Alert Ping

How it's made

Source

a small struck glass or metal tine heard as a high, nearly pure tone. The strike is a ~2 ms onset ramp plus a tiny noise tick (high-passed above 2.5x the pitch) that gives the attack its "tink".

Body

fundamental at 1.0-2.8 kHz with stretched partials (2.01x, 3.02x, 5.1x) that decay 2-6x faster than the fundamental, so the attack is bright and the tail is a pure sine. Strike tension makes the pitch settle down about 1.2 % within the first 20 ms.

Shimmer

every partial is doubled by a partner detuned 2-9 Hz; their beating produces a slow amplitude flutter on the tail, like a slightly asymmetric tine.

Envelope

2 ms onset, exponential decay of 0.12-0.5 s on the fundamental; an optional second ping 0.1-0.22 s later, a little higher and softer, makes it more urgent. The output is closed by a 0.05 s fade.

Variation

`rng` detunes the partials by +-0.2 % per ping; presets change pitch, ring, shimmer and repeat.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.