SMART people, and trained radio announcers such as moi, cup the hand so that the palm become a horn directing the voice to the toy microphone.

It is also a neat trick to set the phone in a bowl on flat on a table when listening to the tinny speaker, doubling or tripling the efficiency of the device's sound.

Average so-called humans - usually younger than 30, such as I see walking by on the sidewalk in Berkeley near UC - have white earbuds in their orifices and the microphone hanging by the collarbone and talk loudly to no apparent listener, sound not a bit different from the homeless and disturbed yelling at the park benches and empty streets. They do not respond when I say something like, gee the world is your phone booth is it?

On another track, I record teleconferences a few times a month, and many if not most of the gest interviewees do not even have a landline any more, and people still haven';t learned to allow for the latency of digital telephony (emphasis on the phony!).

Maybe the mini-pads will become more like phones, but still their mic will be several inches away form the speaking orifice on the users...

"Progress" it used to be called... I still keep my heavy old analog Nokia should analog telephonic audio ever become retro-vogue!

<L>
Lou Judson
Intuitive Audio
415-883-2689

On Mar 11, 2014, at 11:48 AM, Tom Fine wrote:

There's a primary disconnect between "smart" phone manufacturers and the American public. Specifically, phone microphones get buried in the American jowl. iPhones are the worst. I notice the latest generation iPhone and some Samsung phones are longer, presumable to reach down closer to the mouth and not into the middle of the word-muffling jowl.

-- Tom Fine