Do you know what this thing is?
Some of you do.
And many, many more of you have definitely seen one of these before,
but you might not have realized what it is.
And that's because it's not meant to be seen.
It's meant to be heard.
This device is really fascinating to me
because it represents a kind of innovation
which had to happen without being noticed.
Because if you noticed it,
that would defeat its purpose.
Here, let me just hook 12V up to this thing.
[the sound of a bell being rung repeatedly]
That’s right, this is an electronic railroad crossing bell.
If you've spent any time near a railroad crossing in the US,
you'll have heard them.
They provide an audible warning designed to get your attention
so you know a train is approaching
and maybe you should get away from the railroad tracks.
That's a very important warning.
And because we used to use literal bells
which were rung by an electromechanical striker for that purpose,
the electronic replacement for them needed to make the same sound
so it was immediately recognizable.
And so... they do!
These things started to show up in the early 1990s.
This particular railroad crossing...
“bell” was made by General Signals Incorporated,
and they still produced them to this day
with basically the same construction as this one.
Which delights me because holy crap does this thing scream hand-built in some garage somewhere!
This is literally a PVC drain pipe and cap spray painted silver
and with these pill-shaped holes cut out of it with bug screening installed.
Hanging below the cap is a circuit board
which contains an amplifier, ROM chip, and DAC.
When you give it 12V,
it just plays the recording on that ROM chip over and over again
through an off the shelf horn-style loudspeaker,
which fires down onto this wedge thing
which will bounce the sound out in all directions.
And then there's this fitting on here -
the only thing made of actual metal! -
which allows this to be installed atop the mast of a crossing signal.
This is critical safety infrastructure.
And it's like made out of parts from a hardware store.
I love it!
Now, there are several different manufacturers
making these things, and they don't all look just like this one.
But the concept is the same.
Just a loudspeaker of some sort on top of a pole,
which imitates the sound of the big bells of the past.
GSI is really proud of their 16-bit sound technology.
Such high fidelity!
Some mechanical bells are still in service, and in fact,
some are even still being manufactured.
So you'll still see them (and hear them) from time to time.
But electronic bells like this are far more common these days,
because they're just a lot more flexible
and presumably require less maintenance.
They don't really have anything to service and just might one day fail.
And that's what happened with this one.
The loudspeaker had failed,
and whatever railroad owned it simply tossed it.
But almost anything can be fixed if you're patient enough.
And that's how I got it working.
The board was fine, if a little corroded,
and the hardest part was simply getting it apart
because the fasteners holding the board and speaker to the, I remind you
PVC drain pipe cap had all rusted quite badly.
I still can't believe how crude this thing is.
For those curious, here's the raw signal coming from the board.
[the bell sounding crisper but a bit scratchy, too]
This early version has a highly compressed recording,
which doesn't capture the clang of the bell really at all.
And instead it comes across more like a thump.
Though, through that tinny loudspeaker, you can't even really hear the thump.
It's more like a tone that decays and then resets back to full intensity
again and again.
And this is how I tested that the board was working
when I first got the thing.
[an oddly hi-fi bell]
I have a weird job.
But I'm not just making a video about this railroad crossing bell.
I'm making a video about what it represents:
conveying information through sound.
This is something we humans do all the time.
In fact, I'm doing it right now!
I'm using my gross wet mouth parts to modulate the tone
coming from my gross wet vocal cords, and with a little consonant flair,
I can convey information from my brain to yours.
But that's using language.
Certainly one of the most impressive things our brains can decode,
but also kind of clunky and slow.
Our pattern matching circuits can work in many other ways, too -
so long as we're consistent.
Hence, this thing.
I want to focus some attention on the different ways
we use sound for communication purposes.
We have a tremendous wireless communication system
built into our bodies that we can use in so many ways.
Yet I feel like this is getting neglected lately.
Some of that is due to shifting cultural preferences.
I know these days many people find noises to be annoying and obtrusive,
but they don't have to be.
And if we put a little more effort into good sound design,
we might get a little closer to that sci fi future we were promised
and not the one we're being sold.
But let's start with something a little more old school.
[ding]
If this rings a bell, you should know
It actually strikes a chime.
This is a door entry alert,
and it's the simplest kind there is.
It's just a plastic box with a chime and spring loaded striker attached to a magnet.
When installed on a door, a metal plate on the door
will pull on that striker as the door opens,
storing a little bit of energy in that spring.
And once the magnet is released, the striker hits
the chime bar, producing a pleasant tone.
The purpose of this is to alert shopkeepers
who might be in the back of their store that someone has entered.
There are, of course, electronic versions of this,
but frankly, none of them produce a sound quite as pleasant as these old ones do,
which is probably why they're still so common.
