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A Century of “Shrill”: How Bias in Technology Has Hurt Women’s Voices
(www.newyorker.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Feminism
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This is a great history lesson, but it's important to note that none of those technical challenges still exist today. We can perfectly record and transmit the entire voice frequency spectrum for human speech. With the advent of wideband audio, the internet, HD Radio, and HD TV, these challenges are a thing of the past.
You're right, but this article points out present-day women are still being coached to slow down, lower the pitch of their voices, and prevent being described as "shrill", despite advancements in technology.
I see this article as a half-and-half argument on gender biases in speech and on the way audio / broadcast technology still leans toward male voices, even with theoretically solved problems.
For example, the frequency response of lots of microphones still boost higher frequencies which may cause a "shrill" sounding female voice, even though the transmission medium can theoretically broadcast that voice losslessly (but still don't, for bandwidth's sake). This can be solved with a bit of AV sound engineering, but the article points out how limited this time & budget is.
I have personal experience with this - Taylor swifts voice transmitted via industry standard Bluetooth SBC codec is shrill to the point of pain for me in every car I've tried. A quick switch to a different Bluetooth codec or to an aux cable solves all problems for me.
I am agreeing with you. I use TS or discord for years for ttrogs, but always had the problem, that my high voice is cut of by the programms. It's frustrating to figure out how to change that and finding a solution that sounds nice.
As always: if men would have these problems, it would be fixed in a short time.
I was always ashamed of my voice and thought i could not create potcasts, Videos or everything else voice based. I thought noone would like my voice. One day a stranger came up to me and told me i sound like daisy duck, while talking to a friend... 😒