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                                                                                TECHNOLOGY, Page 59

Booms, Boings and Wisecracks


Whimsical sound effects are the newest and noisiest way to
personalize a personal computer

By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT


    In the beginning was the beep -- simple, utilitarian and
sufficient to alert a computer user that his machine had been
turned on or that a floppy disk had failed. Then came the
Macintosh, with its built-in sound chips and an onscreen
control panel that enabled Mac enthusiasts to replace the beep
with a boing, a clink-clank or a monkey's chirp. Finally, last
spring Microsoft put sound-control software in the latest
version of its Windows program, extending the power to customize
a computer's noises to the 90 million owners of IBM PCs and
compatible machines.

    Suddenly, computers that had whirred quietly for years
started making the strangest sounds. Some began to moo like a
cow every hour on the hour. Others greeted each new program
with the sound of breaking glass. Still others spent their
spare moments doing celebrity impersonations: Ed McMahon belly
laughing, Ronald Reagan mumbling, "Well . . .," George Bush
advising that a particular keystroke "wouldn't be prudent" or
Star Trek's Dr. McCoy spluttering, "Dammit, Jim!"

    It's all part of the newest spin in computing: taking
off-the-shelf personal computers and giving them a personal
stamp. Workers tired of staring at the same old screens can now
choose from a growing shelf of software that lets them
customize just about any feature of their machines, from the
color and texture of the screen display to the design of the
windows, buttons, cursors and arrows that appear on it. The
trend passed a milestone this fall when Berkeley Systems' After
Dark, a screen-saver program that paints idle computer screens
with swimming fish, flying toasters and other fanciful images,
became the best-selling software product in the U.S.

    But no corner of the customization market is booming quite
like the one for booms, zooms and wisecracks. There are already
more than a dozen programs offering a wide variety of sounds for
Macintosh computers and Windows-equipped PCs, and more are on
the way. Most follow the same basic format: they display a menu
of dozens of prerecorded sounds and, next to that, a
corresponding menu of "system events" the sounds can be linked
to, from start-up to shutdown and everything in between.

    The granddaddy of custom audio software is SoundMaster, a
piece of "shareware" for the Macintosh that can be downloaded
free from CompuServe and other computer networks (a $15
contribution for the programmer is encouraged). SoundMaster can
instruct a computer to cough whenever the machine requests a
floppy disk, burp when it ejects a disk or bark when it
launches a program. Soon after it was released, a lively trade
sprang up at user-group meetings for bootleg sounds
tape-recorded from the TV and digitized in home computers, from
Bart Simpson saying, "Thanks, man" to Porky Pig stuttering,
"That's all, folks."

    Today you can walk into a computer store and buy
professionally recorded digital sounds by the hundreds.
Prosonus of North Hollywood sells a $30 disk called Mr. Sound
FX stuffed with 150 noises, from "Psycho Strings" (ominous,
insistent chords from the Hitchcock film) to "Dead Man Scream,"
including 75 bits produced by actor Michael Winslow, the one-man
sound machine featured in Police Academy movies who can make
bombs drop, jets roar and lasers blast using nothing more than
a microphone. Sound Source Unlimited of Westlake Village,
California, specializes in collections of clips lifted from
classic sci-fi movies -- ideal for hearing HAL the computer in
2001: A Space Odyssey intone, "I know that you and Frank were
planning to disconnect me . . ." every time you turn off your
machine.

    In October, giant Microsoft joined the fray, offering three
$40 disks in its new SoundBits series. One features sound clips
from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, like Fred Flintstone's
trademark "Yabba-dabba-doo!" and Yogi's "Smarter than the
average bear." Another boasts 50 famous lines from Hollywood
classics, including Bogart's "the stuff that dreams are made
of" from The Maltese Falcon and the Wicked Witch of the West
threatening Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: "I'll get you, my
pretty, and your little dog too!" Baseline Publishing, in
Memphis, Tennessee, goes one step further with a $40 program it
calls Talking Moose and His Cartoon Carnival. This sneaky bit of
software waits until you least expect it and then lets loose a
random quip such as "Boy, are you lazy" or "I like lawyers . .
. stir-fried!"

    Being caught off guard by a wiseacre computer may not be
everybody's idea of fun. One New York City office worker had to
do some fast explaining when his wife overheard a strange woman
saying in her sexiest voice, "Tell me what you want me to do."
As a rule, it's a good idea to break in these programs
gradually, starting with a few simple sounds and working your
way up. Most people get such a kick when they first hear their
computer talk that they tend to go overboard -- assigning
messages to every keystroke and driving themselves crazy the
minute they need to do some real work. But these folks can
always rip out the sound effects and go back to where they
started -- with a simple, utilitarian beep.