a product "being good". I believe humans care not only about practical aspects, but emotions and broadly understood "user experience" as well - no matter how hard they try not to admit that.
biot 15y ago
People enjoy things that please their senses. This applies to cars, dating, software, food, and just about darned near everything. Perhaps on Vulcan everyone chooses strictly for logic, but humans base many decisions on such illogical concepts like how something makes them feel. I guess we're all fools that way.
- robryan 15y ago
  Makes producing products/ services and marketing more interesting than if everyone acted in completely logical and rational ways.
ugh 15y ago
No one in this story is a fool. There is nothing wrong with wanting certain things sound a certain way.
- awaz 15y ago
  I used the fool word in my reply to show that the story makes a wrong point. Engineers are being smart in Including the sound aspect, customers are being smart in paying attention to the sound as a cue. That means the author of the story is a fool :)

kleiba 15y ago

I live close to a pretty crowded street. Lots of trucks, cars, motorcycles. Besides the environmental benefit, one thing I've been looking forward to for years is the reduced noise that electric engines would bring about. Reading a sentence like: Nissan's new electric vehicle has a speaker fitted under its bonnet and a synthesiser in the dash to generate engine noise. makes me so aggressive, I cannot even tell you. I think when you've never experienced any other kind of car than a loud one, then yes, you will start relying on your ears when you cross the street. But I think that's just a matter of what you're used to. If cars always had electric engines from the beginning, do you think people would get run over all the time today? I don't think so, because they would have adapted. I think the transition from combustion to electric engines will be slow enough for people to adapt to them. And gosh, it would be such a niecer world with less car noise...

Joakal 15y ago
Wouldn't it be pretty easy to find the source of noise?
Swizec 15y ago
What about blind people? They rely pretty heavily on hearing the car. Or what about people walking down the street and a car creeping up on them from behind. It's scary having things rush past from behind if there is no warning. Let alone very dangerous. As much as you might think humans are awesome and only need eyes, fact is that as most other animals, when it comes to danger, we mostly rely on our ears. That's why phones ring. That's why fire alarms ring. That's why alarm clocks ring. Everything that needs our immediate and utmost attention ... is loud.
- Nitramp 15y ago
  Modern luxury class cars are already surprisingly silent, in particular when driving less than 50 km/h. That's exactly the speed in situations pedestrians or blind might be endangered. Doesn't seem to be too much of a problem yet.
  - 15y ago

d_r 15y ago

Another classic example would be the "tone" sounds you hear when entering digits on a modern cell phone. Completely cosmetic, but probably just makes sense for consumers. And there's just something pleasant about hearing those tones rather than a generic beep (or nothing.)

Nitramp 15y ago
Arguably these have a function; consumers got used to them from multi frequency dialing in the past, so if you're used to the tones it provides an additional source of error correction (for example to find that you pressed 5 twice instead of 52 which you intended). The frequencies are there for historical reasons, but they do have a purpose.
ianterrell 15y ago
On dialing they might be cosmetic, but the tones are still used to communicate with remote services. When the machine says "Press 1 for English," it's relying on getting the right tones (1209 Hz and 697 Hz in DTMF). Sure, they could be sent in the background without letting the consumer hear them, but they're still being generated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-frequency_signaling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-frequency_signa...
- jwr 15y ago
  Except few modern devices actually transmit there frequencies in-band. They get encoded and sent out-of-band, then recreated (if needed) on the other end.

dmitri1981 15y ago

A friend of mine once worked in a cosmetics factory and told me that by far the biggest difference between a £5 and a £20 lipstick is that the more expensive one makes a satisfying click when you put the lid on.

rmc 15y ago
Market segmentation at work.

Silhouette 15y ago

My personal favourite one of these is the noise the ATM makes while you're waiting for your cash. The internal mechanism is almost silent in modern machines, but without some sort of audible feedback to tell them something was happening, customers reportedly started to assume machines were broken and walk away...

JonnieCache 15y ago

Interestingly, you can make a pretty good instant assessment of the quality of a piece of pro audio gear by its density relative to other devices of the same function. Denser is better, until you get up the the very top of the price range when density suddenly drops due to a switch in the tech used, eg. digital amps.

ImprovedSilence 15y ago
I'm curious as to weather or not this is sarcasm? I remember the owner of a small company that makes top of the line a/v equipment (the type of stuff Saudies wih oil money put in their private jets) come talk in one of my college courses. He showed us the inside of a case, and where they added weights on the inside, so it felt 'solid'. And thus sold it at a premeimum. p.s. I'm a horrible speller, Somebody make a keyboard app with a spell checker, eh?
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  It isn't sarcasm. Good quality pro audio gear weighs a ton. I know this because I've schlepped lots of it around. I've seen enough of it opened up to know that it doesn't have weights added to it. The kind of people who buy this stuff often open it up as soon as it comes into their possession, out of curiosity. Any brand adding weights to their products would soon be laughed out of the market. Good quality in this context doesn't necessarily mean audiophile sound quality, it means consistently high performance and low failure rates over many years of abuse. As I said, when you get to the really top end stuff, it stops holding true. Weight is the last thing to be optimised as you go upmarket. This is pro audio gear I'm talking about, not so called "high end" consumer stuff. I mean the stuff which has rackmounting brackets, not the stuff with a delicate finish. "Audiophile" kit is synonymous with snake-oil, as that guy who came into your college demonstrated.

ajb 15y ago

Another similar thing is voip phones. These don't bother transmitting if there is no-one speaking, but the other party will get worried that the call is disconnected if they don't hear any noise. So the other phone generates 'comfort noise' to indicate that all is still well. In fact, usually the comfort noise is generated to roughly match the spectral envelope of the real noise, so that when the silent party starts talking again, there isn't a strange transition in the sound of the underlying noise.

eru 15y ago
Don't GSM mobile phones work similar?

sltkr 15y ago

My favourite example of this is my iPod nano: it has a built-in speaker only to make a clicking sound when I use the (non-mechanical) clickwheel to browse through menus. The speaker is used for nothing else. If I have my earbuds in I can't even hear it. It only exists to say "click" whenever I scroll up or down a menu. Logically, there is no reason to include such a useless feature into an MP3 player. But apparently the perfectionists at Apple's design department felt the clicking sound of the mechanical wheel on the old iPods was an essential part of the user experience. And that's the difference between Apple and the manufacturers of cheaper clones.

blankslate 15y ago

As a motorcyclist, the sound of traffic is almost entirely a non-issue; I can wear canalphones with music at a volume where I can't hear any traffic noise, and still negotiate peak hour inner city traffic. But then, as a motorcyclist I pay more attention than just about any driver (including myself when I'm behind a wheel). For example, I'm never surprised by a vehicle suddenly appearing in my rear view mirror on a bike, because I move my eyes in a reflexive pattern between the road and both mirrors every few seconds. If you're really paying attention, sound is almost a non-issue on the road - but that puts you in a very small minority of road users.

djcapelis 15y ago

Hate the keyboard clicking sounds on iPads and iPhones. It's like the first thing I turn off.