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

Twiki?

[yourpusher]

Is that you?

"senior voice expert"?

[larry bagina]

that gives me flashbacks to the .com bubble days.

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[metlin]

> "senior voice expert"?

> that gives me flashbacks to the .com bubble days.

Ummm, obviously you don't work in telecom.

Almost every automated system has the equivalent of a voice expert or a speech scientist whose job is to do things like this.

Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[obarel]

... created by the senior hourglass expert.

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[BorgCopyeditor]

Actually, the audio hourglass cursor first created by the senior hourglass expert was green-lighted by the Senior VP for Cursors, but nixed by the Chief Audio Officer or CAO. External audio/cursor mediation consultants were brought in and a compromise was reached by which the same sound would be re-recorded, but this time under the auspices of the CAO's handpicked Special Cursor Liaison Officer to the office of the Senior VP for Cursors.

<caseykasem>and that boy grew up to be ... Paul Allen.<caseykasem>

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[crossmr]

shouldn't this be modded funny? These systems are rarely usable or friendly. Especially the new ones that try to do voice recognition..

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.

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[inKubus]

and that boy grew up to be ... Paul Allen.

Brilliant! Someone should recommend Casey Kasem tags to the W3 committee next meeting. I can think of thousands of uses.

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[metlin]

Sound engineering is a little different than what goes on in IVR design. I do understand that a lot of the IVRs are unusable, but a lot of that goes back to the fact that the applications that need to be IVR enabled are designed first, making the design of the IVR a tricky proposition.

Secondly, a speech scientist or a voice expert is quite different than a sound engineer - the latter's task includes making sure that the IVR has the same or similar sounding voice patterns all over, that the accents and terms used are standard, simple and understandable to that region, that the TTS (text to speech, if used) is set to configurations that are acceptable to the target audience and that volumes and amplitudes are all normalized (this one is probably the only thing that a sound engineer could also probably do).

Also, a speech scientist works on the voice recognition piece of things, including deciding which language models to use, designing the grammars for recognition, utilizing various tools to tune the recognizer, using various machine-learning techniques to help evolve the language models (e.g. SLMs) and so on.

On top of this, you have to do usability analysis to see how best your system is working out. If a lot of people are zeroing out, or if there is an alarmingly high percentage of recognition errors, then there is something wrong with your system. Also, the ease of use in accomplishing a thing is also considered (e.g. how many steps does it take to get a task done and can you minimize this somehow?). Additionally, you have to ensure that unique elements being used in your IVR (e.g. the biddy biddy boop) is understandable in the context to the target audience.

Other task include determining where voice is appropriate and where DTMF would work and finding ways of notifying the user of what's going on at the background without resorting to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for the 37th time (which could be a challenge in its own way).

So, no, I doubt if you could equate a sound engineer with a speech scientist. Most of the speech scientists that I work with would probably feel insulted by that term.

Swedish Dirty Talking

[TractorBarry]

Well I speak Swedish and all I can say is that is one big potty mouth he's got there.

No wonder his sister got bitten by a moose.

Re:Swedish Dirty Talking

[BlueParrot]

Well I speak Swedish and all I can say is that is one big potty mouth he's got there.

Pffft, I'm Swedish , and our language sounds nothing like that, *bork* *bork* *bork*.

If you don't know what this is about

[TorKlingberg]

If you are also not American, or just haven't hear of it, Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411

Basically, GOOG-411 is an experimental Google telephone service. Users can call and use speech regocnition to do local business search. I think American phones have letters on the number buttons, so 1-800-GOOG-411 means 1-800-466-4411.

Re:If you don't know what this is about

[pbhj]

At least someone realises that we're not all Americans.

Re:If you don't know what this is about

[owlnation]

Um, why has someone modded the parent redundant? Actually it is a very valid point. The summary does a poor job of explaining what on earth this article is about if you are not American. My guess is that hardly anyone outside the US knew what this was about before the previous poster linked the article explaining it.

It seems on topic and valid to me to point this failing out the to the editor of the article. It is good that people remember Slashdot reaches every country everywhere (um, except N. Korea and maybe China -- it's probably secretly censored and monitored by the UK too, and archived by the Germans). Remember folks, those tubes are trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific too.

Obviously, in South Korea, only old people read Slashdot.

Re:If you don't know what this is about

[Blakey Rat]

At least someone realises that we're not all Americans ... YET! Muahahaha!

how does it sound slowed down

[petes_PoV]

If you slow it down, or play it backwards (or both) is there is hidden message?

Easier method suggestion.

[WK2]

Wouldn't it have been easier to have just made that sound by audio recording a dying cat?

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:Turn up your Mac

[rueger]

It is quiet, but possibly the problem is that your Mac defaults to a rather low sound level out of the speakers. My G4 certainly did, and even listening to music was annoying because it was so quiet, even with the audio turned up full.

