319: An Amuse-bouche for Your Device

Okay, this is dangerously near a real topic. Uh-oh, we don't do that around here, but I'll allow it for once. My wife asked me, hey, there's a place for text on the back of our Christmas card, and we usually put something funny there. But I'm not feeling particularly funny right now. And when I type it into Google, all the stuff that I get is bad. And I said, oh, it can't be that bad. Wait, hang on. What are you typing into Google?

Like a funny thing to put on your Christmas card, like a mirthful message, a little bit of whimsy, not corny, maybe a little corny, you know. You're saying you're looking for ideas to put on the back of your Christmas card? You're looking for a tone. Would you say you're prompting a text field to give you some ideas? Well, it's funny you say prompting because that is precisely where the problem starts. Oh. When you type funny things to put onto your Christmas card, you get...

things that are both not funny and also not things that i would put on the christmas card but the weird thing and that's not that's nothing new like there's a bunch of hacks working on the internet and have been for many many years and then that hallmark before that yeah well no actually i think a lot of the like look the hallmark people are directed and thoughtful at least yeah okay fair um but the problem

It used to be that you'd click on the first site and then you get one set of things and you'd be like, oh, this is bad. And you click on the second one and you'd be like, okay, I want a Christmas card message that's not written by hacks and is actually funny. And then it would give you something that is a little bit different. So they were all the same. Like the top five results all had the exact same crap in them. And it was all like, hey, I hope your Christmas sleighs and.

s-l-e-i-g-h-s for some reason or i hope uh you get as lit as your tree or like they're terrible really really bad right not funny not clever just hacky and and awful So then I was like, I think that all of these are written by AI. So I went to the AI and it's like, look, this is a chicken or egg situation because it could have been that the AI just looked at all of the.

the things that were written by AI on the, on the top Christmas card site pages and been like, Oh, okay, here we go. Or it could have been that the person at Shutterfly that was writing the, Hey, you don't know what to put in your Christmas card. Here's some funny ideas.

just typed into Google Gemini, hey, I want some funny stuff to put on the Christmas card in article form that I can put on Shutterfly's website. And then it just spat that out because the lists were the same when I asked Gemini for the same thing. I haven't engaged with this stuff in a little bit, the AI stuff in a minute. I kind of like spent most of 2025 just reinforcing my opinions that it's kind of shit and moving on.

and gina was like this is the type of thing most people just ask ai for it's like well let's try and see let's let's see what happens oh so i put i need something funny to put my christmas card into the into the gemini prompt field

And it was like, it gave me the list of things from the internet. I was like, no, that's all hacky and terrible. Give me something that's actually funny. And it was like, oh, you want something edgy? And then it was like, hey, Christmas fucks. And I was like, nope, that's too much. I'm too far. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Did I understand what you just said? Yeah. It said, yeah, yo, I hope you're Christmas Fox. Yeah. That's what it said. I think, I think my brain tried to hear Fox for a second because that sounded so vulgar for a Christmas card. Yep. no so so and then i was like nope that's too far and also not funny no bad gemini that's not no no yeah exactly so then i went down a few other things and like it was just all like

Eventually, I got to the ones that it was posting on the sites that were kind of funny and not just all sad. So anyway, we just were like, I just did an audio nice bit. So anyway, people who listen to this and get their card, I guess, here's a glimpse of your future. But yeah, I think we've reached the point where the AI is crapping up the search results to the point that the search results are all the same and the AI results are all the same. And basically the Ouroboros is eating itself.

We've begun the great process of internet auto cannibalism. Wow, I guess you have to reset the clock now. Let's say happy 2026.

welcome to brad and will made a tech pod i'm will i'm brad brad it's the it's the hap happiest time of the year uh-huh that's right it's the tis the season or make merry and and find love Be the joy in your heart. And rank things. And rank things. Hell yeah. Fine annual TechPod tradition. Yeah, let's make people angry with a ranking list. Oh, you look. I mean, we moved to tier lists. I think that that is...

Okay, a couple of things. We moved to tier lists last year. That seems more popular than the old stand-by top 10. Kids love tier lists. Here's the other thing. This is going to be a two-parter, but we... Finally shows a topic that is just constrained enough in scope that we were able to knock the whole thing out in two episodes. So it's already done. Yeah. There will be no open-ended. Hey, when will you get back?

that tier list this time. Unless we forgot stuff, in which case we'll revisit it at some point in the future. Well, you know, there are probably some other startup sounds out there we could find. Wait, wait, you're going to tell them what we're doing? I guess this is the intro. This is the place to do that, I think. I think we were pretty comprehensive, though. I actually can't think of too many things we might have missed.

I mean, there's some conversations about what makes it here a startup sound and what is not a startup sound that I think are going to be controversial. But other than that, yeah, pretty good. Yeah. Well, hey, shall we roll the tape? Let's go.

Okay, so I'm going to suggest that we start at the very beginning. Okay. The very first startup sound ever. The first startup sound I remember hearing as a youth. I think I know where this is going. I'm getting excited already. The Apple Macintosh. Never mind. I mean, this is a good one, too. What were you thinking? I thought it was going to be the Windows 3.1. Ta-da. But of course, oh, fuck that Mac predates Mac OS.

It wasn't even macOS then, right? But whatever they called it. It's just the Mac. Yeah. Predated the Windows 3.1. Ta-da. That predates it by like a decade, right? Probably close to that. Yeah. And okay. Well, okay. So here's the first one. This was the thing that happened when you hit the power button on, I think, the original Mac. So here we go. I know that sound very well.

My arm-based M1 MacBook Pro makes more or less that exact same sound. So that one is listed on YouTube as the original Mac startup sound. Now. There's another YouTube video from a person who is a much deeper level of crazy who actually posted every Macintosh startup sound for every Macintosh that they could find. Okay. Yeah. Are they all roughly that sound with minor variations? Well, it's funny you ask that because... What in the world is that? Oh, these are all sounds playing in succession.

