Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Podcasts

I don't know if you listen to any podcasts. I don't, but I still get one or another occasionally, sort of like every drinker should occasionally order "whatever will get me drunkest, cheapest".

Every pod cast I've heard has been dictated by the same person.

Now, I don't mean I only have downloaded podcasts from one site. I've gotten podcasts from as far afield as "Gaming Steve" to "Zug". But they're all by the SAME PERSON. This white, male, nasal voice grinding across my various ear bits. This voice which makes me want to reach out and slap someone.

Why is this? Am I just unlucky, or does EVERYONE sound exactly like an antisocial fourteen-year-old?

I think that maybe it has to do with the shitty quality. This stuff is cheap, cheap, cheap! You can download it TEN TIMES faster than you can listen to it. It sounds like it's coming out of a long metal tube placed against a speaker phone.

Maybe the compression cuts out the low bands. All the rumble. That's the stuff that matters for getting tonal quality. If it does that, then everyone in a given register would sound pretty much the same. So, I'm thinking that might be it.

I'm tempted to make one myself, just to see whether I sound exactly like they sound. I wouldn't be surprised, given that I'm just as much of a stereotypical white geek-boy. But MY voice has been called many things in the past, and none of them have been negative. Except one person who said I couldn't sing. But he probably said that to Sinatra, too.

Unfortunately, the only microphone I have is the one that comes with the computer. You have to artificially pump the gain on the thing, which results in this awesome catalogue of background sound effects. Hear that? That's my computer's fan. Oooh, and that's the everpresent squeeeeeek of Seattle's collective attempt to annihilate their brake pads. That blip-zip-caaassssh sound isn't a modem, it's just line noise.

While it might be interesting to simply record and remix the background noise into a new rave tune, I doubt my voice would really come through very well. It sounds muffled, like I'm trying to speak through someone's armpit. Maybe I should give up on that particular practice, but it's kind of fun. And I usually get to choose whose armpit, so it's all good.

Anyhow: Podcasts. All sound the same? Does anyone like listening to people when you can't hear their tonality? I seek answers!

1 comment:

Darius Kazemi said...

Here's your answer.

I only listen to music-only podcasts.