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Preview Treo 600 Ringtones
Handspring's e-newsletter has become a valuable insight into the making of the Treo 600. Each week they have been profiling a different aspect of the Treo 600. An archive of the letters is here. If you are not signed up yet, you can sign up here.
In this week's letter they went over the speaker system of the Treo 600.
"...we used two speakers in Treo 600—a small one next to your ear designed for vocal clarity, and a larger, louder one on the back for the speakerphone, ring tones and alarm sounds.
And speaking of sounds, there was no way the team was going to settle for the ordinary clicks and beeps of past devices. So we hired a professional audio expert named Phil Burk to create a whole host of new ring tones for Treo 600 (and for you Handspring trivia fans out there, two ring tones—Mendocino and Waitin'—are based on songs by our own PR Director, Allen Bush). But we didn't stop there. Rob Haitani, Product Design Architect and keyboardist for Handspring's house band "Buzz and the Shadows," contributed a complete set of new system sounds, so even Treo 600's alarms are a pleasant experience."
In the newsletter they linked to three mp3's of the new ringtones. They are Arabesque, Klavier, and Up Down. I'll let you hear how much better they are than the original Treo ringtones!
Phil Burk owns a company called softsynth. From his website:
"Phil Burk is a computer programmer and designer who specializes in interactive and experimental music systems. While at UC Berkeley, he began designing custom analog synthesizers and computers with a focus on guitar signal processing. In 1981, he began collaborating with Larry Polansky and David Rosenboom at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music where he later became a faculty member. (...) He is currently developing JSyn, a synthesis API for Java that allows composers to embed interactive computer music pieces in a web page. He is also developing a client/server system called TransJam that supports multi-player interaction on the web, and is working with Nick Didkovsky to develop JMSL, a Java based successor to HMSL. Phil has also worked on many projects as a consultant. Those projects have included designing the audio module for a digital television ASIC, and developing MIDI tools and messaging applications in Java."
I guess he can add Treo 600 Sound architect to that to!.
Rob Haitani is a long Palm OS guy; If you use this easter egg in the Giraffe game, you'll see his picture. His band does not seem to have a web presence, but researching did lead to another bit of unknown Handspring trivia. A guy named Will Rees wrote the original Treo ringtones.
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