These are all sounds playing in succession. We're up to the Macintosh portable, which was their first luggable. But that very first one is the Apple IIc. The Apple II didn't have a startup sound as new as I can remember. Oh, I didn't know the Apple. I didn't know the pre-Mac.

like a straight up apple computers apple 2 and stuff i didn't know those had startup sounds at all other than beeps i mean i guess those are just beeps right they're just beeps so this is the macintosh 512 these are all really insanely close together it's like 85 beeps or something in three minutes and 25 seconds

So the Macintosh, early Macintoshes were just beeps. That chime didn't come on until a lot later, actually. You mean like the classic Mac chime? Yeah, the thing that we heard of a second ago started with the LC, I think. Okay. Well, this is the Power Macintosh G3. And it bounced around based on which era of Mac you're talking about. So I think we should start with that very first, with the thing that you and I think of.

The classic one. Classic Mac. Yeah. I'm going to say that one right there. There are probably too many of these and they are too similar to rank all of these. We're not ranking all of them. I say we condense. In fact, like really it's the Macintosh sound, right? I think. I think there's this Mac startup sound that I just played, the one that everybody thinks of, this one. And then I think there's one other in here that I want to pull out and put on the ranking list for sure.

But I think this is a, this is clear S tier, man. I'm just going straight out of the gate. Look right out of the gates. I, you know, man, I'm not, I can be convinced. I'm not. This is the one that started at all. Without this one, arguably, we wouldn't have any other. Maybe this would have never become a thing. On the list here, we have M1 and Future Max. Are you able to play that one? Yeah, you want to hear that one? Yes.

We can play that. Okay, great. It's the same basic idea. It's a little more reverb. There's more bass. It's kind of a little more bassy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because again, like I said, I've got an M1 MacBook Pro and I hear a version of that every time I open it. So the thing I'm going to say is the core element of that sound was on some of the early Macs, like the Centra 660 AV, like a mid-90s, early 90s Mac. Okay. And then...

Steve Jobs went away and they got wild for a while there. And then he came back in the iMac, the original iMac. I'm going to play that one right now. I think. Nope. Skip the time code. Let's try again. Here we go. There's the PowerBook G3. Okay. There's the Power Macintosh G3, the candy color one. Got it. And there's the iMac. So from this point on until 2020.

They were all the same. Okay. And even, even in 2020, it only just kind of evolved slightly. It's like a little more reverb and still basically the same sound. The M processor Max, they changed it, which is the first time they've done it in a long, long time. I might argue for the purposes of this tier list construction, we just do the original Macintosh sound. I think original Macintosh sound, solid S tier.

I agree with that. What I mean is all these others, I think, are perhaps not distinct enough. Let me separate ranking. Let me give you the one for the email. And let me you can tell me if you think it's worth ranking. What in the world is an email? It's like a it's like a. pocket pc it's a handheld device but all right that's totally moogly it did the thing again here we go i clicked the wrong link it doesn't work okay here we go that'll happen

Okay. Okay, I've heard that sound before. There's the emate right there. No, thank you. No, hold on. I want to bask in it. Yeah, that's a D minus for me, I think. Okay, fine. You know what? That one is different enough that I'm just going to type the emates under D right now. Yeah, it's bad. Yeah, you know, maybe just play the Macintosh sound a couple more times when we roll it around in the brain.

Is it a chord? Yeah, that's like a chord. Is that? I mean, I'm like some semi-musically inclined. I'm trying to pick apart the component sounds. I mean, is that like three different tones? Yeah, it seems like it. I don't know. I could put the spectral analyzer if you want over here and let you know. Would you call that a chord as such? You can have a chord with three notes, right? Well, I mean, that's what a chord is. That's what I'm saying.

It's a hard sound to nail down exactly what's in there. You know what? It's quick. It's pleasant. It's warm. It's incredibly distinctive. It's got pretty good brand identity, I guess I would say. Look, if you were at a club and somebody dropped a couple of these in the mix, you'd be like, I know that sound. Oh, yeah, that's, yes. maybe not the only thing i would say but yeah i would yes i do know it look you know whatever um i i think it is i think this is this is definitively one of the things

Like it has all the things you want. It's like you said, it's short. You instantly recognize it. I see the picture of the ad with the thing. Any of them to think different, the throw in the Super Bowl sledgehammer, all that stuff. They're all there in your face. And it's because.

It's an S tier sound. Well, I mean, I think the key for me is that it's warm and pleasant and invites me to want to hear it again. Yeah. Now, I think the M1, the current iteration, the souped up version that they're selling these days.

I think it's actually a regression. I don't think it's as good. Yeah, I think I could agree with that. Yeah, too much low end, I would say. Yeah, and they're stacking up a bunch of... of reverb and stuff on there it's not necessary you don't need to tart this up yeah i would also say i have a negative association with that sound on account of the um

Shall I call it the boot on open behavior of modern MacBooks? Did you know about this? You haven't had a MacBook in a while, right? No, I haven't had a MacBook since the M1s. Modern MacBooks boot when you open them now and there's no way to turn that off. So, and they have also, they used to have lights. Remember the, remember the little, the little battery indicator with the button on the side with the little like pinhole through the metal LEDs. That was really nice.

There is, okay, so A, they turn on when you open them now. B, there's no way to see externally if they're on or not while they're closed. There's no longer any kind of status indicator or light at all. And so... A number of times I've thought like before a flight or whatever, like, is my laptop on? Do I need to turn it off to save battery until I get on the plane? And boot the laptop in the process of opening the laptop to see if it's booted.

I don't think you have to worry about that in a modern life. You know? I mean, on a long enough trip, you would like to save as much battery as you can. I guess. I guess. I don't take the trips that long anymore. My trips are long. I think that the modern M1 sound is like a B probably for me. Yeah. I don't, we need to rank that one. I mean, it's a, it's, you know, I think we're, we're, we listen to it. We just rank it. You know, it is, it is just a, it's not sure.

okay fine m1 mac is a b sure yeah okay i can get behind that okay uh you want to switch up so it's okay so we got macintosh original og macintosh sharp sound s m1 mac b email d

Great episode. I think we can call it here. We'll come back next week. We'll do some more. Happy holidays, everyone. You want to go maybe PlayStation 1? Yeah, why don't we ping pong console and computer stuff a little bit? Okay, so here we go. This is the original launch era PlayStation 1 sound.

All right. Some interesting facts I have for you here. There were a couple of YouTube videos I meant to dig out of my history and send to you before we did this and did not have time for that. Okay. I've watched a couple of breakdowns of the sound over time. Okay, first of all, there's the thing everybody knows, which is that's actually two different sounds. Did you have a PlayStation? I did not have a PlayStation. No. So the first time I heard this was like six months ago.

