Annoying "dun dun dun" sound on OS 5.0

[SC9530]

Notice: While reading keep in mind I probably gave too much information, resulting in several lengthy posts. It's only meant to be read to the extent that you get the basic idea. Unless of course you care about my little rants, which you may not.

Hi everyone. I know i'm new here. It wasn't my intention for my first post to be about a problem. I plan to participate every once in a while.

I have a BlackBerry Storm 9530 with OS 5.0.0.328. I forget if I had this problem when it still had 4.7. I didn't have the old OS for very long so I can't confirm whether or not it had the same problem.

It's hard to categorize what i'm talking about. It is indeed a problem and annoyance, but it also relates to the OS itself and maybe it's normal. I just know I hate it whatever it is.

I almost always have my Sound Profile on Normal and leave it unchanged most of the time, but once in a while it'll choose not to use the sounds I have set for certain events. It doesn't just happen for any one thing. It seems to mostly play during the alarm, and events set on the calendar. If I recall, it has also done it when the phone was supposed to be ringing.

It's this annoying "dun dun dun" sound. I know how I describe it sounds silly, but it's nothing to laugh about. It's a pattern of three same-pitch sounds. It's not high nor low, kinda normal pitch I guess. That's all I can think of to describe it. I would offer a recording, but it just seems to happen when it feels like it. It's not very loud either, so it has actually been the source of some big problems and setbacks on my part.

You see, I rely on my BlackBerry to alert me of things, like if I set an alarm I want it to be how I set it, loud and alerting to interupt whatever i'm doing. This "dun dun dun" sound just seems to surfance out of nowhere. I've set my alarm at night, then failed to wake several mornings in the past just because it chooses to play "dun dun dun.... dun dun dun..... dun dun dun..." etc. instead of the standard loud alarm sound. Needless to say I can't find this sound anywhere in my device. My theory is that it's a generic sound that was used in development of the BlackBerry for when no sound exists. This is just my theory, there's no evidence to support that, but I was sure that out of all the people around here, the ones that are focused on the OS itself would know if such a sound is hiding in the code.

So far I have been unable to reproduce this sound. I've had the blackberry in my pocket before, with the lock thing on, and an alarm set to tell me when I need to leave somewhere, and it just chose to do "dun dun dun" over and over and I was looking around thinking it was something of someone else's and I ended up being late because obviously that was an unfamiliar sound to me, one that I knew my phone couldn't make, or so I thought..

Just earlier I was entering some contact information for someone and one of my calendar event reminders came up to interupt me and I heard "dun dun dun".

I think i've made my point with the stories I told. The point being that it can happen under any condition when I least expect it. If I hear it again you can bet i'm going to do my best to record that sound. I was really hoping someone around here would know the cause and how to stop it from doing that. It doesn't happen a lot, but it happens enough for me to see it as a major flaw with the BlackBerry Storm. Is mine the only one that does this?

My theory that it could be a generic sound is based on the idea that maybe when the phone lags at all or is interupted at the very beginning of playing a system sound it plays that one, or that the memory is so low it can't call up the file. I've already dismantled that part of my theory though, my Application Memory is above 10mb.

Any solutions to this annoying sound problem would be greatly appreciated. Even if any of you don't know how to solve the problem, if you have had it happen to you or have encountered that sound when digging through OS code, I would be interested to know.

My BlackBerry already deletes e-mail and txt messages without my permission even though my settings say "Keep Forever" and the last thing I need is this sound problem to get me in trouble for not being places in time because the alarm won't wake me up like I set it to.

The rest of the text below is my opinion on other issues such as data loss. Let's focus on the sound problem, but you're welcome to reply to this too if you wish:

In my opinion RIM and the wireless providers should take responsibility for OR atleast warn people about the data loss that will likely happen under conditions they know about if it'll contradict any settings that are set specific ways. (I'm being mean I know, but this has me very frustrated) Especially because backing up with Desktop Manager, though preserves the data, you cannot view the contents without a third party application, just restore it to your device, right? I'll leave it at that though before this ends up being categorized as a rant rather than about the sound I mentioned...

