I’m sure it drives many of the geeks crazy in the industry that so much attention is being paid to four little notes. The Associated Press has the story — nice to see Steve Ball get some attention, he’s one of the truly great guys at Microsoft. But, I find it fascinating. I wish I had the videotape I did of Robert Fripp in Microsoft’s studio. But it’s in a big box somewhere inside Microsoft.
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Robert Scoble works at Fast Company.TV (title: Managing Director). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
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November 13th, 2006 at 3:49 am
The first three notes sounds like my speakers are about to crack. Whenever I get Vista, I will be changing that…unless you can no longer change sounds…
November 13th, 2006 at 4:23 am
No waaaaay you are going to let them lauch that stupid sound.
Do this simple test. Put some other pleasant (lol) elevator style music as background noise for distraction. Bring in a small group of people(Not MSFT biased folk), crank the volume on your laptop and start this sound clip. Watch the people in the room cringe in pain.
Go back to the drawing board and concept out just what feelings you are looking to enduce and start over.
Try it. Just a thought.
November 13th, 2006 at 6:35 am
“I’m sure it drives many of the geeks crazy in the industry that so much attention is being paid to four little notes”
No, it seems pretty much par for the course for this release of Windows. Lots of fluff, and 18 months? Pull the other one.
If I were Fripp I would go find a deep hole to hide in.
November 13th, 2006 at 6:54 am
That is horrible! I think the Windows XP start up sound is much better. But even that is quite hated.
There is no real need to have a startup sound on by default. Especially not when it is so horrible.
November 13th, 2006 at 7:45 am
18 Months to Develop, 4 Seconds Long, But You Can Kill It
AP, Seattle: “Some musicians spend 18 months working on a whole album. At Microsoft Corp., that’s how long it took to perfect just four seconds of sound.” That’s the Vista Startup Sound. Microsoft hired famous guitarist Robert Fripp for the j…
November 13th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Michiel wrote:
> If I were Fripp I would go find a deep hole to hide in.
Yeah, but think how well-appointed that hole will be, and will he be laughing all the way to it?
November 13th, 2006 at 8:08 am
I’m a mac user most of the time, so this doesn’t affect me. I’m not defending this sound, but folks, the main reason it seems painful is that the Associated Press’s file is compressed and distorted. I could be wrong, but I’d be willing to bet the actual wav file sounds better (though still not something I’d want to hear every time I turn on my machine). Robert, you’ve heard it, right?
November 13th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Didn’t you have that on Channel 9 at one point. I could have sworn I remember seeing that. Am I just off my rocker?
November 13th, 2006 at 8:41 am
It sounds like someone put a mic next to a speaker and did a bad job on the recording. To me, the internal sounds on Vista are quite delicious.
November 13th, 2006 at 9:28 am
I agree with Bryan Peters :)
November 13th, 2006 at 9:40 am
These posts remind me of a saying I’ve heard, and probably you have too:
“Opinions are like a**holes. Everyone has one, and everyone thinks everyone elses stinks.”
November 13th, 2006 at 10:49 am
And now for something completely different… it looks like ValleyWag has jumped the shark. Scoble, if you don’t TechMeme this bad boy, we’ll be weeping. This is your story to take to the top.
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/housekeeping/valleywag-release-candidate-2-214343.php
November 13th, 2006 at 11:58 am
John: I filmed Fripp twice. The first video was on Channel 9. The second one never made it on there.
The audio in Vista is a lot better quality than what the AP had.
But, they had a lot more choices that I liked a lot better. Microsoft should have given us the top 10, not just one.
November 13th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
It’s interesting that so far I’ve only been able to find coverage of this on media player - I would like to hear it but as a Mac user I need it on quicktime and yet Microsoft doesn’t seem so keen on trying to convert me. That’s missing a marketing trick I think.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Over at Charles Petzold’s blog he talks about the Vista sound being similar to a section of another tune.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2006/11/130618.html
November 14th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Did they ever fix the hard-coded start-up sound “feature?”
November 14th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Keep this in mind…
In addition to the actual sound being better on the actual speakers and the raw file, the audio stack was changed in Vista and should be an improvement over the 10 year old stack.
December 9th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
[...] 18 meses trabajaron para crear el sonido de inicio del nuevo Windows Vista. Aquí está. El compositor es Robert Fripp. | vía Robert Scoble [...]