Look, a phone call is an emergency. Someone is in the hospital or you need me over somewhere ASAP, maybe with a weapon.
Otherwise a SMS or email can do it in just fine.
It isn’t even about anxiety (just a bonus) but it’s that everyone sounds like SHIt on a phone speaker. I can’t make out words. Even with HQ headphones on your voice is gonna get rekt by every ambient noise on both our ends.
It’s amazing how bad smartphones are at being telephones. The old black Property of Ma Bell telephones had better sound quality, at least they cradled your ear and captured your voice. As an old fart I can attest to it.
It’s a fundamental limitation of the technology. Anything wireless, when it comes to audio, requires a certain amount of fidelity loss in order maintain real-time transmission without using an astronomical amount of bandwidth. With landline telephones, you have an exclusive, end-to-end physical connection, so you’re free to fully saturate the line with as much information as it can carry. It’s possible to fit multiple analog audio transmissions onto a single copper line, but the signals need a hard frequency cutoff for it to work. This is why long distance and international calls used to sound worse than local ones. In a similar vein, terrestrial radio has to split airspace between multiple stations, which is why it sounds worse than records or reel-to-reel tape, despite each station using a massive amount of bandwidth by modern standards.
Moving into the digital realm, the same principles still apply, but you can push bandwidth requirements way down thanks to the inherent efficiency of digital encoding, plus the magic of digital compression algorithms and error correction. As a result, wireless digital audio transmissions can maintain a much higher level of fidelity than analog ones, compare Bluetooth audio to FM, for example. Quality still needs to be sacrificed somewhere when transmitting wirelessly though, which is why audiophiles bitch about Bluetooth headphones and wireless mics. Even the best digital audio compression can’t compare to a copper cable carrying an unfiltered analog signal.
Digital audio compression is what makes it even remotely possible to have hundreds of real-time audio streams transmitting wirelessly to a cell tower, unfortunately you have to reduce the audio quality down to the absolute limits of usability in order to pull it off. Even if you still have a copper land line, the audio is always going to sound like crap if you talk to someone on a cellphone, it’s just not possible to operate a large cell network with the same level of fidelity.
The audio quality is just unbelievably bad. Plus no lip reading to augment things. And if it’s a call center (which feels like 90% of my phone usage because I would never call friends or family by my own choice), good odds they’ll have a thick accent to make things harder.
I’m hearing impaired and I think a lot of my own phone anxiety comes from my hearing. Of course, it’s hard to tell because I don’t have anything to compare it to. But what really stresses me out is the fear of not being able to understand the person on the other end. And it’s not an irrational fear, cause it happens so much! It’s extremely embarrassing having to constantly ask for repetition, having to admit you can’t understand them, or giving a response that makes no sense because I misheard them.
I wish every company would join the 21st century and use email or text. My freaking doctor and dentist have both figured it out, so it’s not a privacy issue stopping Big Chuck’s T-Shirt Emporium from using email.
Yeah I just can’t hear over the phone most of the time. It’s somewhat better on ADHD meds. It’s a lot worse when my allergies are acting up. I find video calls somewhat easier just because I can focus easier if I can read lips and body language.
Look, a phone call is an emergency. Someone is in the hospital or you need me over somewhere ASAP, maybe with a weapon.
Otherwise a SMS or email can do it in just fine.
It isn’t even about anxiety (just a bonus) but it’s that everyone sounds like SHIt on a phone speaker. I can’t make out words. Even with HQ headphones on your voice is gonna get rekt by every ambient noise on both our ends.
It’s amazing how bad smartphones are at being telephones. The old black Property of Ma Bell telephones had better sound quality, at least they cradled your ear and captured your voice. As an old fart I can attest to it.
It’s a fundamental limitation of the technology. Anything wireless, when it comes to audio, requires a certain amount of fidelity loss in order maintain real-time transmission without using an astronomical amount of bandwidth. With landline telephones, you have an exclusive, end-to-end physical connection, so you’re free to fully saturate the line with as much information as it can carry. It’s possible to fit multiple analog audio transmissions onto a single copper line, but the signals need a hard frequency cutoff for it to work. This is why long distance and international calls used to sound worse than local ones. In a similar vein, terrestrial radio has to split airspace between multiple stations, which is why it sounds worse than records or reel-to-reel tape, despite each station using a massive amount of bandwidth by modern standards.
Moving into the digital realm, the same principles still apply, but you can push bandwidth requirements way down thanks to the inherent efficiency of digital encoding, plus the magic of digital compression algorithms and error correction. As a result, wireless digital audio transmissions can maintain a much higher level of fidelity than analog ones, compare Bluetooth audio to FM, for example. Quality still needs to be sacrificed somewhere when transmitting wirelessly though, which is why audiophiles bitch about Bluetooth headphones and wireless mics. Even the best digital audio compression can’t compare to a copper cable carrying an unfiltered analog signal.
Digital audio compression is what makes it even remotely possible to have hundreds of real-time audio streams transmitting wirelessly to a cell tower, unfortunately you have to reduce the audio quality down to the absolute limits of usability in order to pull it off. Even if you still have a copper land line, the audio is always going to sound like crap if you talk to someone on a cellphone, it’s just not possible to operate a large cell network with the same level of fidelity.
As a fellow old, can confirm. Old analog landline was actually listenable.
The audio quality is just unbelievably bad. Plus no lip reading to augment things. And if it’s a call center (which feels like 90% of my phone usage because I would never call friends or family by my own choice), good odds they’ll have a thick accent to make things harder.
I’m hearing impaired and I think a lot of my own phone anxiety comes from my hearing. Of course, it’s hard to tell because I don’t have anything to compare it to. But what really stresses me out is the fear of not being able to understand the person on the other end. And it’s not an irrational fear, cause it happens so much! It’s extremely embarrassing having to constantly ask for repetition, having to admit you can’t understand them, or giving a response that makes no sense because I misheard them.
I wish every company would join the 21st century and use email or text. My freaking doctor and dentist have both figured it out, so it’s not a privacy issue stopping Big Chuck’s T-Shirt Emporium from using email.
Yeah I just can’t hear over the phone most of the time. It’s somewhat better on ADHD meds. It’s a lot worse when my allergies are acting up. I find video calls somewhat easier just because I can focus easier if I can read lips and body language.
Exactly. Call me when the house is burning, or you’re bleeding out and I’m the only emergency person in the building. Otherwise, text me.
I have a similar aversion against using email as chat, but for the exact opposite reason.