[kde-artists] New start sound - Discussion.

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday, May 30, 2013 09:13:37 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> I don't think it's a good idea to disable login sounds.
> Sure, they have no practical use, but they are a very important part of
> sound branding (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_trademark#Sound_branding ). That's why

The reasons for having turned off the login sound are:

* It often starts at an unpredictable time due to the mechanics of the startup 
procedure and the wonder that is free software audio; this is only going to 
become worse as we move to increasingly parallelized startup where 
dependencies are determined at runtime by access (the systemd model, e.g.)

* The sounds for KDE are not well integrated into the branding. That the log 
in/out sounds are extremely long does not help.

* They is no realistic benefit to our branding from the sound due to low public 
usage (as you noted in your own email)

* They are configurable .. which destroys hope of branding

* They are annoying as hell (regardless of platform). We've opted for elegance 
for the user rather than attempts to inject our brand into the environment.

Things that could improve the above and which would cause at least me to re-
assess this decision:

* Integrate the startup sound with either the splash screen or the session 
manager (e.g. ksmserver), skip the knotification thing path altogether and 
ensure the sound is played via a low-(enough-)latency mechanism. This would 
remove some of the awkwardness of the current sound timing.

* Produce a sound that is actually memorable, meshes with the KDE branding 
goals (e.g. projection of elegance) and is no more than a couple seconds long. 
A simple, calm, recognizable sound that lasts ~1 second would be great imho.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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