Re-sounding Alarms


Figure 1. Shows the melodic contour (a) of the eight melodic alarm sequences from the vastly deployed IEC:2006 alarm standard. The melodies are also represented with musical notation in (b).

Figure 2. Shows the complex temporal changes found throughout the harmonics of a musical tone. Pictured are a single note from a violin (a), a trumpet (b) and a clarinet (c).

Figure 3. Shows the temporal simplicity of many pure tones (a), a temporally simplistic sawtooth tone (b), and a tone from the IEC:2006 alarm standard.

Figure 4. Shows a harmonically simplistic tone decaying tone, also called a percussive tone (a), a percussive sawtooth tone (b), a single piano tone (c).

Figure 5. Shows three distinct renderings of an alarm sequence from the IEC:2006 standard. A.) depicts the alarm synthesized with a violin timbre and b.) with a trumpet timbre. This is contrasted with the inudstry standard beeps.