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Our Fake Sonic World
Mic Wright of the tech blog Humans Invent catalogues the many artificial sounds built into common products and experiences. Many of the sounds we take for granted are actually engineered for effect -- like the satisfying thunk! of a slamming car door:
A car door is essentially a hollow shell with parts placed inside it. Without careful design the door frame amplifies the rattling of mechanisms inside. Car companies know that if buyers don’t get a satisfying thud when they close the door, it dents their confidence in the entire vehicle.... To produce the ideal clunk, car doors are designed to minimise the amount of high frequencies produced (we associate them with fragility and weakness) and emphasise low, bass-heavy frequencies that suggest solidity.
The effect is achieved in a range of different ways -– car companies have piled up hundreds of patents on the subject –- but usually involves some form of dampener fitted in the door cavity.
Other great examples are the artificially amplified roar of stadium crowds and the whirring of ATMs as they dispense dollar bills (in fact, the whirring comes from a speaker; cash machines are well-engineered and naturally silent). Read more here, and check out part two.
[Image: Waveform for a slamming car door, from Freesound.org.]
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Joshua Rothman is a graduate student and Teaching Fellow in the Harvard English department, and an Instructor in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He teaches novels and political writing.
