Go to Windows 7 Insider Guide
The News.com Lounge: Please try to use landlines
Please try to use landlines
by punterjoe - 2/27/08 6:11 PMI had a really tough time following the phone interview about Sony's Vegas openhouse. Cell phone quality is often marginal. Add in the MP3 compression of the podcast and the fact that the audio is often listened to in difficult environments - noisy cars, subways or offices, and intelligibility can be lost.
I always believed content trumped quality, but there must be minimum standards. I really don't like to whine about this, but if you're getting field reports, PLEASE try to use a landline... or even Skype. consider cellphones last resorts & make very sure the finished MP3 podcast doesn't become unlistenable.
Keep in mind that my anguish over this issue reflects how important your podcast is to me. I hate to see your great reporting wasted by garbled audio.
Sound quality on calls
by jenguevin
- 3/13/08 6:01 PM
In reply to: Please try to use landlines by punterjoe
That's a tough one. When our reporters are out at a conference or elsewhere in the field, we don't have much choice but to talk to them on a cell phone. Forcing them to use a landline would mean they have to either go back to their hotel room (in a case like this, where the reporter was at a conference in Las Vegas, that could easily have taken an hour of travel time) or finding a pay phone (which would likely be outside anyway, so then we'd be competing with wind and traffic). Neither of those is a good option.
That said, we will certainly make an effort to have them find a quiet spot with good reception. I remember this particular one, and the call quality really was bad. And because the reporter was on the run between presentations, she didn't have the time to seek out a quiet alcove. To make matters worse, it was my first time I had ever recorded the podcast by myself. I'm sure as I get more experience under my belt, I'll get better at making adjustments when we have bad connections.
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks doubly for listening to our podcast! We'll do everything we can to spare your ears any undo pain in the future.
Jennifer Guevin
Associate Editor
CNET News.com
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
|
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