What the fuck? Wait, we talked about that, didn't we? We talked about this. That was a startling revelation. So anybody who owned a PlayStation knows this part. That's actually two sounds. The beginning, low end, long. Yeah. is the console power on sound, like just the ROM boot up. Okay. The tinkly, glassy sounding second part. The chimes? Like the chimey, yes. Although we'll get to how that's synthesized. It's really interesting.

That only plays if there's a bootable disc in the drive. So if there's not, if there's not, you only hear the fullness of the low end part and then it just dumps you into the system like memory and CD player management interface. And then if you put in. bootable like a game or bootable disc after the fact you will only get the chimes as it then boots the software up so those are actually distinctive sounds that just happen to blend together

if you have a game in the drive when you turn the system on. So what happened if you had like a CD-ROM, an optical CD, like an audio CD in there? It would just go straight to that system interface that I mentioned that basically lets you either manage memory cards or go to the CD player software. Wild.

Here's the lesser known and way more interesting part to me. That sound is not recorded at all. It is synthesized on the fly by the PlayStation's sound hardware every time you boot the system. With math? Yes, with transforms and programmatic. magic going on because that's what that deep dive video I watched was that was fascinating because people have dumped the component sounds for that thing from the ROM. They sound nothing like the thing you're actually hearing.

So it's not even like MIDI files. It's not even like MIDI where it's just using math directly on the chip. That's wild. It's using three samples. Again, I wish I had sent those files to you. Now I really want to go find them. I don't want to delay the podcast long enough to go do that. But if you find the component sounds that things made up of, they're much, much shorter and they are way, way less kind of interesting to listen to.

okay so before you told me all this i was like this one's pretty meh Like, I don't like the gap between the wom wom part of the beginning and the chimes at the end. Yes, but now you know that those are two separate sounds that are being triggered by system events. Yeah, and like one of the other things that's interesting about this whole process is I think that these things start.

to cover boot time? Yeah. If you think about it, you didn't have this on the NES or the SNES or the N64. Yeah, those systems don't have BIOS. Those things just run the software.

directly from the cartridge to the CPU, right? Yeah, or the software is just chips on the cartridge, right? Yeah, in fact, my understanding of the cartridge systems, I barely know about this stuff. I've just read a little. Like, effectively, when you put a cartridge into a cartridge-based console and hit the power button, you're...

effectively completing a circuit, like the presence of the ROM is completing a circuit that then allows the data to flow versus, yeah, like all the CD-based systems have BIOSes and are full computers in a more traditional sense. In and of themselves. So I like now knowing what I know, like this is, this is a pretty good one. Yeah. I, I don't have quite the nostalgia for basically the, the, I mean, there's the like 12 year old.

rule of nostalgia, right? Like whatever thing came out when you were 12, that's the thing you will love more than anything ever. And like, I was just a tad bit too old for that when the PlayStation came out. Explains why I like the Michael Keaton Batman movie, though. Yeah, there are people out there who just like fall all over themselves about how much they love the sound. And I'm not quite there on the purely nostalgic end, but.

I still respect this sound very highly, and I could see it at either an S or an A. I don't think this is an S. I think this is a solid A. I think that there are other better PlayStation sounds. I might. Okay. I think there might be one better one. I mean, I didn't say there were many other better. There's only two more. No, no, no. There's more. Well, okay. I'm not counting handhelds here.

But of big TV based PlayStations, there's only two more. And then consoles, as we will get into, consoles inexplicably just stopped having boot up animations and sound. They still have boot up animations and sound. You just never see them because they never turn off anymore. Wait, no. The Xbox is the only one. Xbox is the only one. No, no, no. PS5 has nothing. Okay. You want to jump ahead? We can jump ahead. Switch has nothing. Switch 2 has nothing. I... Okay.

All right, I'm going to table that PlayStation ranking. I'm going to, for now, put it at A. Okay. But I'm not sure I agree. Okay. For the sake of expediency, let's keep moving. I'm going to pull up the PS5 startup sound now. Wait, what? Yeah. What PS5 startup sound? Here you go. You ready for it? No. Oh, I don't know. Please see it.

There you go. Startup sound. I don't know if that counts. That is absolutely a startup sound. I guess. That's the login screen, though. That's not the same thing. It's the thing when you turn on the PlayStation. Here's the thing, though. A startup sound has to end. And that doesn't end until you log in. It will sit there making that drone sound forever. It just merges into your menu music. Like, I don't know.

Listen, look, this has all of the highlights of a startup sound. Here you go. That is a startup sound right there. Yeah, you know, I guess maybe it does blend into the like the sign in screen. We'll just sit there and make it an ethereal background droning sounds forever. But I guess that might technically be a distinctive sound. That one's OK. It's fine. It's like a B.

Yeah, a B is right for that. It's a B or a C to me, I think. Look, I would argue for knocking off a tear just because it isn't distinct. I think a distinctness is better than an indistinct one. Yeah, and there's no animation that goes along with it, which is also criminal.

sir i look i mean well there's a little the playstation logo is like hey man you should consider turning on your controller and it also says it has a friendly warning it says see important health and safety warnings in the settings menu This is exactly why that's disqualifying. A startup animation cannot be conveying actionable information to the user. It needs to be purely for vanity. I would argue that this is not conveying actionable information.

to the user either it needs to be purely look how cool our console is how rad is this there's a lot of sparkles on that page along with the actionable information yeah all right i will allow it but it's a b b is b is b feels right This is reminding me we didn't pull any of the analog consoles for this, which those things are crazy. Look, I think Disasterpiece did the sound for one of them, if I'm not mistaken. Oh!

The analog analog analog with a UE. I didn't know that. Like the FPGA based video game console company. That's wild. I think Phil Fish did the boot up animation for one of them. i'm suddenly much more interested in those it's it's like they're cool you can go find them on youtube but yeah we'll see if we pull those in or not uh okay so let's do let's pull let's pull let's get a little crazy here let's do uh what about

A classic here. This one, let's see if you recognize this one. Well, I saw what you were clicking in the Google Docs, so I'm afraid I already know. Oh. Is that Windows Vista? Yeah, you saw it in the Google Doc. It's not. Yeah. Okay. Unjust.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to rank Vista that far out of order yet. Now I'm starting to think maybe we should go chronologically. You think we should go chronological? My argument here is that I think that we need to consider what's come before and how they have built upon or regressed from each other. Okay.

