Re: [Pen-l] Henwood on the radio

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 3, 2008, at 8:26 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On May 3, 2008, at 8:15 PM, Doyle Saylor wrote:
>
> > Much of this is palaver about so called 'professional' standards.
>
> Yeah. Good sound, fluent presentation, knowing what you're talking  
> about, good musical interludes - all just bourgeois crap, right? Bad  
> sound, stumbling speech, ignorant ranting, and "pamphletismo" music  
> (a term I learned from Ned Sublette) - that's proof of authenticity.  
> Produces those giant audiences Pacifica is famous for.

This is not a pertinent response to what Doyle wrote -- at least in my  
understanding of Doyle's post(s), which I offer below -- and I  
apologise to Doyle if I am incorrect in that understanding. In fact it  
(Doug's response) is mostly an echo of Doyle's point i.e.,  
"fidelity" (in this case, the quality of an MP3 or some such sound  
file of a talk programme made available on the Internet) is hardly  
important (as long as the material is intelligible). Yet, as Doyle  
points out, audiophiles (and here Doyle is clearly talking in a  
general sense) reduce the analysis of such material (and their  
potential) to the merely technical -- whereupon we cannot talk in  
pseudoscientific jargon, we must remain silent? What is lost in this  
silence is substantial issues of how audio material can reach or cater  
to a larger audience, exist in a space that is wider, foster a  
community, etc.

As should be obvious to most, Doyle's comments use a passing reference  
in a post, to make an important [set of] point(s). The comments (as I  
mention above) are general. Here is what Doyle wrote:

> That said, do you really care about fidelity of the broadcast?  I  
> doubt it personally.  Audiophiles care, but given what is known  
> about hearing what is really being heard?  Japan demands high  
> quality recordings and gets that.  In the U.S. the recording  
> industry puts out inferior product compared to more discerning  
> tastes, but that to my mind is not what is at stake in hearing.
>
> Much of this is palaver about so called 'professional' standards.   
> Which are in the U.S. commercially defined rather than socially  
> defined.  For example radio could be made to be captioned for the  
> deaf audience, but is not.  That sort of debate about 'hearing'  
> sound is much more profound than is fidelity in 'reproduction'.   
> Socially defined sound, is not about costly audio reproduction  
> consumer goods.  Not about monitors in the mass media, but the  
> fidelity of society to the goals of equality and justice in  
> providing access to knowledge.

There are several things to note that should make clear the generality  
of his point and discouraged the line of reasoning implied in Doug's  
response. Doyle differentiates between "you" (the listmembers, in  
particular the participants in the thread) whom he "doubts" care about  
fidelity, and "audiophiles" who do care. He then goes on to identify  
the source and nature of this audiophiliac obsession -- commercially  
defined professional standards, and he points out what is more  
profound but goes unaddressed: issues such as captioning for deaf  
audience.

The measure of Doug's content is not the encoding bitrate of the MP3s  
that he takes the trouble to offer on the Internet.

And the fact that he offers them as podcasts makes it possible for me  
to skip over the music (tastes vary) and concentrate on the content,  
which is usually of excellent quality -- and by quality I mean the  
broad useful terms in which Doyle describes the term.

	--ravi

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