Question about sound effects on Price is Right

[1DC]

Now that the sound effects are automated instead of keyed by the "Sound effects lady", how exactly does that work?

[GobGlom]

They've probably combined sound effects buttons and game control into the operational software used to control games and one-bids so one operator does it all.
For games that aren't computer controlled, they probably have a "hot key" pad on screen for the operator to hit the effects as needed.

Just a guess.

[RedWing512]

They've probably combined sound effects buttons and game control into the operational software used to control games and one-bids so one operator does it all.
For games that aren't computer controlled, they probably have a "hot key" pad on screen for the operator to hit the effects as needed.

Just a guess.

I've wondered, too, about the sound effects now and how they work. If what you say is true, then the term "automated" is a misnomer. The process was just handed to another staff member.

[Teddy]

I used to think that those sounds were always automated, as you'd never see the man (or woman, as was the case on TPIR from the at least mid-90s until Season 43) hit the buttons to activate them. Case in point: Family Feud and Wheel of Fortune. On the former show, the clang and buzzer would be cued up for immediate reveals of answers that were and were not in the survey, respectively. On the latter show, the same was true of the ding for letter reveals, the buzzer for wrong letters, and the slide whistle for any spins that landed on Bankrupt. Just my two cents...

[blozier2006]

Case in point: [...] and Wheel of Fortune. [...] On the latter show, the same was true of the ding for letter reveals, the buzzer for wrong letters, and the slide whistle for any spins that landed on Bankrupt. Just my two cents...

Actually, there's a few episodes from the 1980s where there's some kind of malfunction or error with the board, since the trilons didn't always light up in sync with the dings.

[JKVisFX]

I'm sure it has been updated since but, a few years ago when I got a backstage tour, all of the sound FX were loaded up on a sampling keyboard synthesizer with each key labeled with masking tape. It was a pretty old sampler as I recall too, a good ten-plus years old (which is pretty ancient in synth terms).

If I were setting up their SFX rig today, I would have all of the music cues and SFX loaded into something like Ableton Live or NI Kontact running on a MacBook Pro and an Ableton Push or similar type of MIDI controller controlling it.