I suspect that this was intended to serve as an antidote to the analog era's characterization of low-fidelity equipment as "voice grade." As long as the basic sibilance was captured (4-5 khz), a native speaker could usually comprehend the message in an audio recording- so all must be well, right? There would have been an urgent need to steer non-techie practitioners away from dictation machines and other media that would fail to sufficiently capture the subtle inflections desired.
Follow that into the mp3 era where extreme compression was often used to save storage space, which was quite precious in the early digital world. Again, often regarded as sufficient for the spoken word but inadequate for professional linguistic analysis.
Recording is an art as much as a science and almost everyone on this list could cite a list of dreadful recordings made on professional equipment.-David Diehl


-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh Paterson III <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, Nov 21, 2020 3:37 am
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Terminological choice

Greetings,

In the academic literature (of linguistics) I often read about the
necessity to record with "high-quality recordings..." and what they
often mean is all based on technical parameters. For instance using a røde
mic, and recording to .wav format at something like 48khz/24bit.

My perspective, and I think some on this list would agree, is that
technical settings on hardware by themselves do not make a "high-quality
recording". My interpretation is that "quality" involves so much more in
terms of sound engineering, such as mic placement, levels like gain (noise
to signal ratio) etc, and composition of the content.

So I am writing a brief squib on this issue, and I would like to
terminologically make a distinction between a "High quality recording" and
a "a well recorded recording". I am wondering if I should contrast the
concepts of "High quality recording" and "High fidelity recording"? What do
you think? Do these terms adequately capture the contrast? Are there other
terms that should be used?


all the best,
- Hugh