why do airline mics sound so bad?
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Depends on which Mic?
The one who hear in the cabin?
These are played out over cheap loudspeakers. There main purpose is to signal an evacuation. They will do this fine when a pilot loudly and clearly calls for it. The chit chat pilots do and all the other attendant announcements are really only a secondary function. As the evacuation announcement is considered safety critical there is a minimum amount of speakers required. So it really is quantity over quality. A typical A320 has 30 rows, a speaker every 3 rows on both sides is around 20 speakers not including the toilets and galleys. To swap them all out to a higher quality one adds up fast.
The ATC mics?
Depends on which radio they are using. Long range ATC comms is done with HF radio which is terrible sound quality. Easily interfered with due to weather etc and is AM modulated so old tech but still has better range then VHF.
VHF is the main ATC comms radio. It is actually pretty clear most of the time and shows the Mics can be pretty good on aircraft. It is affected by reception issues so terrain etc and has a much shorter range that can affect its quality.
Cockpit voice recording mics?
There is usually 4 / 5 mic recordings. One for each radio in the cockpit and one “Area Mic” in the cockpit to record everything. But this is specifically designed to be a wide area mic picking up more sounds but at a lower quality, again designed to be quantity over quality.
With all of the above (except for the area mic) it is usually the same microphone used but the different systems affect its quality in different ways. Modern airline microphones are actually mid to high range mics and not cheap at all. They do get dropped and banged around Alot so they are usually beefed up physically at the cost of some performance but would still be a higher quality of most common consumer microphones.
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