The fix is of course simple and entirely intuitive, as are all things on a Mac.

a) open iTunes

b) In the Window menu, choose Equalizer

c) Crank the Pre-amp setting to 12

Now all of the audio on your Mac will not only be loud enough to hear, it will be louder than the same audio on a PC, which can only be turned up 10

I hear something different

[andy314159pi]

To me it sounds more like "giggety giggety."

Next week on Googledot...

[ComputerPhreak]

The revealing backstory about the Googleplex's custom-made toilet paper. The technical term is actual 'bathroom tissue', and it's more complicated to design than you'd think. For the first time, Sergey Brin discusses the choices of materials and the unparalleled softness, and how often he gets thanked by Google employees after they wipe their asses.

thanks for the subversive advertising

[davygrvy]

advertising hidden as a news article. Gee, tanks editors.

What the Flip?

[camperdave]

I'm fairly sure others will join me in asking: What is GOOG-411'?
Why do they have a "Biddy-Biddy-Boop" Sound?
Why would I want to know the Backstory?
How is this in any way important, newsworthy, or even interesting?

Re:What the Flip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent got modded Flaimbait? He expressed my thoughts exactly!

Even as a /.'er I've never even heard of GOOG-411 and now some biddy-biddy-boop sound used in this phone service is News For Nerds? TFA doesn't even elaborate on why the sound is supposedly "more complicated to design than you'd think"; which was the sole reason I even read the article.

What a waste of time. This damn Google worship is really starting to piss me off.

Obligatory Spaceballs

[noidentity]

YouTube video

Dark Helmet: Now what is it?

Radar Technician: I'm having trouble with the radar, sir.

Dark Helmet: What's wrong with it?

Radar Technician: I've lost the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps.

Dark Helmet: The what?

Colonel Sandurz: The what?

Dark Helmet: And the what?

Radar Technician: You know. The bleeps. [makes bleep sound effect]

Radar Technician: The sweeps. [makes sweep sound]

Radar Technician: And the creeps. [makes creep sound]

Dark Helmet: [to Colonel Sandurz] That's not all he's lost.

Re:Turn up your Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

c) Crank the Pre-amp setting to 12

Somehow, "This one goes to twelve," doesn't have quite the same ring as, "This one goes to eleven."

So that's what that was.

[lpangelrob]

If you call up GOOG-411 for free (compared to the ripoff that is cell phone carriers 411 at $1.75 a pop), it always asks you for the city and state first. Sometimes the city and state are easy to parse, like "Reno" or "Keokuk". Sometimes it's not, like "Glen Ellyn, Illinois" (and the other one I've tried, Glenallen, Alaska). If you mumble, your voice is otherwise hard to parse, or the city is obscure, GOOG-411 will take about 3 seconds to figure what the hell you're saying, which is when it'll play this sound.

Same thing with the business name - if you say something like "Restaurant", that's easily parsed, but if you say something specific like "Bed Bath and Beyond", it could take up to 3 seconds to parse, search for, and find your match. You'll hear the sound, and then the list of results.

I don't know why the Johnny Carson theme (or similar) could have sufficed, because the sounded reminded me of logging onto AOL at 56.6 Kbps. Or make up a Google Jingle or something.

I use GOOG-411 at least once a week nowadays, and the feature to text message you details of what you're looking for has proven (mostly) invaluable while I've used it. There's the problem that sometimes, Google's information on businesses just isn't up to date. But that's a Google-wide issue.

Re:Huh?

[Dahamma]

Well there's you problem... who ever heard of FRUIT at a Mongolian barbeque!?

Just like Tell Me?

[saikou]

Well, this sound suspiciously sounds like a re-work of old sound Tell Me systems play while trying to decipher what the beep user tried to say. Just try to call 1-800-555-TELL (1-800-555-8355) and play with the menu.
That sound is also a sure sign that you're dealing with Tell Me designed system -- for example Fandango uses their back-end, some banks and some other interactive voice systems.

Of course Tell Me was bought by Microsoft so now it's inevitably evil :) Even though they were before Google in voice stuff :)

Re:free phone call?

[ehrichweiss]

I'm not 100% certain how pay phones deal with it but you might want to check out the current 2600 Magazine as they have a writeup there on using it creatively.

Function? Usable? Friendly? On what planet?

[JonTurner]

>>Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.

Well, except for the system used by the Cable TV, credit card, bank, telco, computer tech support, university admissions, etc. company. 'Cause those systems seem like they're designed with the sole purpose of making it as difficult as possible to actually speak to a human being. The end result is I'm typically about as happy as Alanis Morissette on a blind date by the time I get to speak to someone with a funny accent who knows even less than I do about the subject matter.

Try telling the vr system what you really think

[cumin]

I try to maintain pristine language, really I do, but on a really bad day I had to talk to Sprint customer service and the automated voice system really started to get on my nerves the second or third time I had to talk to it and I let slip a few choice non-G-rated phrases. I was transferred to a person faster than any other method I'd tried before or come up with since.