7 ms·

That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. I think it really highlights the simple

by bmitc 4y ago

That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. I think it really highlights the simple joy that technology that literally just works can bring. I'm around the same age as the author, a little younger in fact, but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. From game consoles to land lines to various other things, there were pieces of technology that just worked and worked well. Of course, there was technology that didn't work well, but I think part of the tragedy is that a lot of technology that worked well has been replaced by "better" technology that doesn't work well.

AlbertCory 4y ago
Very true. The old-fashioned telephone handset was a masterpiece of human engineering. I bet with state-of-the-art mic and speakers, it would still be way better than a smartphone for actual phone calls. Of course, I have to admit that my Bluetooth headset is pretty good, and a first-class gaming headset would be even better.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The low latency with a completely analog phone call is amazing. We forget it but it was really really low.
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    If I remember correctly, in many cases, latency was lower than in-person talk, because of the speed of sound.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yeah, effectively you're both whispering directly into each other's ear, which, even if possible in-person is a bit uncomfortable.
- Animats 4y ago
  With the 1950s mic and speakers, it was substantially better than a smartphone. The Western Electric model 1500 [1], from 1963, is generally considered the best analog phone [1]. This was rented, not sold, so it is extremely reliable and rugged. Best audio quality was with ISDN phones. Digital end to end, synchronized at the bit level, no noise, no dropouts. [1] http://www.telephonearchive.com/phones/we/we1500.html http://www.telephonearchive.com/phones/we/we1500.html
  - Aloha 4y ago
    I'm not sure why you picked a 1500 as the best sounding, the 500, 1500 and 2500 all used the same network, receiver, and transmitter elements - I've used all three, they perform identically, the 1500 set is actually incredibly rare - touch tone was just not common until the 2500 was out. The best speakerphone ever made (even better than modern ones) is a 4A Speakerphone. Also in my opinion, an AE 80 with a non cohered up carbon mic will outperform a 500/1500/2500 on a short loop (sub 15kf), and can be tuned to outperform on a long. The self compensating network in the WE set is better however. That all said, a modern Northern Telecom or Aastra analog phone will consistently outperform a 500 set, because of the electret mic in them. Carbon mics have benefits as an amplifier, but transistors rendered them obsolete in most cases.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - E39M5S62 4y ago
      You know your phones.
- franga2000 4y ago
  The mic and speaker in the 90s Iskra payphones are far superior in sound quality to anything you'd find in a cheap phone these days. I hooked one up to Discord last month for an art instalation and could not believe my ears when it sounded way better than the 3 other people in the call using flagship smartphones.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    One thing has not improved one iota in the 30 years I've had a cell phone - the voice quality.
    - genewitch 4y ago
      I'm not sure this is true universally. I just spoke to a friend for the first time since I got a phone that does "HD" calling, and although I've been speaking to them for 25 years on the phone, I didn't recognize their voice. I feel like POTS and edge->3g calling made me miss out on a lot of detail and intonation. I'm just glad I get to experience this call quality with non-technically inclined friends before I go completely deaf. I use a lot of voip services and there's something to be said for the phone companies actually making a competitive product, here. I suppose one could argue that "HD calling" is technically just VoIP as well.
      - jcrawfordor 4y ago
        VoIP systems negotiate codec choice on call initiation, generally using a "best common denominator" rule. Even when only companded PCM is available (PCM-a, PCM-µ), 64kbps will be used since it's the universal norm on the TDM (conventional) telephone newtwork. Unfortunately, as a capacity measure GSM specifies very low bitrates for voice connections, as low as 5kbps in the worst case and 10-20kbps typical. This requires the use of high-efficiency vocoders like CELP variants that are sufficient for intelligible speech but, well, only for that purpose. "HD voice" is exactly VoIP and with few exceptions is only transported over SIP or a SIP-like protocol using the existing RTP negotiation mechanism, which usually ends up selecting 64kbps companded PCM (same as a landline phone). Increasing use of VoLTE, which is essentially an optimized form of SIP designed to "combine" session control features with LTE for lower overhead, has made this pretty common as HD voice support is standard from VoLTE vendors. There was such a thing as HD Voice over 3G using a similar mechanism that leveraged HSPDA but it was never very common, at least in the US. VoLTE will quickly become the only way to make cellular phone calls in the US which we can expect to make HD Voice pretty universal. Right now it can be spotty when calling between networks, depending on how their peering is set up.
