In Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing Episode 2 Love, he presents the argument that because sound has moved to a digital platform to keep up with today’s technology, the human voice has lost an element of their character as opposed to when speaking with an analog microphone. He states “…the sound of our voices on the phone has gotten worse with the switch to digital, but it’s not because the microphones in them have gotten worse.” He goes on to say, “The reason is that…cellphones don’t transmit the full range of sound picked up by their mics. Instead they digitally process that sound compressing it to remove whatever engineers have decided is unnecessary data.” I wholeheartedly agree with Krukowski’s observations on digital sound versus analog. When listening to modern music, many artists’ voices sound heavily processed or auto-tuned. Compare that to hearing an artist sing live or acoustic, you are able to hear much more character, emotion, and texture. Some singers are able to project the emotion they are feeling into their performance making it much more personable. When you are able to hear texture in a singer’s voice it greatly separates their performance from ordinary.
The New York Times article “How A.S.M.R. Became a Sensation” the writer explores how ASMR became a hit and how it connects many people. In my opinion, the most interesting point about sound in ASMR is the fact that ASMR triggers are usually intimate, such as whispering and talking in low calm voices. This intimacy is now being mass produced and shared with millions of people by Youtube ASMR channels. This strikes me as ironic because as a society we are now more withdrawn in person socially, yet people seek out forms of intimacy through the internet.