First of all, thank you all for your feedback in both the blog post and, most importantly, the survey. Over 2000 surveys were completed, which is amazing.
We are really quite overwhelmed with the encouraging feedback received at this stage, so I thought it worth sharing some of the highlights.
Quotes
It almost spells out U-bun-tu.
It’s unique and modern, but has a feeling of community within it.
Its pleasant that it reflects the working of OS, smoother more user friendly
An idea of a future, dynamism and creativity
It has a “rich” quality that has generally been part of the Ubuntu soundscape.
It is unobtrusive and feels like it fits the old “humanity” as well as the new “light” theme.
It’s distinctive, playful, lively and yet restrained, soothing and modest.
This is great. What is even better is the quantity of constructive criticism that means we can start to iterate further samples and get closer to the sound.
The vote
It was very close, but the winner was sound number one. For reference, this chart shows the closeness of the averages from the scaled questions in the survey.
Remember however there were open ended questions too, so with this result and the positive feedback from the free form text questions, sound one became a clear winner.
As the results were close (as you can see particularly between numbers one and two) we will feed that back to our chosen sound designer to influence their next development.
Thanks for all your feedback!
For the next stage we intend to
- make it more human, less synthesised
- increase the warmth of tone
- tighten the end note
- lower the pitch
- land the sound for 12.04!
I’m very happy about the choice. I’ll repeat my constructive critique here.
I like the portamento effect on the “melody” that runs “on top” of the vibraphone chords”. Maybe the vibraphone chords are a little too “rushed”. Also I think the volume increase/decrease on that last chord is a bit too sudden, one might consider flattening that volume bump out a bit. The last chord could run for a little longer, fading slowly, and one could consider adding some sprinkle (think blinking stars) to give it some life, and to change the timbre by bringing more high frequencies in during the fade. Right now the overall timbre is a bit too uniform.
Good job.
which sound will play when lightdm is ready to accept a password and which sound will play when ubiquity is ready for you to press ctrl+s to start orca?
I was one of the people who most preferred sound 1 during voting. Congratulations to the composer!
The startup sound is the sound that will play whilst lightdm loads – we are still to work on the timings of this so that it feels right.
Now that we have a sound designer on board, we will be designing a whole Sound Theme, so part of that is working out what sounds we actually need! Unfortunately only the startup will land for 12.04 though.
i Still Like The Sound umber 2
My best wishes to the author of sound 1 !! It is surely a very good starting point!!
This is off-topic but I think it’s scary to think that someone from the canonical *design* team decided to use a pie chart for displaying the results. Is not obvious to the eye whether 1 or 2 is bigger. I hope you agree that a simple bar chart would have been a better design solution here. Designing a desktop have even harder design problems to solve. Scary.
so we still get the drums when ubiquity is ready on the live CD?
they were using it to demonstrate how non-obvious the result was!
All I can say is thank god it wasn’t number 2.
But where’s the sound of drums?
But where’s the sound of drums? I liked and it captivated me
Sorry but this sound says : Welcome on your Windows® session
Haha
¿?
Awesome. Can you also publish a 5.1 channel mix too? Would sound great on some of those Ubuntu TV’s :-) Seriously.
WOW ITS DEFINITELY THE BEST CHOICE :)
IT SOUNDS UBUNTU(GOOD) !!!!!!
UBUNTUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU:)
Sound 1 is my favorite, but I expect it’s ending to get louder and maybe also have a chime, although that would be cliche.
Sound 2 sounds like Win XP to me.
The rest I don’t even remember.
I think I should say that by chime I mean something that resembles the sfx when putting down or picking up the ring in Braid, only more high-pitched at the end.
The various notes don’t seem distinct enough, although I’m not sure why this is the case; perhaps they are held too long?
Also, maybe some other instrument could work better.
Please consider the Second sound again, it sounds and feels more like ubuntu, if not, please try to incorperate some of the Second sound in to it. PLEASE I cant stand the first one, it sounds like it would go to a Cell phone.
I think the main problem with the First sound, the one that won, is that the begining of it is to bold and to fast.
Yeah, the second is really beautiful
What is the status of this? 12.04 is only a month away.
Now its 2 Days away and it is still the old sound
Mike: help is welcomed to getting things packaged! Despite the wish for everything quicker-faster-sooner, it’s probably better to be making this sort of change in the first couple of releases in the LTS cycle (Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 13.04).
Please fix the drum login sound first before you throw another at us. I have searched high & low for a way to get the drums re-enabled. The fix I have seen a thousand times,(Quote): /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play –id=”desktop-login” –description=”GNOME Login sound” Does not work. Also, what I do not understand is how with the directory stating /usr/bin/canberra play the sound when the actual file is at: /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/desktop-login.ogg ????
Please fix this with an update please so the millions do not have to scrabble for it. Would be a God Sent. Thanks
Please fix the drum login sound first before you throw another at us. I have searched high & low for a way to get the drums re-enabled. The fix I have seen a thousand times,(Quote): /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play –id=”desktop-login” –description=”GNOME Login sound” Does not work. Also, what I do not understand is how with the directory stating /usr/bin/canberra play the sound when the actual file is at: /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/desktop-login.ogg ????
Please fix this with an update please so the millions do not have to scrabble for it. Would be a God Sent. Thanks
PS: the new sound, sounds cheap. Don’t do it!
Any updates on the sound them? The project seemed to have had so much momentum starting up, then just died and vanished. 13.04 is right around the corner, this was planned for 12.04…..