I just think that a device meant for business should atleast be reliable in alerting you and preserving data (not deleting it without asking) on the device with a 100% success rate as long as the device stays charged. I'm irritated that you can't save the txt or e-mail to the 1gb on the device, or the 8gb SD. Why do they have to store that in the application memory? I may be wrong, but that is why it feels the need to delete that stuff sometimes, right?

Still.. let's consider this situation... "Hey do you have that text from our client last month? Our computers crashed and we lost all our customer data" "SURE! My BlackBerry has never let me down! The reason my boss counts on me is because i'm the one with the blackberry. one moment ............ WHERE IS IT? I KNOW IT WAS JUST HERE A WEEK AGO, I KNOW IT WAS... WHO WOULD DO THIS TO ME? WAS IT MY WIFE? SHE'S GOING TO HEAR FROM ME LATER" <- Precisely why a blackberry can get you fired and ruin your relationship, and cause loss of business for blackberry devices, lol!

Thanks again for reading. I look forward to your responses.

[jusdis]

Mine dun dun duns when its about to die.

Option» Advanced Options» Accessibility» Event Sounds.

Turn it off.

Try that.....

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[JRSCCivic98]

That's a long post for a first post. The dun dun dun sound happens when you're touching or typing on the screen. It's either an OS bug or something hardware limiting that RIM couldn't work out of the OS. It's been happening for as long as I remember. You can't do anything about it for now...

Also, your BB is deleting stuff because you're either low on memory or because you're deleting those items or filing them in subfolders on the email servers in question. Log into the BIS management site and change the settings for your accounts not to sync your item deletions wirelessly and you won't have that problem.

[SC9530]

Thanks for your reply.

That was a good suggestion, but when I went to see that setting, It was unfortunately already set to "off"...

Now that you mention the battery, I have heard it do the warning sound before when it's about to die. That's high pitch though, on my device anyway..

My battery was definitely full when I heard "dun dun dun".


Thanks for your attempt to help.. If only that setting was On so that I could turn it off, it seemed promising. Now that you mention the device about to die, My battery was actually full when it made that sound... that makes that sound even more mysterious. What could it mean.. I know the events are calling up the sound too, it's not like it means the signal was lost or anything either.. Oh! I've been in a call before, and when I lose the signal and the call is dropped it does a three part sound too. Except that sounds more like the one you hear before the operator speaks to say try your call again. Each tone for the call lost goes higher. That's more of a "daa daaa daaaa" though. The presence of the operator sound when the call is dropped does prove that the OS is hiding some secret sounds though. Why it chooses to randomly assign them to my events that have custom sounds set for already beyond me.


EDIT;
Reply to the second post I didn't see until I posted this:

Yeh, I tend to be a bit long with my messages I guess, heh.

Oh? So it happens when you're touching the screen? I guess if that's true then that's even when the device is locked, because I know I locked it when it's in my pocket, sometimes the touch screen reacts through material if you skin touches the material that's touching it. In that case it might be that. In some situations I have felt that I provide my BlackBerry better protection if the glass part is against me because my body is more cushion than anything hard that might hit my leg from the outside and possibly shatter the screen.

That's a very good explanation you gave me, you might be right about that, since I now know that i might try and see if I can make it do that, then I can be positive. I know for a fact my BlackBerry was across the room laying on the outer shell of my laptop away from me when it was doing the "dun dun dun" sound for my alarm clock. During that time I wasn't touching it. Hmm..... Still! I think you're onto something!


As for the memory, the only thing that ever gets low is the Application Memory, but I try to do the battery pull before it gets down to 0.0 mb. I can say without a doubt that I wasn't doing anything with the folders on e-mail servers. There has been times when I don't login to my real e-mail for a month or more and just see things from the blackberry. I am using a gmail account which gets the most of my mail. I don't manage them and usually just leave them in the inbox. When it uses pagination (i think that's the term) and puts the mail on the next page would that cause it to disappear?

I guess I have a few more things to look into. I'll post any other information I can find out, but for now i'm still welcoming any information anyone has for me on these issues.

[SueyChoy]

that sounds only plays for me when my phone is fully charged..

[SC9530]

I have finally managed to reproduce the sound. I made a recording of it for everyone who wants to know the precise sound i'm hearing.