- stavros 4y ago
  I converted an old rotary phone into a mobile phone (https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/), and the quality is much better than a mobile. Even just the sidetone makes it SO much better to talk on. I have no idea why modern mobile phones have no (or very low volume?) sidetone. It makes the UX orders of magnitude better.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    Yes, sidetone (hearing your own voice through the handset) makes all the difference! I'm not exactly sure why, but I find it so much easier to talk on the phone when there's a sidetone. In general, for me, talking on the phone is like talking into the void, and sidetone at least gives me the assurance that, yes, it's still working. Like the little inset video feed of yourself when you're on a Skype call.
    - stavros 4y ago
      Yeah, exactly. Plus, I've found I'm much louder when there's no sidetone, which is very tiring.
  - alamortsubite 4y ago
    Nice work! Maybe I missed this, but have you considered simulating a dial tone?
    - stavros 4y ago
      I haven't, I think it would be a fair bit of work, given that the modem is what outputs the sound.
      - alamortsubite 4y ago
        I haven't worked with the Arduino. Would it be difficult to incorporate an SPDT relay to switch the sound source between it and the modem?
unityByFreedom 4y ago
> That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. That admission was the best part! Everyone here was not goody two shoes in their teens. Accepting this reality can release people from expectations of perfection. Perhaps ironically, kids' behavior can improve when they feel their imperfections are airable.
- languageserver 4y ago
  I am not sure credit card fraud is innocent pranks or misbehavior... I can tell you with certainty that most teenagers have never committed that sort of crimes tbh.
  - kingkawn 4y ago
    Here’s your merit badge for pedantry
  - samtheDamned 4y ago
    You'd be surprised..
  - stavros 4y ago
    Not for lack of trying.
  - Jerrrry 4y ago
    Always-online teenagers are a different demographic than your "average" teenager. the highs of an exploit working or a bypass make drugs look like candy.
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    If we’re talking about the AOHell era of the mid 90s then I have anecdotal evidence that the majority of kids I knew were committing some kind of wire fraud in exchange for internet access! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOHell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOHell
  - toss1 4y ago
thlr 4y ago
I believe the reason technology could spark so much joy for a young mind back a few dozen years back is more that it was much simpler rather than "it just worked". It was simple and therefore easier to tamper and play with. Also, because it was so simple, more knowledge and understanding of the underlying mechanisms was required to use the technology. In the early years of the internet, simply operating a computer and exploring the web was an adventure in itself! Now, things have gotten plenty complicated and that complexity brings bugs and makes the technology impenetrable to the common folk even with an educated mind - you need to be an expert now. If it's too complex, you can't play with it, and if you can't play with it, you don't learn and you don't have fun. I feel that your conclusion, 'it just worked', is more a consequence of the increase in complexity rather than a root cause in itself.
wildmanx 4y ago
> but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. That's right -- modern age stuff isn't as _hackable_. Especially not at the hardware level. You get an Alexa or a mobile phone or a camera, it's all just a chip on a PCB in a plastic case, not intended to be fiddled with by anybody (not the owner, not some repair show, literally _nobody_) just to be thrown away after a year or two and replaced by a new one. It's all very sad. There is still some software component to things that's hackable, but even that's harder to do. In the past you turned on your C64 and could start write away code, average Joe Teenager needs to install some IDE and pull in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places just to show a hello world. Unless daddy/mommy gave them a Linux box, then the story is different.
- duckmysick 4y ago
  > In the past you turned on your C64 and could start write away code, average Joe Teenager needs to install some IDE and pull in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places just to show a hello world. Or he could open a console in his web browser.
  - pwg 4y ago
    Or average Joe Teenager installs a Linux distribution, which then provides bash, perl, awk, Python, C, C++, often Tcl/Tk, etc. and usually includes one or more editors for creating source files. All without "pull[ing] in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places"
