A Two-Person Startup Has Fixed One of the Most Hated Sounds in Modern Life

I behave very strangely in my kitchen. On any given day, you will find me, often mid-conversation, sprinting from one end of the room to the other. Nothing on the stove has caught fire. No pots are boiling over. I am trying to reach the microwave oven before its counter hits zero.

Why? I detest so deeply its shrill beep heralding the completion of its reheating duties that it's almost as if the appliance has trained me, through operant conditioning, to open its door at T-minus 1 second, so the grating noise is silenced before it begins. But there is another way, a means by which microwave makers can keep their margins, not change the hardware in any way, and, just by manipulating a few lines of code, change the kitchen experience sonically for the better for aurally assaulted microwavers everywhere.

Enter Joel Corelitz and Colin Coogan from Starling , sound designers who have previously worked with clients including Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, and Sega, as well as on major projects such as a sonic strategy for Ford's entire lineup. Corelitz, much like the rest of us, loathes his microwave's unbearable beeps , so he decided to see if they could do something about it.

The beep has cursed humanity for a relatively short period of time. The use of “beep” to mean a short, high-pitched sound first appeared in an Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi story, The Sands of Mars, as recently as 1951. Before this, “beep” was used as a descriptor of the sound of car horns.

For decades now, nearly all microwaves have used the same technology to generate their penetrating pings: a small, cheap device called a passive piezoelectric buzzer. It's a membrane that, when electrically charged, vibrates, producing a rudimentary beep.

The piezo buzzer was first brought to the mass market in the 1970s by Japanese manufacturers. Thanks to their low cost—piezoelectric buzzers cost a matter of cents—and simplicity, the buzzers soon found their way into all manner of gadgets: toys, smoke detectors, alarm clocks, multimeters, watches, and, yes, microwaves. However, the versatility was matched by limitations. Manufacturers can set the beep's frequency and duration, but that's about it. This has not stopped the basic tech from still being widely deployed in all manner of gear.

Manufacturers can add speakers to a microwave, allowing the appliance to reproduce a cornucopia of aural delights. But the reason the vast majority of microwave manufacturers stubbornly stick with offensive beeps is, naturally, cost. Competition in consumer white goods is fierce. Why replace a super-cheap part that does the job with something pricier?

The challenge Corelitz and Coogan set themselves was this: better microwave sound, sound with some personality; but no new hardware, so using existing chips and existing buzzers. Everything had to be done just with code.