Would you prefer no sound at all when they work? I guess that is OK if the press leads immediately to the song starting/stopping but with the delay, I have my doubts. I think a button push needs immediate feedback of some sort.

Yes, if they are doing their job, the user will hear the feedback quickly from the music changing.  

No additional audio feedback needed.  It's just annoying.

I just came upon a counter-argument. If the server or stream is slow to respond then the sound effect feedback is useful, so that you know you don't have to hit the button another time.

Therefore I think this bug is a "won't fix".

I strongly disagree.  

This has never been an issue for any of our existing products, and is annoying as hell.

:)

This was reviewed at the weekly meeting. It was felt that sound effect feedback 
is important for playback and also is what was done with 7.3 controller. Users 
still have the ability to turn off "Playback" sound effects.

The sound being played is not the bump sound, but is the select sound from the 
new set of sounds. Perhaps, it's just the type of sound that is troubling...  
It would be trivial to go back to the 7.3 version of the sound. Assigning to 
Mickey who is our nuanced sound expert.

Here's how the sounds and sound groups are broken out:
local sounds = {
	BUMP       = { default = "bump.wav",      chan = 1 },
	CLICK      = { default = "click.wav",     chan = 0 },
	JUMP       = { default = "jump.wav",      chan = 0 },
	WINDOWSHOW = { default = "pushleft.wav",  chan = 1 },
	WINDOWHIDE = { default = "pushright.wav", chan = 1 },
	SELECT     = { default = "select.wav",    chan = 0 },
	PLAYBACK   = { default = "select.wav",    chan = 0 },
	DOCKING    = { default = "docking.wav",   chan = 1 },
	STARTUP    = { default = "splash.wav",    chan = 1 },
	SHUTDOWN   = { default = "shutdown.wav",  chan = 1 }
}

local groups = {
	SOUND_NAVIGATION = {
		"WINDOWSHOW",
		"WINDOWHIDE",
		"BUMP",
		"JUMP",
		"SELECT"
	},
	SOUND_SCROLL = {
		"CLICK"
	},
	SOUND_PLAYBACK = {
		"PLAYBACK"
	},
	SOUND_CHARGING = {
		"DOCKING"
	},
	SOUND_NONE = {
		"STARTUP",
		"SHUTDOWN"
	},
}

Reassigning to James, who is in QA and a nuanced sound expert. :-)

Nothing for QA to do here, as this is a policy decision on how the hardware should function.  Until that changes, this bug will be marked as invalid.

James, I think you may have missed what comment #5 asks. The hardware behavior question is settled.  The remaining question is: what sound to use? There were new sound effects added for 7.4. It may be that the new playback sound is a poor choice, and perhaps we should return to the 7.3 sound (for just that particular sound)

Perchance we should revisit bug 7206 then and select a less ugly sound?

Ping Seth or Matt Weldon for comment. P2 for 7.4? Please confirm.

Mickey, this is fine as a P2. I see that it has already been changed, so nothing to see here, move along...

Tom's comment 5 is correct, we will keep the bump but allow users to turn off these system sounds.