For many of us, one of the best things in pinball is ripping a spinner that has a rewarding sound effect!

It would be interesting to get everyone's opinions on which games they think have either one of the "Best" or "Worst" spinner sounds, and why.

For purposes of this discussion, I consider:

Best = dynamic, exciting / energizing, satisfying
Worst = lame/boring, unsatisfying, or annoying

I'll start us off with:

Best = Black Knight - A lit BK spinner is one of my favorite sounds in pinball, especially when you wrap it over the top of the high frequencies back down to the low in one shot. Never gets old! Love those old 80's Williams algorithmic sound effects!

Worst = Ripley's Believe It or Not! - Annoying one-dimensional spinner sound that grates on my nerves, such a missed opportunity, I avoid hitting it.

Hey! I used to own that game... I actually liked the teeth chattering from the spinner, so surprising if you haven't played it.

I get why it's not for everyone though.

I need to finish putting the playfield back together on my FG (recently had an overlay applied) so I can play it! Sooo looking forward to it!

It's pretty interesting that the most "Best" mentions so far are for older early SS and EM games. I think it's due to the dynamic nature of the early SS algorithmic sounds, vs just repeating the same digital sample in more modern games, and possibly to the fact the spinners were major gameplay elements in those games vs their often reduced role in more complex newer games.

I wish modern games would make more of an effort to make the spinner sounds more dynamic so it's not just the same sound repeated, same pitch, etc. everytime. I think guys like David Thiel are starting to leverage more powerful sound hw on current games to make the sounds much more dynamic, though I haven't had much first-hand experience with his work to comment on how successful he has been. Anyone experienced his work first-hand? Are the spinner sounds dynamic and awesome?

Seriously?? I've played it and never noticed that!

That's a friggin' pinball crime! Might as well forget to put the ball in the game...

I guess it probably depends on the overall soundscape/aural context in the game. If a game only plays bell sounds, a really fast bell sound is super cool!

But if a game is a barraging you with a storm of interesting sounds all the time, hard for the spinner to standout, even if it on its own it sounds good (F-14?).