Okay, so I can start with Windows. I'm going to start with Windows 3.1. We didn't do prior to Windows 3.1 just because. You haven't even played it yet. I'm typing Windows 3.1 under S. What? Just go ahead and play it. This is a formality, but go ahead and play it. Oh, my God. I have words. Just hit me with it. Yeah. Okay. Again. Again. Ta-da! I mean, it's...

It's probably objectively not great, but remember when I talked about the nostalgia for the PlayStation sound? This is in my wheelhouse. Really? Yeah, hell yeah. Okay, so my Windows 3.1 startup sound was Homer Simpson saying... Yeah. Like, I just replaced this immediately. Mine was Yoda going, help you, I can. Yes. But, like, still. Well, but.

They actually, they also use this for shutdown. Like when you closed, when you exited program manager, they also used it there. Yep. Although I guess we're technically talking about startup sounds here, but I mean, it's so dumb and festive and happy and excited. I, I honestly, I just, I don't think this, I don't think it's very good. I think fundamentally it is. Yeah. It's dumb, festive, happy, and excited. Those are all negatives from where I'm saying.

I want to feel good and excited about sitting down and using my computer. I don't think that's what computers are for, Brad. I think this is a solid B, A maybe at best. I can see an A. i could see an a i mean i can i can i i look i don't think we should be giving out s tiers willy-nilly that's all i'm saying i definitely agree with that which i might apply the same thing reasoning to the macintosh sound but

You mean the sound that started at all? Can I point out that this sound is literally called tada.wave? Yeah. And what better way to celebrate your sitting down and using your computer than tada? I'm going to open up the windows for work groups. Windows 3.11. Wait, is it different? I don't remember. I don't remember it being different. That to me is the exiting windows sound. Well, that's what they used for starting windows. They just didn't care. Was it really?

Yeah, somebody just picked one. That's true. You're right. There was very little sanctity to the choices they were making at that time. Yeah, there wasn't a decider on this one. It was just whoever committed the last change got to choose. Okay, are we treating these as separate then, 3.1 and 3.1? I mean, they're distinct OSs. I think 3.1.1 is a C or maybe a D. Oh, really?

Yeah, I'd say like B at worst. That's fine. If we're rating sound effects. Yeah, but if we're rating startup sounds, these don't have the grandeur and majesty that a startup sound needs. Yeah, maybe you're right. Yeah, as a startup sound, it's fairly lackluster. Yeah, it's like a tier sound effect for sure. But it's a good event sound. Yeah, it's a good event sound. Yeah. All right. Okay, fine. You know, C, sure. So Windows 3.1, you think A is as low as it goes? Yeah, for now.

Okay, I'm going to push to bump that down later, but we can revisit. We can recalibrate as this thing piles up.

Should we pull another console? You want to dip into the... You want to stick with the PlayStation theme, or do you want to go for something a little more Sega-y? Well, actually... Yeah. Do we want to remain within a family, within a, like a company's consoles or do we want to like, maybe generations is better. Maybe like comparing, comparing what the competition was doing at the same time is probably useful here.

the saturn is tricky because they had different startup sounds for different variants of the console yeah that's crazy i never i didn't own a saturn at the time so that's kind of foreign to me but i found this out when i was setting up my mr saturn

uh, core. And I was like, Oh, I got to get different bios for this. And then they all sounded different. Now I don't, I don't know if we've addressed this cause we are recording this out of order. We haven't recorded the intros for these shows yet, but. This is obviously an audio only podcast and most of these have visuals that go with them. And in some cases like this one, I think those visuals are kind of key.

I don't think we should consider the video visuals that were the best startup sounds. Yeah, I guess you're right. I'm just saying that from, okay, you should play the Saturn one, but what I remember in the Saturn one, the sound evokes what's happening on the screen. It's true. It does. I believe this is the U.S. uh uk us eu and korea sega saturn startup sound i believe

Because I don't have in front of me, but again, doesn't the Saturn boot up like kind of the screen shatter and come back together or something along those lines? It starts with a bunch of particles, kind of like triangles flying in and around, and then they get... sucked up all together and it forms a Sega Saturn logo at the end. So here it is again. Might be thinking of a Japanese one. That one's pretty harsh to me. I don't know.

think that's anything to do with like the quality of this call or the quality of the recording you're playing necessarily. It's a little shrill though. i mean it's definitely there's definitely a lot of highs in there in a way that i don't i don't necessarily need i think i'm i that might be like a c to me

Look, if I was including the Sega Saturn logo for the US, which was, I think, actively terrible, then it would probably drop to a D as far as I'm concerned. But I could see a C for this. This seems right. Okay, well, what about Saturn Japan? Okay, so here's Saturn Japan. There were apparently different manufacturers of the Saturn Japan. Yeah, you run into that if you play with the Saturn core on the Mr. Or in Saturn emulators as well.

You have to supply your own BIOS. Perhaps you've heard about this. Supply your own BIOS. Not legal to distribute the BIOS file, but when you go out and configure those things, you have to pick which Saturn BIOS you want to use to boot games with. Sure enough, the Victor Saturn and the Hitachi Saturn. I don't know if those are really... Are those in play here? Because those are such variants. They're not the Sega manufactured hardware. They're on the list. They have Saturn in the name. We can...

I think some of them are better than others. Let's play the Japan, just the standard Japanese Saturn first. That one owns. That's great. Yeah, that one's really good. It's kind of like they're revving an orchestra. Yeah. It sounds like they're revving a car, but it's musical in some way. It really does. It feels like it's like the orchestra tune-up sound. But literally somebody has the gas pedal and they're making it go faster. I'm going to play it again.

And that at the beginning is it's really good. Yeah, it's good. It's real good. Is that the one that visually looks like the screen is shattering? It's still the pieces forming up and then it makes the screen at the end. It might be the Victor or the Hitachi that I'm thinking of with that breaking glass kind of effect on it. But yeah, you know, I guess the visuals don't really matter here. I'm going to say that's like an A at least. I think that's A or S for me.

That's the best of the console one so far. Put it at A for now. I'm going to play the Victor. I can't remember which one's next. I think it's Victor. This is Victor. It's exactly the same sound. The difference is that the logo says V Saturn instead of Sega Saturn. And now, so I think that one we don't count because it sounds the same. i want to say the hitachi is different though the tachi one's different yeah so here it is this is the high saturn also quite good i

See, I don't like that one as much. I think it's, for what it's worth, I think it's the high Saturn BIOS that I use with the Mr. Core. I think that one is the most compatible. So here we go again. That one has some good business where the letters fly towards you. They're like extruded 3D letters and you fly between two rows of letters. And then it's a nice colorful logo. This is a good logo.

