A two-person sound design studio, Starling, has developed a way to replace the harsh, universally disliked beep of microwave ovens without changing any hardware. Founders Joel Corelitz and Colin Coogan, who have previously worked with clients such as Sony, Microsoft, Netflix and Ford, realised that the existing microcontroller and cheap piezoelectric buzzer found in nearly all microwaves can be reprogrammed with new code to produce far more pleasant sounds, since manufacturers have stuck with unpleasant beeps largely to keep costs down.

Almost all microwaves rely on passive piezoelectric buzzers, cheap membrane-based components first mass-produced by Japanese manufacturers in the 1970s, which typically only allow adjustment of a beep's frequency and duration. Using software they built called Microwave Sound Bench, Corelitz and Coogan demonstrated alternatives including trills, cartoonish frequency sweeps, arpeggios and video-game-like sequences, all generated using the same existing chips and buzzers, meaning manufacturers could adopt friendlier sounds purely through a software update.