Ringtone Hell

If there’s a God in Heaven, let him be so kind as to inspire someone to come up with a replacement for the piezoelectric speaker. These speakers, based on the piezoelectric effect, are the workhorses of many applications, providing a small and energy efficient method of providing audio in a variety of applications. And none so annoying as the dreaded cellphone ring tone.

It amazes me that people can spend so much time meticulously choosing a theme song or jingle to serve as the ring tone that captures their “personality”. And then passes that personality through the audio blender that is eight-bit sound and a piezoelectric speaker. Ouch.

The influence of the piezoelectric speaker and low-quality sound output are probably more pervasive than we might recognize. After all, how many of us had a Speak & Spell? That joyful orange box of electronics that taught us the joy of spelling. In a monotonous, Ben-Stein-meets-Stephen-Hawking, lo-res version of a real human voice. It’s a wonder any of us are comprehensible in everyday conversation.

Today, every toy is now being stuffed with a voice. And they all suck. Sure, the potential benefit of a toy that talks and responds to a kid is immense, but at what cost? Are we going to end up with a generation of children who speak with built-in distortion and the verbal gait of a Canadian Prime Minister?