I would like to thank JRSCCivic98 for helping put me on the right track. I can atleast reproduce the sound.

The attached mp3 has the sound that occurrs when the touch screen is being pressed in. I don't mean just touched, but pushed in where it clicks. If any system alerts such as a calendar event or an alarm goes off, it'll make this sound instead of the sound you have it set to make.

I haven't tested with any other button on the phone except for the call button held in when the alarm is triggered and it acted the same as when the SurePress clicking mechanism is pressed in. I tried just touching the screen and it doesn't happen like that. The screen has to be in the middle of being pressed when an alert comes up.

This is a bad flaw in my opinion. I'll tell you all what this means.... It's bad enough that it would happen if you're doing stuff on the phone, but when the screen is pressed in, as long as the SurePress screen is pressed in it will stay silent. So if for some reason it's in your pocket, if you're leaning wrong and the screen is being pressed in, it'll stay completely silent, that is until you move to where it's released or unless it somehow starts making noise anyway eventually. One interesting thing is that the SurePress screen can be pushed in and won't react this way if it doesn't detect your finger (in my theory it's only because the button remains disabled unless it can also detect your actual touch, test that on the Home Screen to see what I mean, by just pressing with a soft object or the top of your fingernail which isn't skin, but inside my pocket i've noticed it does usually feel my touch if it touches my leg from inside my pocket, or even sometimes touches the screen from outside my pocket against the material).

I would also like to point out this doesn't matter if your device is locked! I now know what to be careful for, I know what to expect of the device, but this isn't good. It's too bad because I thought the screen facing my body would be better protection for the screen getting hit by anything outside me, but it has a disadvantage.

And finally, the last thing I noticed during my testing, atleast with OS 5, is that it doesn't matter if the phone is locked, if the power button is held, even though it tells you the device is locked, by holding it, it still does the power off sleep state, where it won't recieve calls or alerts it and it's still technically on, but preserving power. This can be good in some cases, and it's probably unlikely that button would be pressed constantly for a couple seconds, but I still don't think I like that. I wouldn't be in that much of a hurry to turn my phone off that I wouldn't unlock it first.

The easiest way to reproduce this sound is to set the alarm to the next minute then hold down the click mechanism on the screen around the time it's going to go off, as long as it's pressed in when the alert comes up. If you hold it you'll notice it stays silent until you let go then it'll make the "dun dun dun" sound.

NOTE: The rest starts to get a bit off topic, the download for the sound mentioned at the bottom of this post, but read on if you want to hear about my OS 4.7 vs 5.0 opinion.

To conclude; It would be nice to know if there's anyone out there with 4.7 or any other OS version that this is a problem with too. I don't see why not, but there are some disadvantages of 5.0 vs 4.7 and this may be one of them (I doubt anyone else has stated this before, but that's my opinion). There are more good things than bad, but newer doesn't always improve everything. Sometimes some things become not as good.


BUT WAIT! Don't attack me yet for saying 5.0 has disadvantages to 4.7!

Before I upset the passionate BlackBerry fans with such strong words of disrespect i'm going to explain why I think that! There are things that I am a bit more picky about, little things that bother me. So not to seem like i'm only saying bad things, i'll outline some of the improvements they made too.


Advantages of OS 5:

• Momentum when scrolling, it'll keep going for a bit after giving it a push
• a bit more stable than 4.7
• Chat style txting (see the disadvantage of this in the next section)
• Looks cooler when starting up, instead of just being white with a constant hourglass and the blue loading bar at the bottom (not really an important feature but the newer one is a bit more polished and well designed)
• Clickable clock at the top of the home screen, and clickable alarm settings which I don't think were present in 4.7
• Easy to access sound profiles button on the top left of the home screen. I'm pretty sure that button wasn't there in 4.7
• I forget if the old OS could do this, but if you have a picture you can zoom in then when the picture is positioned and zoomed how you want it, you can open the menu and have it say "set as wallpaper" and only set that portion of the picture as the wallpaper. No manual image editing necessary.
• Midi support. It's always been there, but the Ring Tone browser they'd be invisible in, the only way in 4.7 I could listen is by making a draft e-mail then adding attachments and going to preview that way.
• Trust me, there's more, I just can't think of anything else at the moment.