Okay. I don't like this sound as much. I think this is a D tier sound. Probably C or D for me. Wow. I was going to suggest a B maybe. Wow. Hit me one more time with it. Okay. You want it one more time? I can give you one more time. Deserves consideration.

I think there's just too much stuff going on. It's got some alien twinges at the beginning, and then it's like, oh, we got to get some chimes in here. The brand is chimes, but the chimes in. I guess I could see that. I don't know. I'm not feeling it. Yeah, okay. How about a C for now? C is good. I can do a C. Okay. We did not rank the victor, so. There's no vector for victor, sadly. that's all of the saturn sounds then okay so that means we got saturn uh japanese the stock japan is an a

The high Saturn and the U S Saturn are both C's. Yeah, that sounds right. And Nintendo, it should be pointed out. I mean, well, it was a cartridge system. There kind of wasn't really a boot animation to boot because there was no BIOS to boot. So I guess, I guess N64 gets a pass here.

for what it's worth. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. Not to start the show with the showstopper, but if we're doing windows in chronological order, it's 95 next. Yeah, this is, we don't even need to listen to it. You know what? Never hurts, though. Absolutely not. I'm just typing it under S already, though. Yeah, that's right. Whatever they paid Brian Eno, that money did not go to waste. It's just amazing to me that it's such a crappy version. That is the...

Second or third or maybe number one thing I wanted to come in here and say about this. It is fucking criminal that Microsoft has never released a higher quality version of that file. Yeah, right. Well, why does it have hiss? It's a digital file. Well, it's low. It's very low quality. I meant to. This is it's been a busy month.

Getting content ready for the holidays here. But I meant to go download Windows 95 ISO and pull the actual WAV file from it to double check. But my memory of that file is that it is at best like 22 kilohertz 8-bit audio. It's really, really lo-fi. It might be 11 kilohertz, but this was pre audio compression, you know, like this was pre, I mean, it existed in academic contexts, but like in terms of like end user facing.

audio compression i mean that's still several years before mp3s and mp i've said this many times my first mp3 was an mp2 my first mp3 was also an mp2 but

Look, they had room for a buddy, for a Weezer video and what's her name? Those sound like shit too, though. Edie Burkell, but those also sound bad. And that was on the CD. That's true. It was on the CD. This is something that needed to... fit on floppy disks and also fit into memory at boot and just not be super low in power high impact i mean i guess we're talking about a time when machines had like to get two megabytes of ram four megabytes of ram so

And slow CPUs, which, you know, that also matters. But yes, they absolutely should have put out a higher quality version of this thing since then. It is really shitty just from a computer history standpoint. It's really shitty that they have not done so. I wonder if they have it. Yeah, that's entirely possible. Because a lot of this era, famously, some of the masters for these are lost or missing, or the way they generated them is impossible to recreate now.

I mean, it's possible that Eno still has it in some form. I don't know what his workflow and his archiving practices are like, but have you ever read his comments on making this thing? No. He's talked about how creatively invigorating it was to make this.

I think he said he composed 80 something pieces for this before he settled on. Wow. The one to turn in. He, I think I don't have the quote in front of me, but it's effectively he had like, he was, he was like kind of a creative log jam on whatever album he was working on at the time. Yeah.

And he had to take a break from that to do this job for Microsoft. And he said his head like exploded with creativity because composing three seconds of music was such a novel challenge. I can see that, right? Kind of like making something that felt like a complete.

beginning, middle, and end in three seconds was so off beat for what he normally did that he loved the process and just made dozens of these things. And also, boy, would it be cool to hear some of those other attempts. I would love to hear the other ones, yeah. Why don't you like... pepper it in here a couple more times while we're wrapping up on it. Yeah. Uh, like there's just, there is an ineffable quality to it. It's like, I don't even know how to, I mean, I guess that's.

Point of something being ineffable is you can't really describe it, but there's, there's something like, it's not exactly optimistic, but it's a little bit like forward looking and like kind of implies future potential and like. I'm kind of mixing this with the cloud imagery that was all over the Windows 95 packaging and wallpaper and stuff. That's it. There's a bit of a head in the clouds quality to this.

The thing about it is it's the amuse-bouche for Windows. That's what all these sounds are. These are the amuse-bouche for your device. You're getting that first little taste. And we came from this. And we went to this. It's good. It's good and like weirdly tasteful maybe for Microsoft of the era. And well, again, even though the sound quality is crap and it had hiss and all this other technical stuff that's bad about it.

It still sounds really freaking like it sounds like something you've never heard before. Yep. Which was kind of amazing. Now, I kind of want to do the Windows NT one here at the same time because the NT4. And I think 98, they might share the same one. Maybe NT4 is a different one. I can't remember. Real quick before you play it, I will just say you can find no end of YouTube videos of people trying to recreate the Windows 95 sound perfectly in modern software.

And like, it's cool to hear it in that, in high fidelity, but nobody has ever gotten it pitch perfect a hundred percent to my ear. Like several of them that I've heard are like kind of 95, 98% there, but there's always. One little thing or two that just something about the timing or the tone of the instrumentation is just never quite there. None of them have the juice. You want to hear NT4? Yeah. You've probably never heard this one before. Oh, I ran NT4 for a fair amount of time.

okay so here we go it's not bad it may be a little overwrought to me it's very industrial Yeah, kind of. There's just sort of a lot going on there. I like that bomb. There's some nice stuff in there for sure. Not that visuals matter too much here, but didn't NT 4.0 have like that nighttime sky motif to Windows 95 starry daytime sky, right? Look, it was for serious work. They were dark mode people. Right.

like it didn't have that little like starry night back like so yeah graphic when you logged in the the logo was darker generally speaking too sorry i didn't mean to play it again there but yes that one's okay that's like a b for me i think oh best I don't think that makes an A for me. Wow. Even with these chimes at the end, these chimes are pretty good. Let's hear it one more time. I'll give you the whole thing.

