How every LidShutter sound is made in code

LidShutter has 22 sounds, and none of them is a recording. There are no audio files in the app at all. Every sound is built from scratch, in code, the moment it plays.

Building a shutter from tiny clicks

The Rolling Shutter sound starts as a stream of short metallic clicks that speed up and rise in pitch, like a shutter gathering speed as it rolls. Under them, a soft tone glides upward. At the top comes a deep “ka-chunk”, and then a little marimba “ding”.

A small toolbox of building blocks

Most sounds are made from the same handful of pieces, combined in different ways:

• Glides: a tone that slides between two pitches, for whooshes, chirps and pops.
• Marimba notes: a warm tone with a bright overtone, for dings and fanfares.
• Bubbles: a quick upward sweep that sounds like a water drop.
• Filtered noise: shaped hiss for wind, waves, rain and thunder.
• Wobbles: a tone with vibrato, for springs and rubber ducks.

Why make sounds this way?

Sounds made in code are tiny, have nothing to license, and are created in a few milliseconds. They also let LidShutter do things a recording can’t, like making a sound louder past 100% with a soft limiter so it stays clean.

You can hear every one of them on the LidShutter homepage. The website plays them with the same recipes the app uses.