Beeping Computers: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"'''Blipindustry''': The time and effort sound-effects people spend putting noises on to shots of laptop graphics in movies, even though laptop graphics don't make noises in real life."''|One of the ''[[The Meaning of Liff|Meaning of Liff]]''-esque definitions featured in [[Armando Iannucci]]'s [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/7days/story/0,,1739733,00.html Dictionary of Modern Usage]}}

 

 

In [[Real Life]], results vary. Computers run quietly by default, with the most noise originating from motors such as the ones that control the machine's disk drives, or the ones powering its cooling fans. Beyond that, any other noise is produced by playing an audio sample through the computer's sound system, although the meaning of it varies; a user can usually configure whether or not their computer should play a sound in response to specific events, ranging from mouse clicks and dropdown menus to application errors to friends logging in and out of IM.

 

== [[Anime]] ==

* Humorously averted in ''[[Magical Pokaan]]'': Aiko, the android character, emits ''realistic'' computer sounds, such as the noise of a hard disk spinning up and seeking when she wakes up or is deep in thought. In one episode her malfunctioning speech circuits make her voice skip and stutter in exactly the same manner audio playback can stutter on a malfunctioning or underpowered computer.

* The main character in ''[[The Saint]]'' breaks into the leading actress' apartment and begins downloading information from her personal computer. The computer not only flips through the electronic notes on the desktop as they are siphoned onto the hero's external hard drive, but also scrolls down through the bottom of one of the pages, highlights a quote and beeps.

* In [[Jurassic Park]] ([[The Movie]]), after the protagonists basically reboot the entire park to get the power back up, the computers come on with a "System Ready" prompt and a blinking cursor. A blinking cursor that also beeps. This would get ''really'' annoying on a real computer.

* ''Casino Royale'' is replete with computers that beep, click, and chirp as the characters go about saving and destroying the world. In one instance, [[James Bond]] is looking at a map on a computer, and every time he zooms in, the computer beeps then chirps.

* ''[[Airplane!]] 2: The Sequel'' clearly fits this trope as on Moonbase Alpha Beta the commander almost goes insane because of the incessent bleeping and beeping of the computers.

** And better yet, it's a [[William Shatner]] freak-out.

* In one scene in ''[[Drumline]]'', the conductor uses a printer to print sheet music for the band. The printer is an inkjet. It makes the distinctive noise of a dot matrix printer.

* ''[[The Nail Gun Massacre]]'' has a computer that literally beeps with every keystroke.

* When Lisbeth in the English version of ''[[The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo]]'' uses her computer for hacking purposes, it makes an uncharacteristic beep every time she makes a keystroke. One would think that keyboard noises should be sufficient.

 

** "You seem to be searching for plot points! Would you like Word Assistant to help?"

*** "The program I used to hack the Pentagon with my iMac isn't compatible, what should I do?"

*** "Where has my list of Kryptovillains been saved?"

** Actually, almost ''every'' episode of NCIS (especially those after Tim McGee joins the regular cast) involves multiple uses of this trope. For example, in one of the first two seasons of NCIS, Tony and Kate boot up a victim's computer, only to have it tell them that the C: drive has been reformatted. The line that bears this message is green, blinking, and beeping, all at once.

** With the tricorders you can actually get a good idea of what it's reading based on the particular whirs, beeps, and whistles.

*** Which must be by design as the tricorders have such tiny screens they can't possibly show all the data the [[Everything Sensor]] collects.

* Also afflicts ''[[Midsomer Murders]]'', whenever there's a computer around. Thankfully, it's not that often.

* The original ''[[Knight Rider]]'' has KITT emiting a characteristic sound whenever it lights its frontal scanner and enters "Surveillance Mode". The sound was so associated with KITT that the 2008 series carried the same sound effect (the front scanner light effect was completely different, though).

* Ziggy, Al's computer from ''[[Quantum Leap]]'', has its own set of beeps, boops, and squeals, the latter of which usually indicates an error to be fixed via use of [[Percussive Maintenance]].

* Topher lampshades this in the ''[[Dollhouse]]'' episode "Echoes."

* This happens almost any time you see a computer interface in ''[[Numb3rs]]''. Every scroll and click makes some sort of noise.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** Justified because the story was written when analog computers were still prevalent - and were of course replete with relays and valves which clicked and lit up.

