The Radio

[Tim Delles]

Okay so on our way back from Rah Cha Cha Ruckus this past weekend, me and Alex Cormier were talking. Within that discussion he asked me, "why when a song that you like comes on do you turn the radio up?"

Yes i am a person that does that. But i do it out of instinct and i really don't know why i do it? So since he wanted to post it on here and hear from everyone, i decided to post it for him.

[Billfred]

If you ask me, the reason I instinctively turn up the William Shatner is because I've heard it in a higher-quality scenario (namely on the iPod and over the pretty decent speakers at WUSC), and want to replicate it as best I can when I'm confronted with other things, like wind noise and engines running at 3000 RPM and what not.

[sanddrag]

Most definitely I turn the radio up when I hear a song I like. But you aren't a true fan unless you sing along like me!

[Jeff Rodriguez]

I honestly do not listen to the radio at all. Any song that's playing on my car stereo is one I like and it's usually always turned up.

[Koko Ed]

I turn it up if it's something to get me pumped up but since I got my Ipod I don't listen to the radio anymore in the car (I got my Ipod hooked up in the car instead and everything I got on my Ipod I, of course, like so it's always loud and proud.

[Amanda Morrison]

I turn it up, so it'll drown out my own screeching cat-like singing.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

I turn it up, so it'll drown out my own screeching cat-like singing.

and thank god for the radio knob otherwise amanda would go through a fortune in window glass..


i do it to now that i think about it

[Amanda Morrison]

Hey buddy, I've heard you sing on stage, and you're no Sinatra. You're hardly a Backstreet Boy. Don't even get me started.

Another thing I thought of, though: We as humans like having 'background noise', and I'd venture to say Americans, with our facination with technology and our somewhat decadent (by comparison to past) culture, need to have noise- television, radio, anything. Walk through any college dorm and you'll find rooms with televisions on, but nobody watching, just studying or talking instead. Background noise is a necessity for many. Perhaps we turn up the radio to hear the songs we know and love simply because our knowing and loving them differentiate them from the many we don't know?

I actually went to bed thinking about this, and got up because I worked out this theory in my mind. Hrmn. It's an interesting thought. And perhaps hearing some parts of 'background noise' - i.e. a particular song, etc. that is played a lot - helps us to learn it, and it becomes part of our list of known songs. This could also explain why people having the radio on in the background will turn it off or change it if they hear a particular opening series of chords, a certain singer, an overplayed song, etc.

I'm really going to bed this time.

/edit: okay, one last thought. Think of the Walkman revolution in the 80's and 90's - and even before them, how cool it was to carry around a boombox when you were hanging out with friends. Now think to current times, where we are smack dab in the middle of a new music revolution: XM radio (which has more specific stations for more picky people), JACK FM stations (the kind that promote 'we'll play anything' for those who have a wider variety of tastes rather than one genre), and especially the iPod (where you don't have to rely on anyone else's tastes, you can simply create your own playlist, as Koko Ed has said). Can we not walk down the street without our beloved Rolling Stones? Or do we just feel cooler walking down campus to the tune of the Hollies' Long Cool Woman? We as human beings refine our own tastes to create a movie soundtrack to our lives, of sorts. The iPod especially helps us to create automagically (what we deem as) awesome background noises, so that we don't have to skip songs or change stations.

My head hurts.

[JVN]

Weirder question:

When you're following directions someplace, and you're looking for a street name, or a house number... do you turn the radio down?

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by JVN

Weirder question:

When you're following directions someplace, and you're looking for a street name, or a house number... do you turn the radio down?

Depends.

If there's just smooth music on, I'll probably leave it up. But once the DJ switches to death metal or something like that, then I'm not turning it down...I'm turning it off.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

As to the background noise issue raised by Amanda, this is actually a known phenom. When you investigate the possibility of any auditory or visual oddity you must consider that we are animals afterall, and only a few milliseconds away from the wild in which we developed. (evolutionary time) Our brains are still intent on listening for things in the forest that can kill us. As such background noise is a sound that we know won't kill us and it leaves our brains to concentrate on other things. Now on to the next issue, intelligibility. Our understanding of the spoken (or sung) word is dependent on a few things. One, a specific signal to noise ratio and two, knowing the words that are being said. We require at least a 45 dB S/N to understand any conversation but if we know that the speaker is confined to a very limited vocabulary, then we can stand about 25 dB S/N. That being said, you can only listen to Cream's "At the Crossroads" at an elevated level, just because it is the only way.

I will leave "feeling the music" for another discussion.

[MissInformation]

Who said my radio is ever turned down? I like my music loud!

Heidi

[JoeXIII'007]

I turn up the volume on NPR every time, especially when eating dinner and my mother wants to talk over it.

[RbtGal1351]

I turn the radio up when a good song comes on because I want to hear it better!

And I would turn the radio down if following directions, etc. so it is not as distracting, because I need to concentrate.


this is interesting...

[sciguy125]

I keep the radio at a constant level. Well, I use 3 levels: normal, driving with window open, and mute (it says mute, but it really means very very low).