|Opening SFX - Birth of light. Energetic|
The web is beginning to look mighty good... but, where's the sound?
|silence|
Except for on-line games, radio stations and the occasional streaming song the web remains silent. In video game development, we believe audio is 1/3 of the gaming experience (the other 2/3rd's: visual and gameplay.) My unofficial, unscientific, off-the-top-of-my-head survey tells me that 95% of websites offer no sound at all. The other 5% use Flash/Shockwave for intros and demos that have some sound. Why hasn't audio kept abreast with video and graphics advancements on the web?
Some sites play tunes or offer a user-selected song to play while users explore. At FOX's 24 you can play the theme song while exploring the TV hit.
|cue theme song|
Cool. But once you change to another page - no sound. A page change on the web is like a channel change on TV -- flip the channel
|ka-chunk. stop theme|
and you're in a completely different world.
|Cartoon program SFX (e.g. Ed, Edd and Eddy, Dexter's Lab)|
There have been several attempts to thwart this problem (you'll have to go back into the Internet archives for info.
|Sounds of setting the "Way Back Machine"|
Search for Headspace's Beatnik player, Crescendo and SSEYO's Koan.)
I don't like interruptions in the flow of the experience as illustrated, but playing a tune is not what I'm really complaining about. Where are the interactive, integrated, sound events?
|SFX examples: fresh, cool, subtle sound effects - be imaginative!|
Designed creatively, sounds tied to user actions can offer important clues for the user. But much beyond that, audible events promise cool enhancements to a user's web experience - for instance an event that happens off-screen can tell the user of the event and it's status. Note this: the vast majority of sound effects in film are created in post-production - tire screeches
|short Porsche 911 tire screech around corner|
in that car chase or the clinking of glasses
|two very short champagne flute clinks|
are done in a sound studio, well after shooting.
Why is sound such a no-go on the web? Have people thrown their hands in the air with current web technology? Will the new "Web 2.0" technologies offer advances in web audio? Or do web designers figure most people are surfing from work and audio would give their covert activities away? Maybe no one has managed to design proper website sounds?
Heck, what are website sounds?
|Hmmmm|
Recent discussions on a popular pro Sound Design forum have discussed this issue and most have voiced that they just don't like audio on websites. I found this rather unsettling from a sound design group! Some have postulated that since our web activities encompass scanning for information we aren't in the habit of taking it all in - like we do when we relax comfortably and experience a movie.
There's nothing going on at the W3C to indicate people care about enhancing the web with sound.
|Forest at Night. Crickets, occasional frog, etc.|
Or is there? (Is anybody really doing any work with SMIL?)
What do you think? Why don't we have an aural web? Can web-sounds be a new paradigm for professional sound designers? Will new web technologies enable the web to make it past the silent-era?
|Fade out Forest at Night...|
Categories
Audio
Comments (8)
Read More Entries by Brad Fuller.
Insanely annoying
There are cases where sound would "enhance the experience" of a website, but there are far more cases where it is insanely annoying.
The truth is there is a huge range of uses for the web and even more for the Internet. For some of these uses sound is appropriate, for others it is not.
There are websites that incorporate sounds now. And I hate them for the most part. Why? 90% of my web usage is NOT a gripping, multi-sensory experience like a movie. Rather it is, as another poster put it, a self-directed, goal oriented act. Probably 60-75% of the time I am using my computer to listen to music at the same time. When I hit a website that plays music or sound it interferes with the music I have chosen to listen to and muddies it with the music or sounds someone else has chosen for me to listen to. God help us if someone like Google were to adopt this practice!
On the other hand, there are examples of sites where I DO expect to give my undivided attention. These account for maybe 1% of my web usage. An example would be the Adult Swim website from Cartoon Network. There are a number of flash based games there that I find amusing and sound plays a HUGE part in their appeal. I am revealing FAR too much about my personality here, but I find the Squidbillies game to be very funny and the appeal is almost entirely aural (amusing dialog primarily).
If anyone wants to generally enhance the web experience it should be done from the style-sheet level with VERY EASY ways for me, the user, to set my browser up to ignore the sounds.
Why no aural web?
http://guitarshredshow.com/
Why no aural web?
Should every web page have sound? No. Does the possibility exist to have a web destination in which sound either significantly enhances the experience or even is necessary? Sure!
As to your last question, check out: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/why_is_that_thing_beeping_a_sound_design_primer
Why no aural web?
But that's just it: browsing the web is not the same as watching a movie. The latter is an intentional immersion into the world created by the director, the former a goal-oriented self-driven activity. Unless the sounds actually add functional value, they will be considered a distraction (like and before).
Also keep in mind that computer usage does not happen in a vacuum: most computers are located in spaces shared with other people, and those will definitely be unhappy about the noise.
And personally I wonder why an 'experience' have to have sound in order to be complete?
Why no aural web?
I don't know, there are some awfully great examples of stories being told aurally including sfx and music to strengthen, reinforce, and dramatize the dialog.
audio on web
Makes a lot of sense for certain kinds of web experiences. At the moment, we tend to think of the web mostly as a place to get and share information, do various online transactions, and as a place to collaborate. We still think of websites as "pages" rather than as applications. This is changing and certainly Web 2.0 is an indication of that. If you think of a website as a piece of software, perhaps a game or story (or whatever) it becomes more of a destination for an interactive experience. In this light, sfx and music start to make sense as much as the graphics and design of the experience.
Stupid? If I had a dime for everyone who called something stupid that wasn't. Off hand, I think of Atari telling Jobs and Wozniak that a personal computer was stupid, or Decca records passing on the Beatles...
Why no aural web?
Calling it a stupid idea assumes that all we should do on the Web is read, doesn’t it? That seems unnecessarily limiting.
Composer Marty O’Donnell pointed out that in the early days of moviemaking, the director just set the camera up on a stationary tripod and filmed from the perspective of an audience member at a play. Over time, filmmakers developed other storytelling techniques that moved the camera onto and across the stage — and moviemaking turned into a new artform.
Making it easier to get interactive sound onto Web sites will mean more noise, but also more creative opportunities.
Why no aural web?
In a nutshell: Because it's a stupid idea, for the same reasons why the reading-a-book experience would not be improved by sound cues.