This slider, by the way,
allows you to turn this off if you'd like.
I've always been fond of these things
because they do their job incredibly well while also being dead simple.
The sound they produce is distinct but pleasant,
and it carries well without being startling.
It checks all the boxes!
Yes, there are fancier things out there
which can activate sound makers
in various locations, which might be helpful depending on the situation.
Such as for a larger store.
And of course, now we can install smart door sensors
which can even send a push notification to your phone.
But if you've got a small store and all you want
is to be alerted to someone walking in,
these are hard to beat.
They just work.
No need to mess with batteries even.
This is the same sort of thing as the railroad crossing bell:
a specific sound, which means a certain thing.
But we can also use a wide variety of sounds to convey the same message with the use of encoding.
For example, do you know what this means?
[an electronic tone playing in time with the icon on-screen]
You probably should by now.
This pattern of sound is used to alert of a fire emergency.
Full disclosure this is not an international standard.
I think perhaps there's merit to it becoming one, but for now,
this is mainly a US thing as far as I can tell.
But that thing is called Temporal 3,
and it has become the standard signal that fire alarms and smoke detectors use.
The sound those things make is meant to be annoying and intrusive to get your attention.
But you'll notice I haven't been using the sound of a smoke alarm.
That's because this signal is based entirely on cadence.
Three bursts of sound are followed by a silent period.
Usually this pattern operates at one beat per second.
So you have three seconds of sound, then one second of silence.
And that has several key advantages:
the fact that it's a pulsing sound makes it easier to notice.
A constant noise can blend into a noisy environment,
but something which alternates between sound and silence
is much more likely to pierce through the background.
But simply getting noticed isn't the only goal.
It's easy to notice that something's beeping,
But it's also easy to dismiss that.
Beeping could mean anything from a reversing truck
in the distance to your neighbor using their microwave.
Temporal 3's pause between every three beeps
serves as a literal pattern interrupt.
That can be somewhat jarring, so it's good for getting your attention.
The need for a specific kind of signal to indicate
a fire emergency has been known for many years.
I stumbled across this old promotional record from the Autocall company
demonstrating The Slow Whoop:
a signal they had devised and were trying to make into something of a thing.
No doubt since patents royalties would be quite lucrative.
The record went through the same list of things
I just did on what makes for an effective signal.
And the slow whoop did check all those boxes.
But creating a device that made that audible signal back in 1974
required some fairly complicated and expensive electronics for the time.
So while the slow whoop did end up in use in some places,
it wasn't commonplace, except perhaps in certain locales.
Temporal 3, on the other hand, could be adapted to almost any existing fire alarm system.
All that needed to be tweaked
was how power was sent from the fire alarm panel
out to the horns throughout the building.
Rather than send constant power during an alarm,
tt would be pulsed following the Temporal 3 cadence.
And with that simple change,
you've made the alarm far more distinct and noticeable,
while also giving it a specific meaning.
But the somewhat odd thing is that despite this being an option for over 50 years,
and even being encouraged by various fire safety organizations,
it still isn't quite universal in commercial fire alarm systems.
And that's made even weirder by the fact that when it comes
to household smoke alarms, Temporal 3 has become effectively universal.
Smoke alarms of my youth sounded very different compared to how they sound today.
I don't know when exactly that change happened,
but it's been something like 20 years.
And here's the thing:
standardization had to happen because in addition to smoke alarms,
we also use carbon monoxide alarms in the home.
That's a very different kind of but no less dangerous emergency.
And in many cases, those two functions are combined into a single alarm device.
That necessitates a different kind of signal
for the two different things it's designed to alert you to.
And a carbon monoxide alarm in the US
produces four rapid beeps with a long pause in between them.
Like this:
That is quite distinct from the other alarm pattern,
and makes the two alerts easy to distinguish.
I think this sort of signal standardization,
which codifies what different sounds mean, is an unquestionably good thing.
That's why the crossing bell still sounds like an old school bell.
And in many places now, it's required by fire codes.
The National Fire Protection Association
specifies Temporal 3 for fire evacuations
and Temporal 4 for carbon monoxide.
But what I think is so strange is that apparently
this is just something you're supposed to pick up on.
I don't think I've ever encountered anyone explaining the difference between those two alerts,
or even the simple fact that groups of three long beeps with a second of silence between them
is now the near universal signal for a fire emergency.
And I think that's just kind of strange.
So I'm doing it.
You're welcome!
Of course,
we've been using patterns of sound to mean certain things for centuries.
Clock towers ring bells in certain sequences
so anyone in earshot can tell the time.
