A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

[jeff_lindqvist]

I remember topics about listening to low volume audio, in heavy traffic, sped up audio etc. I know that I've mentioned listening to foreign language audio on my MP3 player while taking walks in the town (including the noise from the cars), and Iversen has said that teenagers on a bus are the most difficult to understand. Whether in the same thread or not, I don't know. I haven't found any of them.

Does this ring a bell?

[NoManches]

I remember topics about listening to low volume audio, in heavy traffic, sped up audio etc. I know that I've mentioned listening to foreign language audio on my MP3 player while taking walks in the town (including the noise from the cars), and Iversen has said that teenagers on a bus are the most difficult to understand. Whether in the same thread or not, I don't know. I haven't found any of them.

Does this ring a bell?

No me suena.... It's not ringing a bell.

I think the author of that thread had the idea of actually distorting audio to make it harder to listen to...or maybe somebody had suggested doing that using the program Audacity or something . I'll have to do some more searching, if there is more discussion on it I'd like to check out what you and Iversen had to say as well. Thanks!

[Iversen]

Well,I could just say it again: teenagers on a bus are among the most difficult ones to understand because their speech tend to consist of grunts and farts and snippets of words, uttered more to make their comrades aware that they still exist than to communicate any factual information. But often the problem will solve itself because they are too busy reading stuff on their phones to communicate with people in the same physical space. In that case you only have to contend with the noise from their headphones.

On a more serious level: I am totally against the use of substandard sound while you still have trouble understanding clear and crisp speech. You can understand speech in your native language under dismal conditions because you are able to fill out the holes and make sensible guesses based on years of experience, but if you don't have that background you can just make wild guesses or skip most of things that are said - what's the point in that, except establishing some bad listening habits?

[NoManches]

Found the link!! Actual @coldrainwater found it for me.


http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... 5025&PN=18

There are some familiar names in that discussion so it must be a good one. I'll give it a good read in the morning when I'm not so tired.