Insane: Microsoft Spent 18 Months for Vista Start Up Sound
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. Of course, this isn’t just any four-second clip. It’s the sound ? a soft da-dum, da-dumm, with a lush fade-out ? that millions of computer users will hear every day, and perhaps thousands of times in total, when they turn on computers running Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista operating system.
To set the right tone ? clean, simple, but with “some long-term legs,” according to Microsoft’s Steve Ball ?the software maker recruited musician Robert Fripp. Ball is the first to admit that the percussive beeps in past Windows versions could be jarring enough to bother nearby workers or interrupt others in a meeting. With the number of intrusive sounds from cell phones, handheld devices and other gadgets only increasing, that’s something Ball and his colleagues were keen to avoid with Vista.
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