    - wildmanx 4y ago
      That's a lot of work just to show a "hello world". The point was that it's hard to do it with the thing you already have. Of course it's easier if you just get a new thing -- which installing a new OS corresponds to in the software world.
  - hyperdimension 4y ago
    What about the kids in school districts that issue locked-down Chromebooks? They probably can't even do that! I, for one, learned how to bcdedit my way into booting from a .vhd on my school-issued laptop. And how to SSH tunnel on port 443 to get past the proxy. How LSPs worked on Windows. Messing around is how kids get their start in computers, and I couldn't agree with the parent comment more.
the_arun 4y ago
Today, we take internet for granted!
eternityforest 4y ago
I think the technology itself is 100x better in just about every way(Except for pure novelty, smartphones largely killed true gadgets) The lack of fun, to me, is mostly because of how everything changed around it. I can make a basic website now, no problem, everything is easier than it was aside from the fact we pretty much have to have HTTPS. But, nobody will read it, because it will be lost in a sea of clickbait. I will have a hard time writing it, because I will be distracted by the sea of clickbait, and worst of all, I'll have a hard time finding things to write about. And of course, the very fact it all does work so incredibly well, with a Sci-fi level of polish, means... it's no longer new. Most of it is being a cruise ship tourist, not an Arctic explorer. Because the internet is dead without the offline stuff that gives it meaning. It's like, binoculars and a field notes book with nobody to spy on, the perfect party where nobody shows up, or a spreadsheet showing all the customers someone doesn't have. I think it's just like the idea of set and setting. The internet/tech/coding/etc is the drug, and we lost all the cultural context, so now it's less "A beer at the bonfire with friends" and more "I had a bottle of wine alone because I don't know what else to do with myself".
- entropie 4y ago
  Well not sure. My GFs blog is like in its 6th year now and every year its more visitors. Its not that much in internet terms (we are at ~700 visitors a day) but its serious content (dogs and science around dogs). No clickbaits, no cookies, no nothing.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    Can younshare the Url? My wife would love her blog sounds like...
    - entropie 4y ago
      https://fluffology.de/ https://fluffology.de/
- 300bps 4y ago
  because I will be distracted by the sea of clickbait Welcome to the 21st century! One of the 20th century's main themes was humans having to learn how to live in a world of infinite sugar, fat and salt. Here in the 21st century, we have to learn how to live in a world of infinite information. What will you do with your attention today? Will you consume the mental equivalent of broccoli or snickers bars?
rconti 4y ago
I have a lot of the same nostalgia, but so much of this story is that necessity is the mother of invention. The author: 1. Had more time than he knew what to do with. 2. Didn't have money 3. Had authority figures getting in the way of what he wanted to do. A decade later, kids were 'hacking' their parents' wifi access points by logging in as admin/password to bypass "go to bed and stop using the internet" restrictions, but the author was not, because he likely had more money, less time, and most importantly, no authority to bypass :)
smiddereens 4y ago
soheil 4y ago
> "better" technology that doesn't work well That's a very crude way of saying it and I 100% agree. The digital revolution promised to make analog world more precise, but we ended up having so much complexity as a result and the benefits gained by precision at low level is replaced by ever increasing chaos at high level. We seem to think having many things rendered simultaneously and faster are inherently so good not just for things like games that we built frameworks like React that run big parts of the web. It's as if we decided increasing entropy isn't so bad after all.
Melatonic 4y ago
Survivorship bias I think is at play here (especially with our own memories being infallible). I also remember a TON of shit being a pain in the ass and not working well at all.
dotancohen 4y ago
> part of the tragedy is that a lot of technology that worked well has been replaced by "better" technology that doesn't work well. I am 100% convinced that '80's era landlines had superior sound quality to today's cellphones by any manufacturer. I went out of my way to get a Samsung Note that ostensibly supports some high-quality sound when communicating with another device that supports whatever this profile is called, but all conversations are streams of "what? say again?". Yes I know that POTS landlines generally discard much not-in-human-vocal-range sounds that still affect how we perceive voice. But even with that limitation, I feel that the difference in sound quality as I remember it and as I now experience it cannot all be attributed to 30 years of rock concerts and rifle fire on these eardrums.