You know, you're kind of right. Also, it kind of has an indescribable karaoke vibe to it. Okay. It's like, hey, we paid Brian Eno a boatload of money to make this first one. And now Steve over in accounting, he has a keyboard in some sense. Just do that again, but make it a little darker. This is going to be a common theme for subsequent Windows startup sounds.

There's a couple of bangers in there. They're not all bad, to be clear. Some of them are pretty good, but that's what almost all of them, every single one as we get through them, I think we will find are all just like that Brian Eno one, but not as good. They're all going for the same thing. Yeah.

and they never even get close this is right if b feels right i'm okay with that you want to jump okay so we got two s rankings right now mac and original macintosh sound and windows 95 this is utterly predictable PlayStation, Windows 3.1, and Saturn Japan in A. I don't know about that Windows 3.1 one. I feel like it's waning here. B tier is the M1 current Mac sound, the PS5 sound, and Windows NT4. C is Windows 3.1, Saturn US, and Hitachi Saturn Japan. And then D is the Apple E-Mate, which...

I think the E-Mate is only being considered, so we have something to put under D so far. Oh, there's more. Trust me, there's more Ds coming. Okay.

So we're back to consoles. I'm going to argue, well, no, that's a lot. I was going to say maybe we should do all the consoles from this generation in a block here. We can. I'm down for that. But that is Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, and Xbox. I mean, I would say this is the golden age of console startup sounds.

Yeah, this is the pinnacle as far as I'm concerned. PS1 and Saturn are great, but they were really going for it at this time. And boot up animations. Dreamcast came out first, so let's start there. Oh, Dreamcast first? I was going to do Xbox first. No, no, that was the last one that came out.

Oh. Here's Dreamcast coming in. Fuck, man. Listen to the dripping. That is an instant S tier to me. It's so moody and atmospheric. You see, I came into this thinking it was going to be hard to beat the GameCube, and that's a banger. Yeah. Conscious of maybe not giving out too many S's here too willy nilly. You know what? Here's the thing though. Because GameCube is also absolutely killer. But anyway, go on. Like, hold on.

I hadn't thought about the Dreamcast boot-up sound in 10 or 15 years at this point, probably. It's been a while since I turned on a Dreamcast, but I forgot how good that is. I was going to say, the other thing that's happening here, and we're not getting it on the podcast because the podcast is unfortunately mono, but these are also stereo and have good...

I feel like the Dreamcast one and the GameCube one both have some binaral business going on so that you get the left and the right and it feels real weird in your ear holes. It's pretty good. This is an S for me, 100%. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah. impossible to beat it sets up it's like the problem actually if you want to knock this one the problem is it sets a mood and a tone that the console cannot live up to

Nothing on the console is as good as this sound. You're going to get some angry letters about that. Look, Shenmue is not as good as this. I'm sorry, Brad. Well, I mean... I love my Dreamcast, right? Dreamcast is a great console. I hooked it up so that we could play Samba Demi Go a few weeks ago. I played Crazy Taxi within the last two years. It's an all-timer. Choo-choo Rocket, perhaps? Choo-choo Rocket's fucking great.

But like that sound, the sound is, there's a fidelity mismatch in the contract with the audience that this sound is better than anything else they did. Again, I'm just going to decline to comment. Yeah, it's really good. Okay, so which one do you want to do? Is PlayStation 2 next? Is that chronological? They're in the dock in the order they came out. Okay, so here's the PS2.

I'm torn on this one because it might be my favorite console boot-up. Now that I'm saying this, I'm second-guessing myself. It's up there among my favorite console boot-ups. You know that... Does it do the thing again where it only does the PlayStation logo if the disc is in? In this case, the sound, like the disc startup sound, like the you have put in valid software sound is just that little boop at the end. Boop at the end, okay.

It's when the PlayStation 2 logo appears on the screen. It's just that tiny little singer sound at the end. This one's real harsh for me. This initial chime stuff here. I think, yeah, it is pretty harsh hearing it in headphones without. The visual, I think I think it works super well with the visual, but I know we're not really considering that here. I mean, I'm open to considering visuals, but are you watching a video? I can just call these to mind because I.

I'm watching videos because I'm not super familiar with a lot of these. I have done nothing with my life but play video games, but this isn't really germane, but I love dropping random facts that the visual you get, those columns that are kind of emerging out of the ether.

are programmatic based on, I don't, I'd have to look up the factors, but I think it's like, I want to say it's like reading your memory card and those are, it's like the blocks stored on your memory cards. They're not right. I don't think the representations of storage as such, but it's more like,

pulling stats from some of your stuff. I'd have to follow up on this to really say for sure, but I distinctly remember reading that those columns are generated on the fly based on unique data on your PS2. This one's a C, I think, for me. It's a rad. detail, but it doesn't really factor into the sound ranking on an audio podcast, I suppose. Yeah, I think the sound is, I don't think this is anywhere near as good as the Dreamcast sound.

Maybe even sub-PS5 sound. C seems harsh to me. Play it one more time. Yeah. I think the best part of it's that whoosh. It doesn't have any of the mood or grandeur that the Dreamcast want. Listen to this. Play Dreamcast again. What are all those drips? Is it leaking in here? I don't know. I'm curious. I have questions. Oh, I didn't mean to play it again. Shoot. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's really good. I did Google around real quick.

It seems a bit mixed, but generally, like, okay, here's one site. The amount of towers indicate how many games you've saved and the height of the towers, how long you've played them. Wow. Others are just saying it's how many save games you have on the memory cards. But the fact that those are dynamic based on play data, I think, is incredibly rad. But again, doesn't really matter here. I miss the days when...

Consoles weren't necessarily internet connected, so that didn't feel like a huge invasion of privacy to collect that data. And it's just a cool thing that has happened because of the way you play your games. It pains me to say it, but is this a C? I think this is a C, man. I could see a B. I don't... Look. The PS2 is a very cool console, and that, again, is one of my favorite console boot-ups, but I feel like the sound in a vacuum is maybe not the best. Now, if we want to hear...

You want to hear a banger sound? Oh, yeah. I've got three options for you. Well, two were just for funsies, but go ahead. Two of them are real.

