Do Casinos Pipe Sounds in To Give an Illusion of a Lot of Winning?

The casinos are so loud with lots of dinging. I am wondering if the casinos are piping in additional sounds to give the illusion that lots of "winning" is happening to entice us to play.

[As is our wont, we handed off this question to our man behind the tables, Andrew Uyal.]

Congratulations! It’s always fun for me to come up against a conspiracy theory I’ve never heard before.

There have been lots of such theories over the years. My favorite is the one where casinos pump in oxygen to keep people awake and gambling. Truth is, the only thing they pump through the system is air freshener in an attempt to mask the smokiness.

That’s actually been a fascination of mine over the years. Each casino, especially the bigger ones, seem to have their own distinct smell, almost like a cologne. Some of them are even customized exclusively for that casino.

Anyway, certainly casinos do things to entice people to play. Faking sounds, I’m afraid, isn’t one of them.

It’s a fun idea, though realistically, casinos are just that loud. Even the small casinos usually have in excess of 500 slot machines. Even if only 10% of them are in action, that’s 50 different machines all singing and dinging their own songs and sounds. At any given time in a casino, it’s likely that hundreds of machines are being played at the same time.

Combined with the music over the loudspeaker, maybe some live entertainment, hundreds of people talking and cheering, and the like, casinos are simply loud and chaotic places.

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King of the Bovines Oct-21-2018

Fake music is real

As one walks into the Great American Casino just south of Seattle, you hear the music of slot machines and muffled cheering.

But they have no slot machines.

Just 15 table games, the max allowed by state law.

Dave Oct-21-2018

Conspiracy theory?

Hardly!

 Maybe not all casinos, and maybe not the one where your “expert” works, but some casinos absolutely do and slot machine sounds to the background music. 

One example was Showboat in Atlantic City. There was a large area between the casino and the vallet pick up, which included a Starbucks.  In that area you could hear music but no slot shoes. However, step into the small vestibule before going out outdoors, and that small space had slot machines sounds with the music.

Randall Ward Oct-21-2018

sounds

I like to gamble really late and most casinos seem strangely quiet.  Even afternoons are different.

Doug Bergman Oct-21-2018

The machines are just loud

Unlike a tree in a forest, if a slot machine makes a sound and there is nobody in the room to hear it, it still makes a sound.
Way, way, WAY back when I worked in casinos, during graveyard shifts and even midweek during the day, you could often count the number of customers in the room on one hand.  But the machines kept piping out their own noise whether or not anyone was playing them.  To this day, I cannot hear the phrase "WHEEL. OF. FORTUNE." without wanting to shoot myself in the head.

Jerry Patey Oct-21-2018

Noise

How can you tell if they are paying out. Noise is annoying from just play. Particularly the penny machines. In old days with coin drop you could judge noise. You heard people and screaming players so yes you could tell. With today’s machine no way.

joyce M. Oct-21-2018

JoyceM

I avoided Venetian Casino, for a long time because the strong fragrance made me sick every time I entered the casino. It was nauseating.

Noy Kofler Oct-24-2018

Man, it's so loud in here...

An American lady gambling next to me in a British casino was complaining about the lack of noise, how everyone was very civil, the lack of music playing, the lack of excitement...  
She described it as "not freedom".

Question of the Day - 21 October 2018

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