How a Janet Jackson Song Killed Laptops for Nearly a Decade
In an astonishing tale of technological malice, it's revealed that the hit song "Rhythm Nation" by Janet Jackson was responsible for crashing laptops and hard drives for nearly a decade. The story begins with Raymond Chen, a Microsoft employee and blogger who uncovered the truth behind this bizarre phenomenon.
Chen related a story told to him by a colleague who had previously worked on the Windows XP team. It started when playing back "Rhythm Nation" over a laptop's speakers would crash the laptop. In fact, it could even crash nearby laptops as well. The staff at Microsoft tried to isolate the issue and eliminate other variables, leading them to conclude that it was the sound itself that was at fault.
Microsoft employees discovered that the song inadvertently hit the resonant frequencies of one of the components in 5,400-RPM hard drives used on laptops at the time. This vibration caused faults in the drive, resulting in read faults and ultimately crashing the laptop's operating system. The concept of resonant (or resonance) frequencies is simple: tap a glass, and it will "ring." Project the same sound back at the glass, and it will vibrate in sympathy – even shatter.
Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer dug into the issue as well, concluding that something in the song also hit the published resonance frequency of Western Digital's hard-drive platters. However, Plummer was unable to reproduce the exact issue, prompting Chen to conclude that Plummer used the wrong hard drive – an external 5,400-RPM hard drive instead of one designed for laptops.
The important consequence of this, however, is that Microsoft specifically engineered a fix: a specific filter (a notch filter) to eliminate or downplay the tiny frequency band. For years, if you listened to "Rhythm Nation" on your laptop, you would hear the song minus that tiny little laptop-killing audio slice.
The update to this story came when Chen asked how long the notch filter remained in place. It remained from Windows XP (2001) until Windows 7 (2009), as Microsoft had tried to put in a rule that would make it possible to disable with all "Audio Processing Objects (APOs)." However, another PC vendor was still freaked out by Janet's ability to crash laptops and applied for an exception to this rule on the grounds that disabling their APO could result in physical damage to the computer.
The waiver meant that even if all of the APOs were disabled, the notch filter would remain in place. Chen reported that the vendor applied for an exception to this rule because they feared that users would disable their APOs and enjoy richer bass for a while before crashing mysteriously or producing incorrect results.
Fortunately, virtually all laptops today use SSDs, which don't include mechanical components that can be affected by vibration. However, the materials of an SSD do have resonance frequencies, but there's no indication that hitting them with an audible tone could cause errors to occur.
It's a shame that "Baby Shark" hasn't been responsible for crashing laptops – just imagine how different the world would be! As author Mark Hachman wrote in a recent article, "Sorry, kiddo – guess we'll have to listen to Daddy's music instead."