Contest for System Sounds | Haiku Project

The end result counts, IMO. If you find well fitting sound clips, it doesn’t matter if you created it yourself, or you excavated it after hours of digging and comparing sound archives. The original sound producer will still be credited according to the license, of course.

Sound events being often shorter than 1s, doesn’t leave that much room to ‘innovate’…

Anyway, all contributions are welcome, I think!

Cool! I want to port over the Borealis and Linux Mint sound themes to Haiku, as I find them rather non-intrusive.

I don’t think ‘porting’ existing themes fits the definition of a contest. We can include or offer additional themes to be installed via HaikuDepot, of course.

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For myself I only need a startup sound to make clear the sound is working in Haiku!

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I like the start of ‘Ballroom Memoirs’ by Per Kiilstofte
https://machinimasound.com/legacy-tracks/page/2/#

What does it have to do with the contest and the said entry?

He is signaling that he is both a satanist and a mason. Do you know what that means?

It means he is a satanist and/or a mason. I still don’t understand what does it have to do with the contest?

I don’t think you do.

In his videos, he is signaling that he has performed human sacrifice. That means he has tortured and killed a human being as sacrifice to Lucifer. He is signaling that he is a pedophile and that he has killed animals (a neighbors dog).

I’m just warning everybody. It is up to each individual if they want Haiku to be associated with an open satanist – a worshiper of evil, enemy of God.

Updated my previous message.

Well, since you are so knowledgeable about the signals and the rituals, why don’t you report this person to authorities? Personally I am going to vote on the entries based on their quality, not the author’s religious affiliation, I’d like if other voters would do the same.

This paragraph is plain irrelevant. Please do not bully people that do not necessarily share your general view of things, and leave your religious thoughts out of this discussion.

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Can you please do us all a favour and keep BS like this out of the Haiku community. The world’s crazy enough at the moment. There’s places like 4chan or 8chan (or whatever chan) for that.

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Submission is over. Please check out the entries! Voting will start December 1st.

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Unfortunately, the download link for the first one (bearlyMatt - Komorebi) is broken on contest page. It should be https://www.haiku-os.org/files/sound-contest/bearlyMatt-Komorebi.zip
For the 15th 3rd from bottom (Straight Outta Cronton), you forgot to indicate the author name (Gareth White) on contest page and, of course, to be helpful the zip file doesn’t contain the theme name.
Note that 16th (Tim Lyakhovetskiy - Leafy / tim_lyakhovetskiy_leafy.zip) doesn’t decompress like others in a folder.

Thanks for the mentions. I’ve submitted a fix for the corrected link and the non-decompressing archive. The one I just created decompresses fine on my machine, if the issue persists, please let us know.

Well, I should have explained better. It’s not that it wasn’t decompressing but files are not put in a folder so if you decompress on your desktop… I guess that you have the picture now.

Oops, sorry. Anyway, this one decompresses in a folder here, so should fix it anyway!

Listened to all of the submissions and have compiled a list of entries that should be considered closer as picks for the contest along with critiques:

  1. Sparkly Tones (Garrett Kabler) - Fits very well with Haiku as an OS, but the device sounds seem to be a tad reminiscent of their Windows counterparts.
  2. Clack (Denis Čumak) - Very complete with bonus event sounds, however a couple sound a tad harsher than necessary.
  3. Zen Peace (Ward Bones) - Synth and Zen soundscape is quite intriguing and nice, but may be a bit too harsh as a default system sound theme. Very good pick as an alternative one though, due to its distinctiveness.
  4. Zen (Joshua Spann) - Fits well with Haiku as an OS, but the key sounds last slightly too long than they should.
  5. Leafy (Tim Lyakhovetski) - Could fit well with Haiku, although some of the window sounds feel more appropriate as alternative notification sounds. Maybe they last a little too long?
  6. Straight Outta Cronton (Gareth White) - Good mix of synth and string instrumentals, but the key sounds are quite unappealing. The notification error sound is somewhat disturbing, although that may be a good thing given what it is supposed to tell the user.
  7. Komerobi (bearlyMatt) - Has a good overall soundscape for Haiku, barring the key sounds which ruin the general acoustic atmosphere.
  8. Yanquim (Parnikkapore) - Unique mix of artifical and instrumental sounds with a rather good startup chime, but is inconsistent between those two soundscapes.
  9. Basics (Maksim Malerson) - Has some good sounds, but is inconsistent with the use of organic and synth soundscapes.

Aspects like consistency and ambiance with regards to how well entries fit with the intended UX of Haiku are weighted the most heavily, followed by length and uniqueness. If an entry is very complete (such as including bonus sounds), then it can be elevated significantly in the rankings; this is mainly why Clack is so high up, otherwise it would be a few rungs lower than it is now.

Open for feedback on the arrangement of the entries, critiques, and how this was conducted.

IMHO best sound schemes have sounds so discrete that you don’t really notice their presence. You only feel that’s something missing when you don’t hear them. But such theme hardly can compete in a contest where you want to be distinguished from others. So you end having sounds too long and playing too loud when they are not weird.
Nevertheless, I was surprised by the number of entries and their overall quality. I think that it will be difficult to define a winner and it would be a good idea to use them for a while to have a real opinion.
Having the possibility of saving, loading or switching themes directly in sounds prefs would help greatly.

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Agreeing with this very much. Out of the top five in my rankings, only Zen Peace sticks out as something that would be noticed by the user a lot. Even then, it has Zen elements that somewhat help it blend into the background eventually. Many of the entries that didn’t make it onto the list had too many quirky or bouncy sounds, which get annoying really fast when heard multiple times.

@win8linux Thanks for the detailed review! I don’t consider my startup chime as good as the other non-silly ones though :smile:

To aid future sound theme makers, can you elaborate a bit on the “consistency” thing, and how to make otherwise incoherent sounds seem consistent? (Say, in “Straight Outta Cronton”)