The History of a Sound: iOS' Tri-Tone

[Massie]

Kelly Jacklin has an interesting personal history here all about the development of the now iconic Tri-Tone sound, a tone originally developed for SoundJam MP (a program that would eventually become iTunes), and familiar today to all iPhone users. Be sure to scroll to the bottom to hear all of the options that didn’t get chosen.

Cool to learn about the origin of such a ubiquitous sound!

(via jackjohnbrown)

 

[anon5664829]

Kelly Jacklin has an interesting personal history here all about the development of the now iconic Tri-Tone sound, a tone originally developed for SoundJam MP (a program that would eventually become iTunes), and familiar today to all iPhone users. Be sure to scroll to the bottom to hear all of the options that didn’t get chosen.

Cool to learn about the origin of such a ubiquitous sound!

(via jackjohnbrown)

Hey thanks man, never knew this before, you learn something new everyday.

 

[Massie]

Hey thanks man, never knew this before, you learn something new everyday.

My pleasure! There is also a long post about other tones and some backstory on the marimba tone here: iPhone: What's the story behind the iPhone's default "Marimba" ringtone? - Quora

(excerpt below)

The Apple Marimba And GarageBand
In late 2005 Apple released the GarageBand Jam Pack 4: Symphony Orchestra Instruments [8]. This was an amazing collection of Software instruments and Orchestra loops. The sound quality and utility of this enhancement was outstanding. In the very long list of Software instruments is the high quality Orchestra Marimba. This GarageBand / Logic Pro Software instrument, marimba, is nearly identical to what has become the famous iPhone marimba ringtone. So much so, that there are versions that were faithfully reproduced in GarageBand where one could not distinguish a difference with the correct filters and effects. Thus I and a number of people, some inside of Apple, have concluded that Dr. Lengeling [see source for more info on Lengeling--Massie] may have directly or indirectly created the marimba iPhone ringtone on a Mac using GarageBand / Logic Pro. However this is not apparently officially discussed or otherwise revealed.

From Apple's GarageBand Jam Pack 4.

The Marimba As An iPhone Default Ringtone

The marimba contains all of the factors that can create a distinctive and useful ringtone. And as mentioned, it is not too far from the original Bell Ringer conceptually and it indirectly supported the decades of Human Factors research from Bell Labs. It is rich in tonality and contains a number of harmonic and inharmonic overtones. The sound is unique enough that the human brain could easily detect the sound even when layer in a crowded soundscape. It is annoying perhaps to us today as the original bell telephone ringers were to our grandparents. But in the end, that's the point, not to so much annoy but to remove your attention and focus to the alert.

To Steve the marimba ringtone alluded to cultural sophistication and echoed Steve's eclectic style. It also disarmingly showcased the iPhone's surprisingly loud and rather high fidelity sound and speaker system. It was Steve's default ringtone for quite awhile, apparently even in the pre announcement phase, although most of the time Steve preferred the vibrate only mode. It is clear that up to the actual release of the first iPhone there was much internal debate about the default ringtone, however all insights seem to suggest this was Steve's final call to pick the 18 note marimba ringtone.

Early iPhone Ringtone Envy And Early Adopter Tax

During the first year, the iPhone marimba and perhaps a close second, the ringtone "strum" (strum also has similar Human Factors as marimba) was a "badge of honor" much like the white headphone earbuds were to the iPod. It allowed the early adopters to broadcast our rather large early adopter "tax" in a very noticeable way. Thus the high quality and unique ringtones combined with a limited selection made the marimba ringtone well known. Even though today there are a multitude of options, a vast majority of iPhone users default to marimba and strum. Although in some circles these default ringtones cast a squinty eye of judgement. In the early years "business" users especially wanted a respectable Blackberry-like ringtone.

The marimba ringtone, love it or hate it can not easily be removed, as the audio file is not located in the /Library/Ringtones folder, it is located inside of SpringBoard.app found at /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/ring.m4r. So at least for most of us, the marimba ringtone will be a part of the iPhone for a while.

 

[BLiNK]

the WORST tone ever

whenever i hear it in public it makes my skin crawl

 

[Massie]

Which one? I hate most of them, but the Piano Riff really grinds my gears.

 

[BLiNK]

basically any of them lol

even though i do not use any of them for some reason i always semi-sort of reach for my phone when i hear them

 

[BLiNK]

and another thing. why has Apple neglected to add "new" tones for a while now.. since iOS 4.x???

most of us are fans of the "little" things Apple does, well this would be classified as such, IMHO

SMH

 

[Just_Me_D]

basically any of them lol

even though i do not use any of them for some reason i always semi-sort of reach for my phone when i hear them

and another thing. why has Apple neglected to add "new" tones for a while now.. since iOS 4.x???

most of us are fans of the "little" things Apple does, well this would be classified as such, IMHO

SMH

I only use the Tri-Tone alert for voicemail in which I rarely get. The email ding, the sent mail swoosh and the calendar/reminder alerts are tolerable but the others are downright horrible and useless "to me". I use the Business Ringtones app for my call ringer, text & iMessage alerts and a few others. As for why Apple haven't updated the alert, it is beyond me.

 

[Ipheuria]

basically any of them lol

even though i do not use any of them for some reason i always semi-sort of reach for my phone when i hear them

Luckily I have never used any of the default tones since I had the first gen iPhone. So I never reach for my phone when I hear them because I know it's not custom and can't be mine.

 

[Fausty82]

Luckily I have never used any of the default tones since I had the first gen iPhone. So I never reach for my phone when I hear them because I know it's not custom and can't be mine.

That's also how I roll. I remember the day when text tones were not customizable. I thought it was odd that every iPhone user in the world had the same sound alert for a text message. We've come a long way, baby!