Friday, December 30, 2022 11:14 am3 Comments

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Popular Science has published an excerpt from What the Ear Hears (and Doesn’t): Inside the Extraordinary Everyday World of Frequency by Richard Mainwaring that explains why Apple’s Mac chime is off key.

Richard Mainwaring:

Because of an internationally standardized allocation of named pitches to set frequencies, we have jettisoned the vast majority of other frequencies into musical oblivion (in Western music at least). With this in mind, I’ve held on to an unproved theory: that one global tech giant has exploited our unfamiliarity with such long-forgotten frequencies in order to create an instantly recognizable aural logo for its brand.

The company is Apple, and the genius aural logo is the start-up chime of an Apple Mac computer. It has a strikingly unique sound that most of us instantly recognize, though few can explain why… I was therefore excited to have the chance to interview the composer of the chimes, Jim Reekes.

MacDailyNews Take: Turns out that the off key Mac chime wasn’t intentional. It was the result of non-musician Apple engineers and sample rate changes.

Read more in the full article – recommended – here.

See also:
• Why the return of the Mac’s startup chime is a big deal – December 4, 2020
• macOS 11 Big Sur resurrects the Mac startup chime – June 23, 2020
• RIP Mac startup chime – June 8, 2018
• How to reinstate the Mac’s classic boot chime on Apple’s new MacBook Pro – October 31, 2016
• Apple axes iconic Mac startup chime from new MacBook Pros – October 31, 2016

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