I don't know. I know they're all real. I'm just like two of them are just fun peculiarities. Anyway, go ahead. Weird stuff. It's the GameCube. Go ahead and play the GameCube. Now, I'm just going to say this again. Visuals don't matter here, but this is the single best union of visuals and sound on this entire list. I think that's probably right. Like the sounds perfectly track that thing unfolding on the screen and the whole.

way the logo folds out at the end like it's just it's a great sound and then you're like hey it's a g it makes a g and it's made of cubes this is right on the nose and it's such whimsy listen to this again

Yep. I mean, this is prime Nintendo having fun with its product era. And... like we're not talking about the videos but like the way that the last cube smacks into place and the whole object moves and it's like it's clear that the people who did the animation are not just good computer animators but actually understand 2d animation and a bunch of other stuff

because of the way the whole thing warps is is spectacular yep it's great um this is an instant s tier game yes this is just just just an s yeah uh now there's two other alts i don't think we should rank these but i think they're These happened when you held down buttons on the controllers, is that right? Yes, there were basically hidden alternate sounds for this thing. Okay, so this is when you hold down one button on one controller. Yep.

There it is. I mean, it's pretty good. It's just dumb. The kid laughing at the end, it really sells it. I never knew this. This is not a thing I knew. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was a fun. We would do that in the GameSpot office here and there. Play that again. Is there a dog barking in there? There's squeaks for sure. There's a boing or two.

It sounds kind of sounds like a like a computerized like puppy barking. There's a spring. I think it's a kid. Well, there's definitely the child at the end. Yeah. That sounds like a dog in a video game barking to me, but anyway. Oh, to me, the squeaks sound like squeaky clown shoes. Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. All right. And then we've got the samurai one. Yeah. Then this is if you had four controllers, which I didn't know anybody who had four controllers.

That one's also pretty great. The warm when the cube hits the G is quite good. Yep. You know, I'm fine with not ranking these, though. I think those are a fun goof, a fun Easter egg. i think novelty we have to uh you look we have we have to hold the line somewhere you know yep agreed all right okay then the last one for this generation is the original xbox the xbox one

Arabic, not the Xbox. Yes. The OG Xbox is usually the best way I can think to describe it these days. Thanks, Microsoft. Yeah, green and a bad logo. Here we go. Yeah, I'm much like the PS2. This is a sound that evokes what's happening on the screen very well, but I don't think is very good as a sound on its own. Yeah, I agree. I think this may be even a D. I don't love this one. I'm going to play it again.

I could see it. For people who don't know, you're effectively seeing kind of like a. giant green nuclear reactor that is it's like a blob yeah implied to be inside of your super powerful xbox and i'd like for what it's worth i like the chimes at the end i think the chimes are the best part that's easily the best part

All of the machine sounds at the beginning are not what I want to hear every time I turn on. There's some bubbly, squishy stuff in there as well. Yeah. Which is weird. Yeah, I'm fine with this at a D. Like they needed a misphonia mode for this thing. Yeah. Okay, so what is this? Fourth generation consoles? Fifth generation consoles? We do not use generational numbers for consoles here. Oh, we don't. Okay. Those are fake.

Oh, good to know. Those don't mean anything. So these are 128-bit consoles. Yeah, there you go. Now you are designating correctly. Yeah. Windows 98? Yeah, we can go up to Windows 98. This might be the same as... similar to the nt4 one i think i can't remember i thought i remembered 98 having its own thing i think you're actually i think you're right as i as i look at the picture now my brain i'm closing tabs uh here's windows 98.

Just nowhere near the 95 one. It's got no juice. It's the most milquetoast sound they've ever made, I think. I think I prefer ta-da to this. Oh, definitely. I mean, that goes without saying. It's not bad. It's just kind of generic.

Do you know what the first thing I did when I installed Windows 98 and I heard this was? Did you replace it with Windows 95? I went and downloaded the Windows 95 when I put it on here instead. Good. Yeah. This is a D. Solid D for me. Man, really? Fuck them. I was going to put it at a C, but. They took art.

This is like they looked at the Mona Lisa and then they were like, you know what? I can do this. And they drew an XKCD. Yeah, sure. Okay. You know, just in the spirit of having a more balanced tier list, I'd sure I'll put that at a D. It's about hot takes. And probably just move on from there. Yeah, that seems like the right choice. The less said, the better. Should we maybe do a few more Windows here since we burned through a bunch of console? We can do some. You want to hit a Windows ME?

Uh, sure. Or Millennium Edition? Sure. Who doesn't want to hear the Windows ME startup sound? This is the sound that like 18 people have heard because nobody bought this. Yeah, here we go. The secret of this one is this one's pretty good. It's not bad. It sounds a little khakis to me. It's a little bit... I mean...

Look, Dockers were the official pants of Microsoft at this point. It's a little bit nerdy business, casual Microsoft style kind of thing to me. Have you ever watched any of those videos, like the corporate? like it in a true 3000 presents. It's like, it's got, it's got definitely got that vibe. Sure. The piano makes it pleasant.

Like it's got a pleasant vibe to it. It's just a little bit, uh, I don't know what's milk toast. Yeah. Bland. Yeah. I could see it at a C, but I think it's better. I think it's better than, uh, i i think it's better than a c i think this is the one place this is the one good thing windows me has going for it yeah yeah and this sound pretty good yeah okay i think this is a b for me really I think this is a good one. You want to play it again? I don't know.

When we've both used words like bland and boring, I'm not sure that that rises to B exactly. But look, it's hopeful and bland. That's like, this is like, what's the band? what's the right band for this it's this is this is like the gin blossoms of windows startup sounds sure sure gin blossoms are a b they're not a they're not a c they're not good nobody's gonna say yeah the gin blossoms are my favorite band

But like every Jim Boston song comes on, you kind of bop your head and you sing along to it. Someone is enraged right now. Look, if people don't scream at their radios during tier lists, then we're doing it wrong. I suppose that's a fair point. Should we try to get up through XP? Hmm. Maybe we should try to get up through XP here. Yeah, we can do that. Kind of going in eras of stuff here.

Yeah, it's hard to believe this was all like a five-year period. I know. It's crazy to think how fast new Windows releases came out back then. Well, it's because they realized that if they did one every year, they could make way more money for people. They sure did. But also computers were getting...

Rapidly better, you know, like everything was improving very quickly back then. Also true. Okay, so this is Windows 2000 Professional, built on NT technology. Yep, they find Windows. Hang on. Hang on. No, this is a solid beat here, I think. Hang on, can you play that ME one again? Yeah, you want to hear that ME? Why would you want to hear that ME one again? I thought you didn't like it. I thought it was bland. I need to compare and contrast here. Are they literally the same?

