New York, rebuilt in sound

Fifteen everyday sounds of New York, rebuilt from scratch in your browser: the subway, the sirens, the cabs, the 3 a.m. car alarm. Ten of them are played to you, and you name each one.

Ranks, from lowest to highest: Tourist, Visitor, Transplant, Local, Native, Real New Yorker.

The sounds of New York

• Subway door chime. Two notes, then “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.” The newer trains play it at every stop.
• Subway wheels screeching on a curve. On tight curves like the one at Union Square, steel wheels grind against the rail and scream.
• Express train roaring through a station. Express trains skip the local stops and roar through them at full speed.
• MTA bus kneeling. Buses “kneel”, letting out air to lower the front step, with a hiss and a beeping alarm.
• Staten Island Ferry horn. The Staten Island Ferry is free, runs all night, and sounds its deep horn every time it leaves Whitehall.
• Taxis honking in gridlock. Honking without an emergency can get you a $350 fine in New York. Nobody seems to have heard.
• Doorman whistling for a cab. Doormen hail yellow cabs with a whistle that cuts through the traffic.
• FDNY fire truck. FDNY engines still run the mechanical Federal Q, a motor-driven rotor that winds up into a howl.
• NYPD siren. NYPD cars switch from a wail to a fast yelp, and many add the Rumbler, a low siren you feel in your chest.
• Car alarm at 3 a.m.. Car alarms cycle through the same fixed set of sounds. Nobody has ever checked on one. It just wakes up the block.
• Jackhammer tearing up the street. Somewhere in New York a street is always being dug up.
• Garbage truck before dawn. Private carters collect commercial trash overnight, so the backup beeper is a sound of the small hours.
• Bucket drummers. Bucket drummers play upturned plastic pails in Times Square and in subway passageways.
• Pickup basketball at West 4th. The court at West 4th Street, known as “The Cage”, is famous for its fierce pickup games.
• Ice-cream truck. Ice-cream trucks park with the generator running and loop their tinny jingle all summer long.

How the sounds are made

None of the sounds are recordings. Each one is rebuilt with the Web Audio API in your browser and tuned against field recordings. Katman started as a research instrument, the Lab, which runs 3AFC and ABX listening tests on what a sound memory keeps when the recording is gone.

Play New York (needs JavaScript and sound). Other cities: İstanbul.