by bmitc 4y ago

AlbertCory 4y ago

Very true. The old-fashioned telephone handset was a masterpiece of human engineering. I bet with state-of-the-art mic and speakers, it would still be way better than a smartphone for actual phone calls. Of course, I have to admit that my Bluetooth headset is pretty good, and a first-class gaming headset would be even better.

bombcar 4y ago
The low latency with a completely analog phone call is amazing. We forget it but it was really really low.
- GuB-42 4y ago
  If I remember correctly, in many cases, latency was lower than in-person talk, because of the speed of sound.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, effectively you're both whispering directly into each other's ear, which, even if possible in-person is a bit uncomfortable.
Animats 4y ago
With the 1950s mic and speakers, it was substantially better than a smartphone. The Western Electric model 1500 [1], from 1963, is generally considered the best analog phone [1]. This was rented, not sold, so it is extremely reliable and rugged. Best audio quality was with ISDN phones. Digital end to end, synchronized at the bit level, no noise, no dropouts. [1] http://www.telephonearchive.com/phones/we/we1500.html http://www.telephonearchive.com/phones/we/we1500.html
- Aloha 4y ago
  I'm not sure why you picked a 1500 as the best sounding, the 500, 1500 and 2500 all used the same network, receiver, and transmitter elements - I've used all three, they perform identically, the 1500 set is actually incredibly rare - touch tone was just not common until the 2500 was out. The best speakerphone ever made (even better than modern ones) is a 4A Speakerphone. Also in my opinion, an AE 80 with a non cohered up carbon mic will outperform a 500/1500/2500 on a short loop (sub 15kf), and can be tuned to outperform on a long. The self compensating network in the WE set is better however. That all said, a modern Northern Telecom or Aastra analog phone will consistently outperform a 500 set, because of the electret mic in them. Carbon mics have benefits as an amplifier, but transistors rendered them obsolete in most cases.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - E39M5S62 4y ago
    You know your phones.
franga2000 4y ago
The mic and speaker in the 90s Iskra payphones are far superior in sound quality to anything you'd find in a cheap phone these days. I hooked one up to Discord last month for an art instalation and could not believe my ears when it sounded way better than the 3 other people in the call using flagship smartphones.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  One thing has not improved one iota in the 30 years I've had a cell phone - the voice quality.
  - genewitch 4y ago
    I'm not sure this is true universally. I just spoke to a friend for the first time since I got a phone that does "HD" calling, and although I've been speaking to them for 25 years on the phone, I didn't recognize their voice. I feel like POTS and edge->3g calling made me miss out on a lot of detail and intonation. I'm just glad I get to experience this call quality with non-technically inclined friends before I go completely deaf. I use a lot of voip services and there's something to be said for the phone companies actually making a competitive product, here. I suppose one could argue that "HD calling" is technically just VoIP as well.
    - jcrawfordor 4y ago
      VoIP systems negotiate codec choice on call initiation, generally using a "best common denominator" rule. Even when only companded PCM is available (PCM-a, PCM-µ), 64kbps will be used since it's the universal norm on the TDM (conventional) telephone newtwork. Unfortunately, as a capacity measure GSM specifies very low bitrates for voice connections, as low as 5kbps in the worst case and 10-20kbps typical. This requires the use of high-efficiency vocoders like CELP variants that are sufficient for intelligible speech but, well, only for that purpose. "HD voice" is exactly VoIP and with few exceptions is only transported over SIP or a SIP-like protocol using the existing RTP negotiation mechanism, which usually ends up selecting 64kbps companded PCM (same as a landline phone). Increasing use of VoLTE, which is essentially an optimized form of SIP designed to "combine" session control features with LTE for lower overhead, has made this pretty common as HD voice support is standard from VoLTE vendors. There was such a thing as HD Voice over 3G using a similar mechanism that leveraged HSPDA but it was never very common, at least in the US. VoLTE will quickly become the only way to make cellular phone calls in the US which we can expect to make HD Voice pretty universal. Right now it can be spotty when calling between networks, depending on how their peering is set up.
stavros 4y ago
I converted an old rotary phone into a mobile phone (https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/), and the quality is much better than a mobile. Even just the sidetone makes it SO much better to talk on. I have no idea why modern mobile phones have no (or very low volume?) sidetone. It makes the UX orders of magnitude better.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  Yes, sidetone (hearing your own voice through the handset) makes all the difference! I'm not exactly sure why, but I find it so much easier to talk on the phone when there's a sidetone. In general, for me, talking on the phone is like talking into the void, and sidetone at least gives me the assurance that, yes, it's still working. Like the little inset video feed of yourself when you're on a Skype call.
  - stavros 4y ago
    Yeah, exactly. Plus, I've found I'm much louder when there's no sidetone, which is very tiring.
- alamortsubite 4y ago
  Nice work! Maybe I missed this, but have you considered simulating a dial tone?
  - stavros 4y ago
    I haven't, I think it would be a fair bit of work, given that the modem is what outputs the sound.
    - alamortsubite 4y ago
      I haven't worked with the Arduino. Would it be difficult to incorporate an SPDT relay to switch the sound source between it and the modem?