They're exactly the same. Hmm. Maybe we should move it up a notch. What? I just happen to. I like when... Windows 2000 is one of the best Windowses. I have very fond memories of Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was fantastic unless you had two CPUs. Yeah, I certainly did not have that problem. But I was very, somebody who... tried to run NT4 for a long time and how spotty compatibility was on that.

Getting the NT kernel in a much more stable and robust and sort of consumer focused version of. With full DirectX. It was great. Full DirectX. You could play all the games like 2000 was rad. Uh-huh. It was really good. It was the beginning of it. It was the precursor to Windows XP. I don't remember this one at all. Windows 2000 is better than Windows XP. Wow. It just doesn't have that Aqua though. It just is.

Look, go back to your gray taskbar. Remember the nostalgia thing I mentioned with the PlayStation startup sound? That shit is out of control for Windows XP. Look, I'd have to look at population numbers. I mean, isn't it kind of an established fact? Like the millennial generation, there was a pretty big population surge, kind of like there was with the boomers. I mean, they're the children of boomers, right?

Well, children, boomers, and Gen X, yeah. I just have to assume there are a lot of people who were 12 when Windows XP came out because the number of people who you will see going that the Windows XP GUI was peak computing is endless. I think people have got a bizarre love for Windows XP that I don't quite understand. Here's the other thing about Windows XP is it lasted a really long time. Yeah, that's probably part of it. Sure.

Like, if you think about it, it released in, what, 2001? Yeah, and then they'd stuck around through multiple service packs, and also Vista was a disaster, so people probably kept using it longer than expected. And they didn't EOL it for ages, yeah. But also I think a lot of people were coming of age and spending a lot of time on the family computer around the time that XP was big. It was designed to be friendly looking. It had bright colors.

We'll queue it up then. Nothing wrong with a little blue in your OS. If we're talking friendly, let's have it. Okay, that's a good startup sound. That's a banger. It's short. It's to the point. That's an A for me. That is like the closest they probably ever got to the Eno again. Yeah, it's super good. It's orchestral. It is somewhat grandiose.

there's a rising rising it's an up the whole thing is an up it sounds like going up yeah yeah and it also has hints of blue which is themed appropriately for the whole thing you don't like blue i hate the xp i hate really gooey i hate it man wow I guess I didn't know you in an XP time frame. I ran XP like everybody else. Actually, didn't XP still give you the option to revert to the 195 style? Yeah, you could do the gray one still. I think I 100% did that.

That seems right. Actually, that was also in the era. I found some old desktop screenshots. That was also the era when I was like doing DLL stuff to make my windows look like a Mac at that time. Oh God. So anyway, anyway. Should I do one more just for good measure just because it's good? Yeah. Why is this not an S? I don't think it's quite there. Wow. It is like a slightly... less artistic version of the Eno one. I mean, it does still feel like Eno karaoke. If I go back and play the Eno one now.

You're going to hear the same tones and same themes. It's a little predictable. It's executed very well, but it's not like the Eno one surprises you and the Windows XP one does not surprise you. It just pleases to some degree. Like, that is interesting instrumentation. Those are interesting tonal choices. Like, again, that one surprises Windows XP1.

That's like, that's nothing I have not heard before. That's just strings and piano and stuff like that. It's not, it's not like, it's not me asking like, what kind of piano is Eno playing there? That sounds weird. Yeah, one sounds otherworldly, and one sounds like something you'd hear in an elevator. Yeah, yeah, but it's very good for that. Yeah, it's good elevator music, but still elevator music. Sure, yeah.

Okay, let's call it there for this week. We will be back and finish the other half of this next week. But before we get out of here, I'm going to read the current tier list as it stands for posterity at S, S tier. Macintosh, Windows 95, Dreamcast, and GameCube. A, PlayStation 1, Windows 3.1, Saturn, Japan, the Japanese Saturn, and Windows XP. B tier. The M1, Macintosh, PlayStation 5, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows ME slash Windows 2000. At C, Windows 3.11. That's Windows for work roots.

the American Saturn, the Hitachi High Saturn, the PlayStation 2, and then at the D tier, the E-Mate, the Xbox original, and Windows 98. And that'll be a wrap for 2025. I suppose it will, but not for our tier list, which will continue into next week. I can't believe where we ended up. It's just absolutely incredible.

These are some hot placements, hot takes. I know that nobody's going to have any comments or thoughts about what we've said here. But if they do, and they're patrons, they can go to the Discord.

and they can go to the current episode channel and they there'll be a thread for this one and they can just say hey whatever you want we'll we'll read it we'll see it we'll comment we'll come back we'll chat about it maybe and uh we'd love to know what you think now the bad news is next week's episode's already recorded So anything you say, it's just screaming into the void, but that's fine. We're still going to listen to it. Just going to have to live with it. Sorry. Yep. That's how it goes.

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uh look there have been a bunch of weird conversations this week about docker containers and nix os and all these other things that i was fire alarms yeah fire yeah like what the appropriate reaction when a fire alarm in your building goes off um And so on and so forth. Again, it's patreon.com slash techpod where for $5 a month, you get access to all this and the monthly patron exclusive episode, which will be recorded after this episode is up probably.

Maybe not. I don't know. We'll see. And we might actually take the feedback from this episode into that episode. You never know. It's anything possible. Time is just looping in on itself here at the end of all things. I mean, sorry, at the end of 2025.

yeah no all things that's next week 2025 ends this week um but yeah so after you go to patreon.com slash tech bod uh you can sign up and As always, thanks to everybody who supports the show. We are listener supported. So without you all, we wouldn't be here. But a very special thank you goes to our executive producer, to your patrons, including James Kamek, David Allen, Bunny Jerk, Jordan Lippet. Andrew Slosky, nextlander.net, it's .com. True. Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

And Jason Lee, thank you also so much. Yes, thank you. And happy holidays to all. Well, hold on. I got to thank the associate producer to your patrons as well, because it's the end of the month and the end of the year, I guess. But more importantly, the end of the month. So. Thanks to Graham Banks, Thomas Shea, Jad Rita, P. Tibbs, Steve Lin, Tom Fuller, Just Associate Wedge, Nathan Phelps, Ben Tallman, Tom Hilton, Andre M. Burke P., Andrew Dicey-Schuldice, and Alejandro Navarro.

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