Listen to a typical voicefile
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Digital voice corresponding is a unique form of communication that has a
special place in my heart. It has been a long evolution over more than 30 years.
I started playing with tape recorders after being recorded by my father in Pennsylvania. I
got my first hub drive tape recorder in the early 60s and began recording myself and
things around me. Later I got a portable one and did even more of the same but the quality
was not really there. My father was rink master at the local roller skating rink and used
a reel to reel tape recorder to play the music. One day he brought it home and I was able
to record radio using it. I wanted it so bad. In the mid 60s I was given a loan to buy one
second hand and paid it off working my paper route. As time went on I got more tape
recorders and friends that also enjoyed using them.
In the late 60s I joined a tape club called the Great Lakes Tape Club that I found in an electronics magazine I had. I immediately began tape corresponding with kids that were my age around the country and even other countries. There are so many memories from this part of my life. At first being very shy I started corresponding with many of the female members of this tape club. Nothing really developed but since I was so shy these were some of the first girls I really talked with about anything much. At one point I did even get to meet a female I had been taping with for some time.
I also got into other tape clubs such as world wide tape talk and global tape recorder exchange. I met more tape friends from these clubs as well. In the great lakes tape club they had a round robin that was a lot of fun to listen to. The club librarian would take contributions from members and make a show and send it around for a bunch of members to listen to and comment on.
Well as time went on taping evolved with my many tape friends. We started using reel to reel tape and went to cassette and then even tried some video cassette. As we got jobs and families the time to tape correspond became more rare and more and more friends just stopped taping to me. I was left with a core group of tape pals. We began using DBX and such to improve our audio even more but tapes became less and less frequent due to the lack of time at home to make them.
In the mid to late 80s I got the idea that we did not need to sit at home and make our tapes... we just might be able to do it while traveling in the car. The problem had been that we would listen and write down notes.... then read them when making our reply. There was no way to make notes in a car while driving let alone at night. We were, however corresponding via cassette tape by now and I had a small hand held recorder that was good enough to record my voice on. I took a tape from a tape pal and played it in my car cassette radio and then put a blank tape in the hand recorder and drove off. I would listen and each time I had a thought about what my tape pal was talking about I would stop the car player and press record and begin talking back. When I was done with my thought I would resume listening to the car cassette player. This worked GREAT and the drive time FLEW by.
Well the internet came along and I began looking up tape pals that were long lost. I reconnected with one in Texas and we began talking again using digital voice recordings made by our computers and sent over the internet as attachments to our email. We thought it would be nice to do this from our cars and eventually we started encoding our tape recordings into digital and sending them over the net... bingo no more postage and time delay.
Next we found some of the first few crude hand held digital voice recorders and used one called a Dlink. With it we could record our reply in the car and there was no need to digitize it since it already was digital. We would just send the set of files it made to each other over the internet. As time went on these recorders got better and the internet faster and now its easy to exchange digital voicefiles instead of tapes. We still do the same thing however... we listen to the voicefiles from the other person till we have something to say and then go into record mode and record a voice file. We exchange these voicefiles over the internet and it still makes the commute time fly.
I know some people use cellphones to do similar things but let me say why this is better in my opinion. First many people use a cell phone for boredom relief. This can do the same thing in all the same places. You can make voice files from a car or at home or whenever you have downtime and need something to occupy your time and mind... there is always someone there to talk to. Here is where it gets BETTER. If you are on a cellphone driving and talking OR listening and your FULL attention is suddenly needed by the road... you must be rude and stop talking or cut them off. Most people do NOT do this and so drive dangerously. With voicefiles you can stop playing the file or stop making it and the other person need never know.
It cost money to talk a long time on cell phones. The cost of sending and receiving voicefiles is basically free since it is something you have already paid for if you have internet. If you are bored and want to talk to your friend he may not be home when you call. On voicefiles he is always right there to talk to. It is like an instant friend.
I find that in many cases the people I talk to via voicefiles I am closer to than my own family. They talk to me more often and about more more of what I do than my family has a chance to do. It is amazing how well you can get to know someone far away and you can do it just about anywhere you want to. Just take out the digital player/recorder and begin the conversation.
I still send and receive voicefiles to a few people but I would like to meet and talk to some new people. I like to talk about a LOT of stuff. Of course I talk about my day to day life but also about politics, religion, sex, philosophy, travel, science fiction, high tech in general and computers in specific, and so much more. I think I can talk about just about anything except for sports. I have the gift of gab and have no problem generating conversation. If you have interest in trying this let me know.
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