And even something as simple as a doorbell
can be configured to make a ding dong when someone's at the front door
and just a ding (or dong) when someone's at the back door.
Now we just text “here” so that doesn't matter so much these days.
But there was that period of time
where you had to learn Morse code to send text messages.
So, you know, there's another example of using patterns of sound
to convey a specific meaning, one letter at a time.
But here's a much more modern use of sound patterns,
which is still in use today and which demonstrates a mastery of sound design.
[airplane bing-bong]
Yeah, those bings, bongs, and bing-bongs you hear on an airplane
are another form of audible alert with some surprising flexibility.
Those are used by the crew to communicate specific needs to one another.
For instance, if the captain needs to speak to the flight attendants.
The specifics vary from airline to airline,
but pay attention and you'll pick up on a lot.
That's actually just good life advice in general -
it's why I'm like this!
But the thing about those bing-bongs
is that they were designed to be noticeable, to convey complex meaning.
and - unlike what we've been discussing so far
to be unobtrusive.
I've certainly been on airplanes where the volume was set
a little too high so they can be obtrusive,
but when done well, it's the best of both worlds.
It's a signal designed to be noticed by the people who need to notice it,
but to be subtle enough to not distract you from the movie
you're watching or the book you're reading
or the sleep you're trying to get.
And through the use of two tones with two different pitches,
there are several distinct patterns
which can be used to convey different things like who is paging who.
It's a system that's been in use for a very, very long time,
but which does its job in such a subtle way
that many fliers don't even realize what it's for.
Airplane bing-bong, in my opnion,
demonstrate the amazing things we could be doing with careful and intentional sound design
if we only wanted to.
Maybe I'm just weird, which I am.
But it feels like we just sorta lost the ability
or perhaps desire to do this.
When I was a kid, people wore wristwatches
which double beeped on the hour.
Something I personally found quite handy for keeping track of the time.
But today, devices which make noise almost feel taboo.
I seem to be one of very few people left
who bother to curate a selection of notification sounds for my phone
and set them on a per-app and even per-contact basis.
This is something I find incredibly helpful,
but which clearly went out of fashion.
And no, this video is not just to address my social anxiety about that.
What are you talk- that's ridiculous.
I understand that we are probably in a corrective period
after the years of incredibly irritating ringtones,
and these days, a lot of you have way too many apps
sending you way too many push notifications,
which is more of a condemnation of push notifications
and not the apps you use, for the record.
But personally,
I choose to work to keep things on my phone at a reasonable to manage level,
and there are plenty of non-intrusive sounds out there.
I've been using my own custom sounds for years,
some of which are airplane bing-bongs.
I just like to know what that notification was
and whether it needs my immediate attention
no matter where I might have set my phone down,
or before I even take my phone out of my pocket.
And look, I am not about to buy another computer to wear on my wrist.
I simply refuse to be that plugged in any longer.
Though if someone would resurrect the Pebble, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Oh wait, that happened!
Yeah, I started writing this script a long time ago.
If you don't know anything about the Pebble smartwatch,
I'm not about to go on a tangent about it, but if you're like me
and simply want a notification-mirroring watch with a whimsical design
philosophy and battery life measured in weeks and not days,
well, you should know it is coming back and it's even open source.
I'll put a link in the description for those who want more info.
But anyway, even though I have
what might be my favorite ever gadget back on my wrist,
I still want my phone to make a sound
because I have a really hard time noticing vibration and always have.
I even miss it on my wrist sometimes.
So for me, I consider audible notification sounds to be an accessibility tool.
But I am also considerate about other people
and use sounds which aren't obnoxious, like those airplane bing bongs
or the people mover chime.
Or this one.
[Metra/Caltrain door closing chime]
That's for those of you who still think I'm car-brained.
I would argue that there's actually quite a lot of fun to be had here.
And while I am sympathetic to the notion that sound pollution is a thing, we need to be concerned with,
the choice between silence and sound pollution is a false choice.
There's a lot of those happening these days, probably because we're so stuck in binary thinking.
But as airplanes show us, we can design
sounds which aren't obtrusive, but which are helpful.
And when you get yourself out of binary thinking,
you can do things like make your most obnoxious apps be silent
while your important ones make themselves known,
and in ways which are meaningful to you and pleasant to everyone else.
And to be clear, I don't think it should be up to you.
I spend way too much time on this!
I just think we need to appreciate and bring back
the art of good and intentional sound design.
Many years ago, I made a video on elevator chimes and how in the US,
the Americans with Disabilities Act requires an elevator
which is going up to make a single chime when it arrives at the landing,
and an elevator which is going down has to make two chimes.