** See "Contemporary computers" under Real Life

* In [[Discworld]], one of the many strange peripherals on Hex is a device whose sole apparent purpose is to go "parp" every fourteen minutes.

** The imps in the Dis-organizers say "Bingely-bingely beep!"

 

== [[Music]] ==

* The merengue song "El Baile del Beeper" by Oro Solido revolves around this trope.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** Considering that the game takes place in the 1960's, it is kind of justified.

* In ''[[System Shock]] 2'', computer panels tend to make lots of noise.

 

** Also parodied when Bender was running a computer dating service and ran Zapp Brannigan's preference card through the Computer Data Matchupifier (read: crumpling it up and throwing it in his chest compartment), making beeps and boops to trick [[The Ditz|Zapp]] think it was actually having something done.

** Don't forget Boxy, Calculon's robot sidekick who's basically a mainframe on tank treads. He can communicate anything with a single, nondescript beep.

* An episode of ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'' features in one episode Jon going on a dating game show, which presents a large, impressive looking mainframe computer that Jon's dating data is fed into, in order to match him with a prospective date. The back of the computer reveals it's just a giant cardboard prop, with some guy whose job it is to take the fed-in-data, press a tape recorder playing computer-beeping-noises for a few moments, then spit out pre-written "results" through a slot.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

* Windows: Whenever a Message Box is displayed, a ''short sound effect'' is played. Under default settings, it's a sound effect very akin to a beep. The name of the [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms680356.aspx function that does it] is quite explicit...

** It's quite common, perhaps even a [[Memetic Mutation|meme]], to find songs with windows sounds set to the music. Or even ''as'' the music.

** Then there's togglekeys which makes the computer beep when you turn num, caps or scroll lock on or off. (it's turned on by holding numlock for 5 seconds.)

** Annoyance is only exacerbated when it eventually turns out to be someone's wristwatch.

* The doors of the new type of streetcars in Vienna beep every time somebody presses the door opener.

* Cisco has a networking simulation program called Packet Tracer that includes a lot of annoying noises for different actions, like mechanical grinding noises accompanying drop down menus.

* Old dial-up modems when connecting. And to a (old-school) nerd, that sound is as comforting as an audiophile hearing the sound of a needle being placed on vinyl. (Or reminds us of the "I hope Mom/Dad didn't hear that" wince we made if we'd snuck down go online at 3 AM and didn't know how to avoid the noise.)

** You can also configure them to keep the speaker on after the handshake. Obviously, this has never been a very common configuration, except among technicians troubleshooting line issues.

* Programs for some older home computers were encoded as bleeps and noises on cassette tapes, in a manner similar to the telephone modems of the day. The ZX Spectrum and TI-99/4 home computers play these noises while loading programs.

*** There's websites & groups now where people share archives of their old tapes for posterity and to help replace broken/bad ones or for use in emulators.

** The Supercharger adapter for the Atari 2600 game console likewise allows loading of data from cassettes. These sounds are not intended for the user to hear. But tones indicating the loading status, and matching a graphical feedback, are played through the TV speakers.

* '''Contemporary computers still make a variety of unintentional noises when operating.''' Even taking the loud and soon-to-be-hopefully-obsolete hard disk drives out of the question, modern CPUs under load rapidly cycle no-power and full-power states. The metal on the heatsinks used to keep those modern CPUs from melting expand and contracts very quickly as the thermal power fluctuates, which turns into faint vibration, i.e. sounds. Yes, if you listen closely, you can literally hear a modern CPU working, with the exact noise changing with the workload. If you have any audio hardware installed, current (as in, Voltage) microfluctuations from all the computer's components going into similiar load-halt cycles will also produce some faint noise on the audio hardwares output. There's a number of similiar effects that will probably prevent computers from being truly silent for as long as they use electricity.

* If your hard drive starts making loud periodic clicking sounds, [[Oh Crap|you're in deep trouble]] (e.g. stuck spindle or bad heads).

* The old 5.25" MFM, RLL and ESDI hard drives, particularly the Seagate ST-225 and its related models, produced a loud and rather high pitched beep with every track step as the head actuator seeked across the platters. Many late 80's and early 90's TV shows either used a recorded single such beep or artificially created one then played it repeatedly without any variation whenever a desktop computer was on screen. More realistic would have been randomly playing the beep rapidly a random number of times to simulate hard drive activity.

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Beeping Computers]]