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Samsung is reshaping its identity one note at a time
A car barrels across a highway, accompanied by a gently stirring orchestral movement. Wait, it speeds away in silence. Actually, it's careering along to a rapid drumbeat and a brutal string arrangement, suggesting there's trouble ahead. That's how Samsung's Joong-Sam Yun prefaced our meeting at the company's Sound Lab in Korea, overlapping different backing tracks to a TV show opening and highlighting the drastic effects of audio. His team is trying to bring a similar aural clout to the company's devices. Samsung's Galaxy S series has become known as the iPhone rival, no doubt magnified by the ongoing legal tussles between Samsung and Apple, and its own ads for the Galaxy S III. Becoming arguably the most visible (and successful) Android smartphone maker has made it a magnet for criticism, fair or otherwise. Despite multiple critically and commercially well-received smartphones, dominating the TV market and spending $10.8 billion a year on R&D, it seems the Korean company hasn't quite achieved the identity it wants. Now, with an eye on changing consumer perception, the company has turned to sound design to make Samsung distinctly recognizable to your ears. Aside from shifting to studio recording and increasingly sophisticated methods aimed at making its ringtones and start-up melodies unique, Samsung's Sound Lab is also tasked with testing and creating new uses for haptic technology -- another effort that the company hopes will ensure its future mobile products maintain that smartphone market share.
Visualized: Inside Moog's Sound Lab
As touring acts grow weary from their travels across the US of A, Moog has a spot for them to get re-energized. Inside the synth maker's North Carolina headquarters sits a room that's decked out with the company's analog tech and effects (including a Model 15 synthesizer) -- waiting for musicians who are on the road to stop by for a visit. It's here in the Sound Lab where the likes of Mutemath, Phantogram, OK Go and Ra Ra Riot grab their Moog gear of choice to re-imagine some of their existing tracks. For a look at all of the sound-scaping tools on display, mosey into the gallery below for a virtual visit. %Gallery-169365%
Peek inside Samsung's sound lab to see ringtones being born
Samsung's opened up about how the engineers in its sound lab build the default tones for your handset. Tasked with developing a "Sonic Branding," a ringtone that's as iconic and recognizable as Nokia's famous reworking of Gran Vals is to the Finnish handset maker. Research showed that most phones are answered within 10 seconds, so for Over The Horizon, the two-second is repeated and variated several different ways. Designing the soundscape for NatureUX also posed problems of its own. In order to create those aquatic noises, designers stirred a rubber bowl of water and scratched wet plates with toothpicks hundreds of times until the perfect tone was found. What was the leading cause of rejection? The enhanced sounds were a little too similar to that of a flushing toilet. Of course, while handset sound design is the team's most famous effort, it's also tasked with producing the audible signals from everything from Microwaves to Washing Machines -- so perhaps your next load of clean laundry will be heralded with a three-minute guitar solo.