Disadvantages of OS 5 (what 4.7 has that makes it better):

• Chat style txting (Why did I put this as both a disadvantage and an advantage? What if I don't like it? I wasn't happy with it when I got OS 5. It makes txt messages seem cheaper in my opinion, cheaper in quality I mean, which isn't necessarily so, but they should include the option for people to change to each-individual-message-gets-its-own-screen if they don't like the new way)
• They ruined my animated gif's! I used to view gif files centered nicely on the screen. When they added the "view actual size" option it made a frozen version of the gif, then when you animate it, it would jump to the corner. I believe they fixed this though! I don't know when, but I double checked this just now.. it seems fine..
• Volume controls during watching a video file used to be invisible before, you'd just hear it getting ouder. Some developer had the brilliant idea to be able to see how loud it is, great idea, but it was oversized and covers the video while it's playing, you can't see what's going on until it goes away. I'm then forced to start the video over to see what I missed.
• They don't allow midi looping. I can't remember if it could be done in 4.7, but you can't loop it when just listening.
• Low quality preview before allowing to view actual size, this helps with lag, i'll admit that, but it's more of a disadvantage, just remember the option is there to make it look better
• Simplified "Media" screen. I think it's cool that they let you choose what icons you can hide and such, but I also sorta liked the one with the big icon and name of whatever you're selecting in the middle of the screen.
• limitation of Blackberry in general: my old clam style phone could record the other person. It was a fun feature to make voice clips of a friend to remind them of fun times, blackberry disallows any kind of recording, not even personal voice notes (when I say doesn't allow, I mean during a call).
• limitation of BlackBerry in general: my old clam style phone i could hook to my PC and use it as a standard dialup internet modem or to send faxes, it takes minutes but works nicely, I haven't managed to get my blackberry to do this
• AND FINALLY! I can't stress enough how annoying THIS problem is... with OS 4.7 it would atleast always accept the charger. There are times when the device won't react at all and then come up saying the charger is incompatible. If I unplug it and plug it back in a couple times sometimes it recognizes it, or I let the error show then I try again. Sometimes I have to do a battery pull over it, just so it'll accept the charger, how lame is that? Ever since 5.0 I had this problem. You don't know how annoying it is when your battery bar is red and you really need to charge and it won't accept it. Then again.. maybe you do know?

I know there's no way I could've covered everything, but those are some things I can think of at the moment of writing this. Some of the disdvantages are things I have considered taking up with RIM, but I doubt they'd just listen to one picky person like me. I've wanted to see flash support and other such things, like being able to run Java applets on websites.. but really, i'm not THAT picky to be mad at RIM over it. There have been some other platforms that support flash though (such as Sega Dreamcast's Planet Web Browser -- Flash 3.0, but that was 10 years ago, I think only WebTV and PC's had that innovative support back then). I care more about the realistic features right now, like these little issues being fixed if they can be.

BlackBerry is a good device, but this sound flaw I mentioned and the few other things can be very annoying at times. I admit I am a bit picky with some of what I mentioned, but you can't blame me for being bothered by the "dun dun dun" sound and deleting your txt and e-mails without permission. As if it can really free up that much space by deleting that. It'll get some kb, but even if it resorted to wiping out all the e-mail it's highly unlikely it'll even free up another mb.

Follow-up to the above reply:

So this sound is also used for a full charge notification? Interesting.. I probably have my notification disabled. I'll consider testing that sometime.

[y2nicco]

Im not going to read the posts here in their entirety, as i dont have 2 hours to do so. I have noticed the sound when two alerts are going off at same time. For example, if i get an email as I am getting an sms, it does it. That is what i think based on my experience and process of elimination...

[SC9530]

I agree. There has been a lot of text produced in the last few posts (unfortunately like 90% of it by me..). I've tried to give as much information as I could.

If what you say is true, it answers my question about my alarm making that sound when I was nowhere near the phone, or when the phone rings with that sound.. I think someone sent me a txt and then called me about the same time and that may have done that.