Very few people even pick up on that unless they're who that's meant for:
the blind.
But it's incredibly useful for those who need it.
And when we design things well, we can make them useful for all.
I'd love it if our tech overlords could be bothered to hire some good sound designers again
who understand the tension between sound pollution and accessibility.
Because the default choices that come with a phone these days all kind of suck.
And for those of us who want to be intentional about it,
it's a very clunky experience to set up.
Even using the sounds the phone came with.
And I know that people designing phones today
don't give a rat's ass about people like me anymore
because they've made what I consider to be basic functions,
like putting a phone on vibrate or silent,
or adjusting ring and notification volume
to be way more difficult than it used to be.
It's irritating enough for someone like me,
and genuinely a problem for people like my parents.
When an Android update changed how that worked,
my mom kept accidentally setting the notification volume way, way down
and she was missing stuff right and left.
That's not really an issue with sound design,
but it is an issue with basic usability and accessibility.
And I would love it if the people in Silicon Valley could respect those of us
who don't want our crap to change on us like that.
That is not a software upgrade.
That's user hostile.
Think about other people for once!
While I'm ranting,
let me also just say I wish I could make my phone do things like suppress the notification sound
when someone is texting me a lot and simply make the noise once every minute at most.
The beautiful thing is there's a setting
which claims to do that called notification cooldown,
but it clearly doesn't work because it's been on the whole time.
Classic Google.
I also kind of miss what my very first cell phone did,
which was keep beeping every few minutes to let me know I had an unread text.
Obviously I wouldn't want it to do that for every text message I receive,
but maybe for starred contacts?
And like, this is a computer!
That would not be really hard to implement at all.
But nobody in charge of notification settings (in Android world at least) can imagine it being useful.
So it just doesn't happen.
And I know there's probably some app I could use to make that happen,
or some other phone out there which can do that,
but I truly don't think it's that weird of a thing for someone to want,
and it should just be built into the OS like it claims to be.
I'd like that way more than I want my phone to help me write an email!
Okay, calm down, calm down.
They don't need to know about that one
Gmail account of yours, which for some reason has literally never managed
to send a push notification to your phone.
Despite tinkering with the Gmail app settings
and the Google account settings and the phone notification settings
several times off and on throughout the literal years,
they don't need to know that it's not important.
Everyone knows everything sucks now.
But it sure could suck a lot less.
Anyway, earlier I mentioned the notion of false choices.
This is something I keep noticing more and more in the world of tech,
and we really need to start becoming aware of when people are pushing them on us and rejecting them.
A designer's idea of “best” may be great,
and it could be appropriate for a large majority of users,
but one man's presets are another man's hell.
And if we don't give people the option to do something differently,
it's important to interrogate why that might be.
Right now, despite having amazing computers in our pockets,
which can do tremendous things for us,
we have a false choice between audible notifications
that are irritating and possibly don't even work correctly,
and a phone which never makes noises at all.
And I believe we keep getting caught up in these false choices
because we no longer do a very good job of
considering what might be important to other people, and the scenarios
those other people might encounter in their day to day lives.
Because you know what?
I would like to have an audio cue to tell me
I got an email and from which account.
Many times I'm waiting to hear back from someone
and I don't want to miss being notified, which,
as I explained earlier, often happens to me
since I don't notice haptic vibration quite frequently.
And yet,
I would also like to be able to preview it on my wrist
so I know whether that was the thing I was looking out for
without digging my phone out of my pocket.
I want my technology to make my life easier,
and that means I want my technology to do things
that work for my weird brain and its weird brain things.
And yet, I would also like to be considerate of the people around me.
So I would like to have audio cues which are unobtrusive.
I make the effort to do that,
but it's way too much effort to be putting on the end user.
We can have the best of all worlds,
but it requires intentionality, respect for other users and their needs,
and respect for other people.
Only then will we truly be Living with Each Other.
...something which alternates between sound and silence is more likely to pierce through the background,
recording - there’s weird delivery happening.
followed by one second of zilence.
Zilence?
such as the piezoelectric sounders in a battery operated -
There was a weird click there.
I guess I'm starting over again!
And in many places now, it's required by fire cords - cords?
The National Fire Protection Association specifies tempourorral 3...
I'm really struggling with words.
Airplane -
Airplane bing -
Airplane bing-bongs
Airplane bing-bongs,
in my opinion [starts breaking]
I'm saying it too many times!
It's breaking down.
[bing-bong] Well folks, erhhhhhhhh, looks like we've passed 10,000 feet.
That sure is a lot of feet. Maybe there's a marathon going on or something?
Ok that's not my best work.
But y'know, some effort is better than no effort.
Except in November, of course.