Why is there growing demand for sound products ?

Ircam Ampli­fy is a sub­si­dia­ry of Ircam (Ins­ti­tut de recherches et coor­di­na­tion acoustique/musique). After set­ting up an in-house indus­trial deve­lop­ment acti­vi­ty, Ircam crea­ted this dedi­ca­ted com­mer­cial sub­si­dia­ry for the tech­no­lo­gi­cal trans­fer of its research work. In recent years, there has been a gro­wing demand from a varie­ty of com­pa­nies for acous­tic pro­ducts. We respond to this need with a team of around thir­ty people inclu­ding scien­tists (engi­neers, resear­chers) and crea­tive pro­fes­sio­nals (desi­gners).

We deal with sound in all its forms, from the sound that is emit­ted, trans­for­med, and trans­por­ted, right through to its dis­tri­bu­tion. We are divi­ded into two divi­sions : a tech­no­lo­gy deve­lop­ment divi­sion for artists and the music indus­try, and a sound expe­rience crea­tion divi­sion. The first essen­tial­ly deve­lops pro­ducts and soft­ware for pro­fes­sio­nals in the music, auto­mo­tive and connec­ted object indus­tries. The second part, “expe­rience”, which I manage, creates inno­va­tive pro­ducts and ser­vices that trans­form the way we expe­rience sound on a dai­ly basis. They meet the needs of inter­na­tio­nal cus­to­mers from all kinds of indus­tries, from music to the auto­mo­tive and luxu­ry goods industries.

Yes, we believe that sound can be as impor­tant a mar­ker as image in iden­ti­fying a brand. This was a very real issue during confi­ne­ment. How can you per­ceive – and sell – a fra­grance if you can’t smell it ? What does a smell sound like ? What does a taste sound like ? Our ans­wer is based on poly­sen­so­ria­li­ty. This word refers to a neu­ro­lo­gi­cal phe­no­me­non that occurs when infor­ma­tion inten­ded to sti­mu­late one of our five senses sti­mu­lates another.

For some people, a sound can even pro­voke a taste in the mouth or be asso­cia­ted with a colour. Our job as sound desi­gners is to find the sound that best evokes a concept, an ingre­dient, for a given tar­get. But while we have a high­ly deve­lo­ped voca­bu­la­ry for taste and smell, and we know how to define key concepts such as bit­ter or sour, we are very limi­ted when it comes to the voca­bu­la­ry of sound. So, we used the SpeaK method, deve­lo­ped at Ircam’s “Per­cep­tion and Sound Desi­gn” labo­ra­to­ry, to cha­rac­te­rise the sounds.

The SpeaK method is rela­ti­ve­ly simple. It takes the form of a pack of cards on which words from the lexi­con of sounds are clas­si­fied into three cate­go­ries : the gene­ral qua­li­ties of the sound, inten­si­ty (weak/ loud) and pitch (low/high). Tone is asso­cia­ted with sen­sa­tions of bright­ness and rough­ness. Mor­pho­lo­gy is asso­cia­ted with tem­po­ral varia­tions in inten­si­ty (crescendo/decrescendo). A sound can, for example, be of low or high qua­li­ty, have a constant or fluc­tua­ting mor­pho­lo­gy, a warm or bright tone and cha­rac­ter. By wor­king on this voca­bu­la­ry, we have been able to attri­bute “sound cap­sules” to cho­co­lates or perfumes.

Sound is playing an increa­sin­gly impor­tant role in eve­ry­day life, not least because it is asso­cia­ted with the mana­ge­ment of man-machine inter­faces. For example, you know your com­pu­ter is char­ging when you plug it in, because sound signals the action. Manu­fac­tu­rers are also wor­king more and more on the “orga­nic” sounds of objects, even if it means trying to make them quie­ter. If you want to sell an elec­tric too­th­brush, a hair­dryer, or a cof­fee machine, it’s not just the appea­rance of the object that needs to be taken care of, but also the noise it makes when in use.

Yes, we car­ried out a stu­dy on a panel of French and Ame­ri­can users who tes­ted two ver­sions of the same e‑commerce site, fea­tu­ring four fra­grances. The first site offe­red an audio trans­la­tion of each pro­duct, while the second pre­sen­ted the pro­ducts in the tra­di­tio­nal, silent way. In France, 47% of respon­dents who tes­ted the first site said they would poten­tial­ly buy the per­fume. For the tra­di­tio­nal site, this rate was only 30%. The impact was even grea­ter when users enjoyed the sound, with 40% inten­ding to buy.

Euro­pean legis­la­tion requires hybrid and elec­tric cars to emit a mini­mum sound level of 56 deci­bels when tra­vel­ling at less than 20 km/h, equi­va­lent to the noise of a dis­h­wa­sher, an office com­pu­ter or the ambience of a quiet res­tau­rant… The aim is to alert pedes­trians and cyclists to the arri­val of a vehicle. As our ears are trai­ned to lis­ten to the noise of inter­nal com­bus­tion engines, they can be foo­led by the faint sound of an elec­tric motor. In col­la­bo­ra­tion with Renault, Ircam is wor­king not only on this exte­rior sound signal­ling (VSP : Vehi­cule Sound for Pedes­trians), but also on the acous­tics inside the vehicle. This has a lot to do with mar­ke­ting concerns, as some users have com­plai­ned about the lack of cha­rac­te­ris­tic sounds in new car models. People who used to enjoy the typi­cal engine noise of a 2CV, a Volks­wa­gen Com­bi or a Mase­ra­ti do not like the silence of the new vehicles.

It depends on the pro­duct. When the object is par­ti­cu­lar­ly inno­va­tive, it’s some­times bet­ter to work on exis­ting sounds. For example, when you place a docu­ment in the recycle bin of an Apple com­pu­ter, you hear an object fal­ling, then when you emp­ty the recycle bin, you hear the sound of crum­pled paper, which doesn’t cor­res­pond at all to what’s hap­pe­ning in your com­pu­ter ! But it’s the clo­sest meta­phor (or skeuo­mor­phism¹) that allows the user to find their way around this new environment…

Marina Julienne

Refe­rence :

Speak lexi­con : https://​speak​.ircam​.fr/​l​e​x​i​q​u​e​/​l​e​x​i​q​u​e​-​i​rcam/