Watching old movies or broadcasts always sound the same. Everyone has a very muffled and nasal sound to them. What caused microphones to produce such a uniformly weird sound?
In: Technology
One factor is the recording media, which in combination with microphones can dramatically roll off frequencies at the top or bottom.
Older recordings were on film, tape, or vinyl, which introduced their own artifacts like compression and graininess.
You end up with a reproduction that is missing much of the nuance in human speech, like chest resonance and sibilance, so you get that nasally quality.
It was also a factor in how broadcasters spoke, as someone speaking normally would not be as well understood.
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