It's no secret that J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" adaptation aimed to mirror as much of the original franchise as possible while simultaneously putting a unique spin to it.

From romances that never made it to the screen in the 1960s series right down to the red shirt dies first, "Star Trek" included elements that older fans would surely get a kick out of.

But none of those were as important as the sound; blips, bleeps, whizzes and whistles were as much a part of the USS Enterprise as her crew, and it would be impossible to imagine the craft sailing between the stars without such an integral piece of her personality. And nurturing this particular piece of her character was something sound designer Ben Burtt took personally.

"Two things in the original 'Star Trek' effects were revolutionary: Roddenberry had his team create lots of detail," Burtt told the Official Star Trek Magazine. "Every room in the ship sounded different. Every button made a noise, when you pressed a lever or a switch. Not only were there sounds articulating all these things to make them sound like they were real, but they were very musical sounds. Somebody pressed a button, there was a little melody. That was not in the movie at the point I came on: youd just hear a little beep. If it was Star Trek, it needed to sing a little bit and feel like it was alive."

Why was such an approach necessary? Burtt insists that the sound style given to the Enterprise built the illusion that there was a host of complex operations being performed with just the flip of a switch. And, by drawing on the familiar sounds of the existing franchise, Burtt was able to introduce areas of the ship without the need of dialogue.

One area he remains particularly proud of, though, is his use of shortwave radio transmissions to create a realistic tone to the futuristic technologies ... something that the original series was no stranger to.

"The other thing that was used a lot in the original showwas shortwave radio recordings and sounds off of transmissions and Morse code, things you can pick up in-between the dials on a shortwave radio," Burtt said. "I love that sort of thing and Ive collected it for years. Theres some of that in the original 'Star Trek' television show - and the whole beginning of the movie, that first minute or two where the [USS] Kelvin is coming into view, is all short wave radio sounds."

It tells the audience that they are "way the heck out at the edge of the universe, barely in contact," Burtt explained.

"Things are far away. There's these disembodied sounds that are being transmitted back and forth," he said. "They're supposed to be encountering something new, so I tried to capitalize on this legacy in science-fiction of using radio."

Issue 21 of the Official Star Trek Magazine is on sale now in the United States.