Today was another of those excruciating ‘phone days’. Excruciating, because when I consulted with several mic owners for several hours on various topics, it was not fun. Not because the persons or objects of discussion were unpleasant, but because the physical act of communicating was.
By now, a clear majority of people I talk to on the phone for business and pleasure use cell phones, not land lines. Almost always bad sounding cell phone connections with efforts, at least on my end, to decipher some of the words said.
One of the calls today was to James Gangwer, a friend and repairman for vintage audio gear, when suddenly (and as usual, at a particularly relevant point in my argument) the connection was lost. He called right back. “What happened?” I inquired. He: “sorry, I bent forward; where I’m sitting, that’s what usually happens.” I said: “Why are you participating in a technology which promised so much and over the years has delivered so poorly?” He: “I have to.”
James is right. Most people get fired these days if they refuse to strap one on their belt, during and after work, on weekends, during vacations.
But this is also the age of voluntary, constant, habitual communication, the kind not required by the ‘man’. Soon it will be the majority of strollers on the streets of Honolulu, Tokyo or downtown Portland who habitually talk by themselves, or walk with others and talk alone. They don’t check their surroundings anymore and are not participating in the community around them- they are absorbed in a mental space at least partially removed from the physical space they’re in.
So be it. Besides, what am I? A Luddite whiner? Like those geezers shuffling through the park, pushing candy wrappers with their canes, complaining how the world has gone to hell?
No, but I would have thought that, given the significant amount of time we, the buying public which has made a Mexican the richest man on earth this year, because we spend so much time with our precious, super-high-fidelity-capable ear on that microwave thing, we would have demanded by now a more pleasurable audio experience from our cell phones!
At least, audio that is not a constant strain on the listener.
I would have thought that shoppers who shell out $300+ for their next communication device in one of those Verizon kiosks or ATT boutiques would at least partially test and select for sound quality- the core interaction of cell phones between man and machine.
It’s been a long time since I last asked, in the middle of a phone conversation, what brand and model the other party was using. Yes, I was always delighted when that rare call would come in where it sounded as if the caller was in the next room, not across the continent. I have more than once then gone out and bought that phone, so that my counterparts would have a more enjoyable calling experience when they talk to me.
Maybe we deserve the abominable audio quality that dominates cell phones, cordless phones, car stereos, and increasingly, CDs,
because, though we participate in a free and adaptive market now, we are not insisting on good audio of these devices as deal breaker for our purchase.
I bet you: if just 10% of consumers were insisting on better sounds from their audio-reproducing consumer devices we would have them by next year, 18 months tops.
So what kind of fool am I, spending the rest of my good, healthy ear-days in forums discussing the minute, barely audible differences between brands of capacitors or biasing methods in microphones?
Why do we even bother to strive for better sounds in recordings anymore? Why would anybody who accepts the sound quality of cell phones care for high fidelity anywhere else in his life?
Where have our expectations for technological progress in devices like phones gone, given that the first cordless phones, in the mid 1980s, sounded about as bad as the average phone does now?
P.S.: due to a software glitch, I had to copy and paste in the first few responses to this subject