unityByFreedom 4y ago

> That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. That admission was the best part! Everyone here was not goody two shoes in their teens. Accepting this reality can release people from expectations of perfection. Perhaps ironically, kids' behavior can improve when they feel their imperfections are airable.

languageserver 4y ago
I am not sure credit card fraud is innocent pranks or misbehavior... I can tell you with certainty that most teenagers have never committed that sort of crimes tbh.
- kingkawn 4y ago
  Here’s your merit badge for pedantry
- samtheDamned 4y ago
  You'd be surprised..
- stavros 4y ago
  Not for lack of trying.
- Jerrrry 4y ago
  Always-online teenagers are a different demographic than your "average" teenager. the highs of an exploit working or a bypass make drugs look like candy.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  If we’re talking about the AOHell era of the mid 90s then I have anecdotal evidence that the majority of kids I knew were committing some kind of wire fraud in exchange for internet access! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOHell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOHell
- toss1 4y ago

thlr 4y ago

I believe the reason technology could spark so much joy for a young mind back a few dozen years back is more that it was much simpler rather than "it just worked". It was simple and therefore easier to tamper and play with. Also, because it was so simple, more knowledge and understanding of the underlying mechanisms was required to use the technology. In the early years of the internet, simply operating a computer and exploring the web was an adventure in itself! Now, things have gotten plenty complicated and that complexity brings bugs and makes the technology impenetrable to the common folk even with an educated mind - you need to be an expert now. If it's too complex, you can't play with it, and if you can't play with it, you don't learn and you don't have fun. I feel that your conclusion, 'it just worked', is more a consequence of the increase in complexity rather than a root cause in itself.

wildmanx 4y ago

> but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. That's right -- modern age stuff isn't as _hackable_. Especially not at the hardware level. You get an Alexa or a mobile phone or a camera, it's all just a chip on a PCB in a plastic case, not intended to be fiddled with by anybody (not the owner, not some repair show, literally _nobody_) just to be thrown away after a year or two and replaced by a new one. It's all very sad. There is still some software component to things that's hackable, but even that's harder to do. In the past you turned on your C64 and could start write away code, average Joe Teenager needs to install some IDE and pull in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places just to show a hello world. Unless daddy/mommy gave them a Linux box, then the story is different.

duckmysick 4y ago
> In the past you turned on your C64 and could start write away code, average Joe Teenager needs to install some IDE and pull in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places just to show a hello world. Or he could open a console in his web browser.
- pwg 4y ago
  Or average Joe Teenager installs a Linux distribution, which then provides bash, perl, awk, Python, C, C++, often Tcl/Tk, etc. and usually includes one or more editors for creating source files. All without "pull[ing] in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places"
  - wildmanx 4y ago
    That's a lot of work just to show a "hello world". The point was that it's hard to do it with the thing you already have. Of course it's easier if you just get a new thing -- which installing a new OS corresponds to in the software world.
- hyperdimension 4y ago
  What about the kids in school districts that issue locked-down Chromebooks? They probably can't even do that! I, for one, learned how to bcdedit my way into booting from a .vhd on my school-issued laptop. And how to SSH tunnel on port 443 to get past the proxy. How LSPs worked on Windows. Messing around is how kids get their start in computers, and I couldn't agree with the parent comment more.

