[BC] Re: HD Receiver

[David Reaves]

I really believe that the way a consumer relates to entertainment  
(and its electronic devices) is pretty primitive.

I would even venture to say that once you disregard the primary focus  
--the programming-- MOST of their interaction is sub-conscious, with  
little or no actual conscious thought process involved, never mind  
verbalization.

Either they are satisfied (stay with the program) or they are not  
(change channel/station...or turn down volume...or turn it off)

Any reason we give them to make the decision to leave hurts us. Yes,  
I believe that the *conscious* reasons to stay or go will most often  
be programming-related, but that decisions are also made intuitively  
due to technical irritants.

When your signal clearly has a 'sound' (whether intentional or not)  
there is always the possibility that this sound will be irritating to  
a number of people. Sometimes the sound only becomes an irritant over  
a length of time, and people will put up with it, especially if the  
content is compelling.

If the distortion should rise to the level of being really  
noticeable, they *might* talk about it. Otherwise, they may just  
mysteriously tune away, for reasons even THEY couldn't tell you.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to quantitatively or qualitatively  
segregate the technical irritants from the programming ones as  
relates to ratings. Some people may use this as an 'out' when  
advocating hard processing, but I think that one could use the same  
reasoning to reach the opposite conclusion.

You can look at radio as being in a long-term listening test. It is  
and has been interesting to see if and how this ultimately affects a  
station's (or a technology's) success or failure.

Kind Regards,
David


David P. Reaves, III
TransLanTech Sound, LLC
Home of the Award-winning "Ariane Sequel" Digital Audio Leveler


On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 11:47:11 EST, Xmitters at aol.com wrote:

> <snip>
> Personally, I don't really care about the quality of a station's  
> signal when
> I have my "Joe Blow Listener" hat on. I tune around the band  
> looking for my
> favorite song :-) I continue listening when I find a station that  
> plays a lot of
> my favorite songs. My time spent listening does however, drop like  
> a rock
> when listening to an aggressively processed station. I just cannot  
> tolerate that
> grinding, ice pick in the ear sensation I get when listening to  
> such stations.
> I will take music on AM any day over a highly processed FM station.
> </snip>
>
> Jeff Glass
> Northern Illinois University