The sound of the house
Eight bells.
The house has two sounds: a small bronze ship's bell and the sea under it. Neither is a recording. Your browser plays them live, from a few lines of arithmetic, every time you turn the sound on. Here they are as files.
Play it, keep it
Rendered in your browser on first press. Nothing downloads from us but the page.
The sonic logo0:05 · WAV · 44.1 kHz stereo
Two bells, struck as a pair. The sound of the mark.
Eight Bells0:09 · WAV · 44.1 kHz stereo
The full strike at the end of a watch: four pairs. All's well.
The sea0:30 · WAV · 44.1 kHz stereo
Thirty seconds of open water, swelling about every twelve seconds.
The Watch bed1:00 · WAV · 44.1 kHz stereo
A minute of sea with the step bells (one, two, three, four) and eight bells to close.
Our own sounds, made in your browser when you press the button. Free to use in your own videos: tag #StandYourWatch. Each render is a fresh strike, so no two files are quite the same.
How it's made
The bell, partial by partial
A struck bell is a handful of pure tones that don't line up the way a string's do, which is why it rings instead of sings. Ours is eight sine waves over a 640 Hz strike note, each fading on its own clock, and a twentieth of a second of noise for the clapper.
- Hum320 Hz4.2 s
- Strike note640 Hz3.4 s
- Minor third762 Hz2.6 s
- Fifth966 Hz2.1 s
- Octave1280 Hz1.8 s
- Upper partial1702 Hz1.2 s
- Upper partial2074 Hz0.9 s
- Shimmer2624 Hz0.6 s
Partial · frequency · ring time · level
The sea
Brown noise, the low rumble left when white noise is smoothed, through a low-pass filter. A slow wave swings the filter and the level together, so the water swells and falls back about every 12 seconds.
How a watch is struck
A watch is four hours, rung on the bell every half hour: one bell, then two, up to eight. The strikes come in pairs, close together, with a breath between pairs. Eight bells ends the watch.
- +0030
- +0100
- +0130
- +0200
- +0230
- +0300
- +0330
- +0400
Eight bells, and all's well.