the_arun 4y ago

Today, we take internet for granted!

eternityforest 4y ago

I think the technology itself is 100x better in just about every way(Except for pure novelty, smartphones largely killed true gadgets) The lack of fun, to me, is mostly because of how everything changed around it. I can make a basic website now, no problem, everything is easier than it was aside from the fact we pretty much have to have HTTPS. But, nobody will read it, because it will be lost in a sea of clickbait. I will have a hard time writing it, because I will be distracted by the sea of clickbait, and worst of all, I'll have a hard time finding things to write about. And of course, the very fact it all does work so incredibly well, with a Sci-fi level of polish, means... it's no longer new. Most of it is being a cruise ship tourist, not an Arctic explorer. Because the internet is dead without the offline stuff that gives it meaning. It's like, binoculars and a field notes book with nobody to spy on, the perfect party where nobody shows up, or a spreadsheet showing all the customers someone doesn't have. I think it's just like the idea of set and setting. The internet/tech/coding/etc is the drug, and we lost all the cultural context, so now it's less "A beer at the bonfire with friends" and more "I had a bottle of wine alone because I don't know what else to do with myself".

entropie 4y ago
Well not sure. My GFs blog is like in its 6th year now and every year its more visitors. Its not that much in internet terms (we are at ~700 visitors a day) but its serious content (dogs and science around dogs). No clickbaits, no cookies, no nothing.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Can younshare the Url? My wife would love her blog sounds like...
  - entropie 4y ago
    https://fluffology.de/ https://fluffology.de/
300bps 4y ago
because I will be distracted by the sea of clickbait Welcome to the 21st century! One of the 20th century's main themes was humans having to learn how to live in a world of infinite sugar, fat and salt. Here in the 21st century, we have to learn how to live in a world of infinite information. What will you do with your attention today? Will you consume the mental equivalent of broccoli or snickers bars?

rconti 4y ago

I have a lot of the same nostalgia, but so much of this story is that necessity is the mother of invention. The author: 1. Had more time than he knew what to do with. 2. Didn't have money 3. Had authority figures getting in the way of what he wanted to do. A decade later, kids were 'hacking' their parents' wifi access points by logging in as admin/password to bypass "go to bed and stop using the internet" restrictions, but the author was not, because he likely had more money, less time, and most importantly, no authority to bypass :)

smiddereens 4y ago

soheil 4y ago

> "better" technology that doesn't work well That's a very crude way of saying it and I 100% agree. The digital revolution promised to make analog world more precise, but we ended up having so much complexity as a result and the benefits gained by precision at low level is replaced by ever increasing chaos at high level. We seem to think having many things rendered simultaneously and faster are inherently so good not just for things like games that we built frameworks like React that run big parts of the web. It's as if we decided increasing entropy isn't so bad after all.

Melatonic 4y ago

Survivorship bias I think is at play here (especially with our own memories being infallible). I also remember a TON of shit being a pain in the ass and not working well at all.

dotancohen 4y ago

> part of the tragedy is that a lot of technology that worked well has been replaced by "better" technology that doesn't work well. I am 100% convinced that '80's era landlines had superior sound quality to today's cellphones by any manufacturer. I went out of my way to get a Samsung Note that ostensibly supports some high-quality sound when communicating with another device that supports whatever this profile is called, but all conversations are streams of "what? say again?". Yes I know that POTS landlines generally discard much not-in-human-vocal-range sounds that still affect how we perceive voice. But even with that limitation, I feel that the difference in sound quality as I remember it and as I now experience it cannot all be attributed to 30 years of rock concerts and rifle fire on these eardrums.