The startup silencing your microwave's annoying beep

If you've ever scrambled to the microwave like a maniac to halt the piercing "beep, beep, beeeeep" — alerting the neighborhood to your late-night burrito indulgence — this will be music to your ears.

Starling, a two-person startup, developed a surprisingly simple solution to tame those annoying beeps without requiring new hardware, per Wired.

Buzz off

Why is the microwave beep such a near-universal annoyance?

It's all thanks to a small device known as a passive piezoelectric buzzer.

Popularized by Japanese manufacturers in the 1970s, the simple buzzers vibrate when electrically charged and, importantly, cost mere pennies.

They've been used in alarm clocks, smoke detectors, those beloved Nokia phones, and, of course, microwaves.

Versatile and cheap, piezo buzzers are also limited to adjustments of frequency and duration. Effective, but irritating and devoid of personality.

Until now

Starling, a new sonic-branding studio launched by sound designer Joel Corelitz and creative strategist Colin Coogan, aims to improve microwave sounds by leveraging the tech already inside. Collectively, their previous clients have included Sony, Netflix, and Ford, so they probably know what they're doing.

Simply adding a speaker and playback system would increase cost and complexity — a tough sell for an inexpensive appliance.

Instead, they built Microwave Sound Bench, software to program the buzzer's frequency and duration using an Arduino microcontroller. Most microwaves already contain microcontrollers, so a manufacturer would just need to add new code.

Instead of beeps, the buzzers could play a multitude of frequencies and sequences that sound infinitely better. Even button sounds could be adjusted.

While Corelitz and Coogan told Wired they would be happy to work with companies to upgrade their microwaves, they also aren't concerned about them "borrowing" the idea.

As designers and audio consultants, they have more to offer brands in terms of sonic branding.

• Sonic branding — strategically crafted sound that creates a company's unique audio identity and elicits emotional responses from customers — is considered the most underutilized component of marketing.
• Three quarters of Gen Z consumers say music makes them feel more connected to a brand.
• Amp Sound Branding's Best Sound Brand study ranks companies' sonic branding strategies.

We'll just be happy enjoying our burritos to a more pleasant tune — and maybe one shorter than Samsung's "The Trout."

(Oh, and you can mute most microwaves. But where's the fun in that?)