Minutes: AudioPlaf Sounds Meeting

Date: December 18, 1998

Present: Anastasia Cheetham, Lake Porter, Karen McCall, Jutta Treviranus, Joseph Scheuhammer.

Joseph recalled from the previous meeting that Lake was going to look into a "pachenko" sound effect for trees, and Karen was going to investigate echo and reverb for containers. Lake and Karen did not find to time to record some examples, and will do so at some future time.

There followed a discussion of a "drum" theme for containers. Different kinds of containers would be identified by different drum sounds, e.g., African drum, snare drum, tom-tom, and so so on. Unfortunately, my notes are not explicit as to which drum sound effect goes with which container.

We listened to and discussed the sound effects for combo box, namely a list sound, and an editing sound (the latter for editable combo boxes). It was decided that these were ok.

We listened to and discussed the sound effects for progress bar, both in terms of its identification as well as its update sounds. The conclusions were:

We listened to the slider sound effects. It was decided that the xylophone used for identification was ok, but needed to be quicker.

We reviewed the sound effects for the password entry field. My notes say, literally:

I believe this means that the identifying sound effect for the password field is now a lock sound, but I can't recall what this sounds like. A padlock locking? A key turning in a lock? A deadbolt being set? Does anyone remember?

The second point is clearer: as the user types in the password, they hear a type writer "chicka" for every key typed. Is this correct?

There was a relatively lengthy discussion on the sound effect for a desktop icon. This was because none had been previously specified to date. We came to the following "principle"; that a desktop icon is really a graphic proxy for the "real thing". Jutta suggested that, within the audio domain, one could communicate this proxy nature via the sound of a post-it note being attached (a sort of stick-on sound effect).


Joseph Scheuhammer.