A Semiotic Approach Toward Product Sound Quality

For quite some time the opportunities to enhance the quality of a product by means of an appealing sound design have simply been overlooked.Product sound was mainly taken as an annoying bi-product in the sense oi 'noise rather than as a quality element that bears creative power.Only recently an awareness of the sound as a quality element of products has developed.The sound has actually been recognized as the acoustic visiting card of a product, the better designed.the more it is supporting overall product quality.Although this statement may sound trivial, it does not preclude the fact that it is indeed an extremely demanding task to design high-quality product sounds.Not that the tools for product sound design have not been available there is simply a lack of knowledge on what actually makes a product sound good.This paper considers some relevant aspects of the problem.