Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1280.
Describing poor audio quality.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1280.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
This episode is a dialogue between Young and Sylvia about listening to something that is not recorded very well, that has poor audio quality.
Let's get started.
Really?
Let me listen to it.
Oh, the volume fluctuates and keeps cutting out.
We even have long periods of dead air.
That's only one of the many problems.
Keep listening and you'll hear lots of static in the background.
Sometimes it's so loud that it drowns out all other sounds.
Oh no, the voices are distorted too.
Some speakers sound garbled and others sound muffled.
And when you can make out what the speakers are saying, their voices are tinny.
What are we going to do?
What if we can't?
We'll use captions.
Young begins our dialogue by saying to Sylvia, we have a major problem.
Major, M-A-J-O-R, means a big or important problem.
Young says the audio on the new presentation is really awful, is really bad or terrible.
Audio, A U D I O, is sound that you hear that is recorded or copied.
Usually it is recorded on some sort of electronic device.
Most movies have video, V-I-D-E-O, as well as audio.
Video is what you can see, what is recorded.
Visually, audio is what you can hear.
A presentation.
P-R-E-S-E-N-T-A-T-I-O-N is usually some information that is given to someone.
That includes both sound and visual information.
A presentation at your office where you work might be someone standing up in front of you and talking about information, giving you information and showing you things.
That's a presentation.
The audio on the new presentation, according to Young, is really awful.
Sylvia says, really?
She's surprised.
She then says, let me listen to it.
Oh, she says, the volume fluctuates and keeps cutting out.
The volume, V-O-L-U-M-E, of something is how loud it is.
It is a measure of how much sound is being produced, we could say.
We talk about a high volume and a low volume.
Something that is on low volume is not very loud.
If you want to increase the volume, we would use the phrasal verb turn it up or turn up the volume.
To turn up the volume means to increase the volume, to make something louder.
The opposite would be to turn down the volume.
Here, the volume fluctuates, F-L-U-C-T-U-A-T-E-S.
To fluctuate means to vary, to increase and then decrease, but not in a constant or steady way to go up and down unpredictably.
The phrasal verb to cut, C-U-T, out, can mean simply to stop.
But here it means for the sound to stop temporarily and then to begin again.
If someone says the audio is cutting out, he means you can hear it, and then suddenly you can't hear it, and then you can hear it again.
You know what happens sometimes when you are listening to your music through your headphones or your earbuds on your phone and suddenly you can't hear the music.
And then you can hear the music.
That's usually because you have a bad perhaps the wire is bad.
That's what we mean by audio cutting out.
Sylvia says, we even have long periods or long amounts of time of dead, D-E-A-D, air, I-A-R.
Dead air is usually a phrase we use with television or radio when there is suddenly no sound.
You can't hear anything.
That is usually because there is some technical problem at the radio station.
Well, in this presentation, which was recorded electronically, there are times when there is dead air, and that, of course, is not good.
Young says that's only one of the many problems.
Keep listening and you'll hear lots of static in the background.
Static, S-T-A-T-I-C, is noise in a recording that you don't want there.
Here's an example of static that, if you're old enough to remember, you might have heard on what we used to call a record player, something that played old vinyl albums.
Listen.
Listen.
That's an example of static.
There is static, Jung says, in the background.
B-A-C-K-G-R-O-U-N-D.
The background is what you hear... in addition to the person talking on the audio.
It's the other noise in the room, or other noise that is present in addition to the person talking, or perhaps the music that is being played.
Young says sometimes it, meaning the static, is so loud that it drowns out the other sounds.
To drown D-R-O-W-N.
Out is a two-word phrasal verb meaning for the noise or the sound to be louder than something else, so that you can't hear what you want to hear.
If I'm talking to you and suddenly there's a big motorcycle that drives by and makes a lot of noise.
If that noise is very loud it might drown me out.
You won't be able to hear me because the noise of the motorcycle is too loud.
My neighbor likes to sing to himself, sometimes very loudly, and that sometimes drowns out my television that I am listening to.
So I have to turn my television volume up and then he sings louder, and then I turn my television up even louder.
You get the idea.
Sylvia says, oh no, the voices are distorted too.
To be distorted.
D-I-S-T-O-R-T-E-D means to be difficult to hear or to understand, usually because there's some problem with the recording or because the device you are listening to has a problem.
A voice that is distorted might be one that is suddenly very high or very low.
This would be an example of a distorted voice.
I am going to go to the store.
That's really bad distortion.
I apologize for that.
Sylvia continues.
Some speakers, meaning some of the people who are talking sound garbled and others sound muffled.
If someone sounds garbled, G-A-R-B-L-E-D, he is difficult to understand.
It's similar to distorted.
Muffled M-U-F-F-L-E-D is when sound is not loud enough, perhaps because someone is covering the microphone or someone is not speaking very clearly.
Young says...
And when you can make out what the speakers are saying, their voices are tinny.
To make M-A-K-E out what someone is saying means to be able to understand what the other person is saying.
We also use this phrasal verb when we are trying to read something that is very difficult because it isn't written very clearly.
Maybe it was written with a pencil and it's hard to read.
I can't make out what this says.
I can't understand it.
Young also complains that some of the people in the recording have voices that sound tinny T-I-N-N-Y.
If you have a tinny voice, it's very high-pitched or difficult to understand.
Well, that's even more than tinny.
Sylvia then says, what are we going to do?
Young says, I guess we can try to remaster it and see if we can make any improvements.
To remaster R-E-M-A-S-T-E-R is to use technology to improve the quality of sound that was recorded earlier or often many years ago.
Sometimes movie studios here in Los Angeles, movie companies will remaster old movies, trying to improve the sound and the way they look.
We usually use this term, however, to refer to improving the audio quality of something.
Sylvia asks, what if we can't, meaning what if we cannot remaster the audio to make it sound better?
Young says, worse comes to worst.
We'll use captions.
The expression worse W-O-R-S-E comes to worst W-O-R-S-T is used to mean or describe a bad situation that gets even worse, that becomes as bad as possible.
Young says, in the worst situation, we'll use captions.
C-A-P-T-I-O-N-S.
Captions are when you have the words to what you are watching on the screen.
Captions are used in television and sometimes in movies when a person is difficult to understand.
And so you put the words of what that person is saying on the bottom of the screen so that you can read them as well as listen to them.
Watching programs, television shows that are captioned in the language of the show, that is not translated, but actually the same words that are being spoken by the person on the show or in the movie, is actually a very good way of improving your English.
There's some good scientific research about that.
Now let's listen to the dialogue this time at a normal speed.
We have a major problem.
The audio on the new presentation is really awful.
Really?
Let me listen to it.
Oh, the volume fluctuates and keeps cutting out.
We even have long periods of dead air.
That's only one of the many problems.
Keep listening and you'll hear lots of static in the background.
Sometimes it's so loud that it drowns out all other sounds.
Oh no, the voices are distorted too.
Some speakers sound garbled and others sound muffled.
And when you can make out what the speakers are saying, their voices are tinny.
What are we going to do?
I guess we can try to remaster it and see if we can make any improvements.
What if we can't?
Worst comes to worst, we'll use captions.
I hope you can always make out what I'm saying, especially when I am talking about the wonderful scripts by our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2016 by the Center for Educational Development.
Thank you.