It's good that we're finally getting somewhere, an understanding of the problem, and the causes of it. I had searched the forums with no luck of anyone else mentioning it.

It will be unfortunate if there's no solution. Worst case is we'll try to live with disadvantages, but at least there will be an awareness about it. I just thought of this, but after what you said, I'm thinking the device or OS can't support multiple sound streams.. I thought it was only for convenience when it stopped your music just to play an alert, but there might be more to that.. It disables audio files from playing while on the phone, and it also never plays alerts during listening to music.. Everything takes turns playing.

[valorian]

I listened to your sound file. I too get this sound. But for me it only happens when I get a notification from the Facebook app.

[tmpafford]

I get that same dun dun dun sound instead of the normal alert sound when I am sending a text and receive a text or email in the background.

[jwebste9]

Yes this happens to me when i am touching the screen of my storm and get a message at the same time it does the "dun dun dun" sound.

Considered posting about it aswell but had no idea how to explain in words what was happening

[The_Engine]

Lack of multi channel sound folks. Something maybe S3 will correct.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[SC9530]

I want to thank everyone who has replied so far. It has helped to prove some of my theories, and explain to me what's actually going on.

I would've never guessed that people experienced that sound for so many things though.

The_Engine is the first person that says something that specifically flows with my idea that maybe the device can't handle multiple sound streams. However, the issues still remain.. why would the alarm keep doing that? Pressing the button when the event comes up doesn't make a secondary sound. I have my key-press sounds disabled. I think there may be multiple circumstances that cause this sound besides just that.

I'm glad to know i'm not alone, but at the same time I am disappointed because that means others deal with this same problem, and I know what it's like to have it.

The only sloppy solution I can think of is to just keep the BlackBerry closer than usual without the speaker covered and pay close attention to if the device starts to make that instead of a standard sound. It would be nice if someone had a better idea. However, something tells me this won't be fixed until they release another OS and are aware of it. I wonder if RIM knows people have this issue. I might contact them and being sure. This seems like one of those things they might overlook. There's not normally any time when someone would want multiple sounds playing at once, it would just sound bad. At the very least they need to touch up what they're already doing to handle sounds.

This seems like a mixed issue to me, once again the button issue, and multiple sounds trying to play at once. Hearing all of your responses has me thinking..

I'm sorry that I wasn't any to provide anything but speculation in this post.

[Strakerc]

Posts too long to read, but isn't that just the sound whenever it has trouble playing the sound that is supposed to be played?

For example you have your ringtones stored on your SD card, so when an alert plays while your phone is plugged into a comp and Mass Storage Mode is enabled (ie the phone can't access the SD card) it plays that sound by default instead.

[SC9530]

You're not the only one to suggest that it's too long. I guess too much information is a bad thing too? Sorry, I shall learn from this.

I don't think I have ever had my phone plugged in long enough to get alerts or a call while in Mass Storage mode. That may be possible too. By the looks of it, it's just a sound that's used for all kinds of things. The most notable annoyances are conflicting sounds and when the button is clicked. Atleast there are finally logical causes! I was a bit worried that it just randomly happened because the phone was glitched. It turns out it is a glitch, but not an intermittent one, just one with certain causes.

Like I said in an earlier post, i've woken up in the morning, and I was nowhere near my phone, but I heard that the alarm clock was replaced by that sound repeating over and over again. In this case the phone wasn't plugged into USB, and the phone had at least a half charge or more.

In other words, I wasn't touching any buttons, it was sitting on a flat surface with nothing on the device, it wasn't plugged into USB, and the alarm was making the sound. Meaning the only cause I can think of is that it was caused by a conflicting sound.... It's too conicidental that an e-mail or txt would show up right as the alarm was triggering..

My guess is that my calendar event was in sync with my alarm time, and both triggered at once causing the conflict.. I'm going to try that! I'll get back to you guys in a bit.

No... I'm wrong.. I thought I was onto something, maybe it was a txt or e-mail then, clearly having an event reminder and the alarm land on the same minute didn't do it, unless i'm not doing something right. Does anyone else have an idea? I know I can rely on my alarm most of the time, but I worry about when that'll happen again.