GOOG-411's "Biddy-Biddy-Boop" Sound Backstory

Chris Albrecht writes "The bippedy-bippedy-bippedy sound you hear when using 1-800-GOOG-411 is actually a senior voice designer at Google. (Here's the sound.) The technical term for that noise is the 'fetch audio,' and it's more complicated to design than you'd think. For the first time, the voice of GOOG-411 talks about how he came up with it, how important that sound is, and how people now ask him to 'perform' it."

Comments

Re:free phone call?

[bev_tech_rob]

It doesn't allow you to make a free phone call, it is a free alternative to the 411 service that the phone companies change you ($1.50 per call on Alltel). I put it on my speed dial just now and gonna start using it. Tried several numbers to see if I could hear the sound, but the response to my query was instantaneous and thus heard no sound....

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[PopeRatzo]

The technical term for that noise is the 'fetch audio,' and it's more complicated to design than you'd think.

As a sound designer, I can tell you that this really is not much more complicated than it sounds. We sound designers and music producers work very hard to give the impression that there is some very sophisticated techno-magic in what we do and that it not only requires extremely complex procedures but superhuman "ears". A great deal of it is just playing around with the bits and pieces, seeing what works. That, and having a very good sound engineer buddy.

Sometimes, the best sounds are ones that were made in the most simple manner, with a stoned guy in front of a mic going "biddy biddy boop" for example.