What is an earcon?

An earcon is a brief, abstract, synthesised sound that a device plays to tell the user something: an action succeeded, a message arrived, a limit was reached. The word was coined in 1989 by the researcher Meera Blattner and her colleagues as a play on “icon”, and the analogy is exact. An icon is a small picture that stands for a function. An earcon is a small sound that stands for one, and like an icon it has to be learned, because it does not imitate anything in the real world.

Earcons and auditory icons

Interface sound has two traditions and they pull in different directions. Auditory icons, described by Bill Gaver in the 1980s, borrow sounds from the physical world: crumpling paper for delete, a camera shutter for a screenshot, a swoosh for send. They need no learning, because the metaphor does the work. Earcons are the opposite: short musical motifs, built from pitch, rhythm and timbre, that mean nothing until the interface teaches you. Their advantage is that they can be organised. A family of earcons can share a timbre so they all sound like one product, share a rhythm so they all sound like one brand, and vary in pitch so that success rises and failure falls.

Most modern products mix the two. The camera still clicks; the payment confirmation is a two-note motif nobody has ever heard a physical object make.

Earcons everyone knows

The Windows startup sounds. The most famous earcon in computing is the Windows 95 startup sound, six seconds of Brian Eno, and every version since has replaced it with a shorter motif. None of them imitates anything; they simply mean “ready”.

The Mac startup chime. A single chord, held. Apple removed it, then brought it back by popular demand, which tells you how much an earcon can come to mean.

The Nokia SMS tone. Three short, two long, three short: the letters S, M and S in Morse code. An earcon with a hidden logic, learned by a billion people without one of them needing to know it.

The Slack knock. Two soft taps on wood. Technically an auditory icon, in practice an earcon, because the association it built was with Slack rather than with doors.

Mastercard’s acceptance sound. When a Mastercard payment goes through, terminals play a short phrase distilled from the brand’s melody. It is an earcon that doubles as a sonic logo: functional at the till, and a brand asset wherever it is heard.

How earcons are built

Because earcons are abstract, their meaning comes from structure. A well-designed family follows a small grammar.

• One timbre per product. The instrument or synthesis method is the product’s voice. Change it and the family falls apart.
• Direction carries meaning. Rising intervals for open, connect, succeed. Falling for close, disconnect, fail. Flat repetition for waiting.
• Length carries weight. One note for the small stuff, two or three for events that matter, and a longer motif for the rare moments, such as setup complete or payment sent.
• Rhythm carries the brand. A shared rhythmic cell, three quick notes, a long-short pair, is the thing people recognise across every earcon in the set.
• Room for silence. A family also decides which events get no sound at all. The most common mistake in interface audio is not a bad earcon but too many of them.

The finished set is delivered as a specification, not just a folder of files: length, loudness, frequency content, behaviour when two earcons trigger at once, and the haptic pattern that accompanies each one on devices that have an actuator. See haptic audio.

Earcons in a sonic identity

An earcon is where a brand’s sound is heard most and noticed least. A customer meets the sonic logo in adverts; they meet the earcons every time they use the product. Building the earcon family from the same sonic DNA as the logo, the same intervals, the same rhythmic cell, the same tonal colour, turns thousands of daily interactions into rehearsals of the brand. It also solves a practical problem: a product team with a specified earcon grammar can add a new sound in an afternoon that fits everything that came before, instead of commissioning a new one-off that fits nothing.

This is the functional layer of the identities we build. The melody is written for the brand track and the sonic logo, and the earcons are derived from it last, once the team knows which events the product actually needs to announce. For the wider process see our sonic branding service.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an earcon and a notification sound?
A notification sound is any sound that announces an event, including ringtones and sung tags. An earcon is specifically a short abstract motif designed for that job. Most notification sounds in modern products are earcons.

What is a spearcon?
A spoken word sped up until it is no longer intelligible as speech but still recognisable as a unique sound. Spearcons were developed for screen-reader menus, where a long list of items needs a fast, distinguishable cue for each one.

How long should an earcon be?
Almost always under a second, and often under a third of one. Confirmation sounds are the shortest; the rare ceremonial events, such as a first login, can afford a full two-second motif.

Do earcons need to be musical?
They need to be organised, which usually means musical: a defined pitch, a defined rhythm. Noise-based earcons exist, but they are harder to vary systematically and harder to make pleasant on repetition.

Related terms: UI sounds, notification sounds, haptic audio, motif, sonic DNA, skeuomorphic sound.