Slashdot Mirror
Mega-ISP Update: Layoffs At AOL, Voices At MSN
rfc1394 writes: "There are two articles, the first article, in today's Washington Post, mentioned that AOL, having successfully digested Time Warner, is producing results of that digestion by additionally extruding almost 1,000 people in layoffs due to an anemic advertising market and a need to meet projected revenue goals of about $40 billion.
A separate Post article mentions how Microsoft's online service MSN is having a woman named Shelley Reynolds create a series of spoken identifiers for its online service similar to AOL's famous 'You've got mail!' and identifies El Edwards as the man who is the voice behind the phrase. The second article also tells about the effect of sound on people with respect to technology, and the payments involved (Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures.)"
"You've got pink slip!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'd call that a rock.
But what would you think the diffrence between a rock and a stone is?
and what about pebbles?
It's funny I looked up the definitions of all these 2 weeks ago.
"You've got goats(parental control feature turned on)!"
---
Repeat after me : "Want fries with that?"
Je t'aime Stéphanie
that was the key here Einstein
its ok your a geek not a buisness major so you are forgiven just don't run a dotcom for a few years please.
RTFA. She's getting a big contract for reading over 10,000 names as well as standard greeting phrases.
if (not $article_read) {
post($stupid_pseudocode);
bash(qw(Micro$oft Microshaft Microsquish Microhard Microsuck M$ MS Billy-Boy BillG));
karma += 3;
}
For more information, click here.
It is a sick world when companies layoff people like they are a social security number and not a person. Consumers are the very people we employ. When you layoff your employees, you lose them as a consumer as well. The economy crashes because of these companies. How do you expect people to spend more when you are laying them off. Do the math.
Back in the early-to-mid-90's, I lived the slacker life in Austin (I realize nowadays, Austin is too hip to be hip anymore, which is one of the reasons it's been overpopulated by refugees from San Francisco, and is also is one of the reasons I left, but I digress). One of my best friends was a diligent worker at Ruby's BBQ, a local barbeque joint with one location and no plans for expansion. At the time, the place was located adjacent to Antone's blues club (the blues club has since relocated to downtown, and Antone has since relocated to federal prison) and Ruby's BBQ was open until 3am on weekends. This, combined with the Texas liquor laws requiring bars to close at 2am, led to a lot of business for Ruby's, and a lot of Antones' drunken patrons vomiting up a lot of perfectly good beef brisket and sausage. Now, my good friend (I'll call him Scott) had the good/mis-fortune of working at Ruby's almost every Friday and Saturday night (bad because he didn't get off until late, and good because after he got off, he usually stayed up until dawn drinking out of Rubys' beer cooler). Well anyway, one night while ol' Scott was working the late-night shift, this young feller walks in, drunk off his ass. He's waiting in line, joking with his friends, and doing absolutely spectacular impressions of Beavis and Butthead, and Anderson (don't forget the time period this is taking place in). I mean, not only are the voices spot-on, but the observations being made in character are absolutely uproarious. This fellow gets to the head of the line, proceeds to order a combo sandwich in Anderson's voice, and moves off to wait for his order to be fulfilled. Upon speaking with the other members of his party, this fellow turns out to be a personage no less than Mike Judge himself. He eventually receives his order, goes to his table, and proceeds to regale his companions with hilarious (to the sober) impressions of the decor at Ruby's, the food at Ruby's, and the overpriced, talentless acts booked by Antone, all in the voices of the characters of America's best-loved cartoon show (Power Puff Girls were still several years away).
Well, that's pretty much the whole story. Sorry I'm not like the classic Deep South narrator (well thish-yer Smiley)...maybe you had to be there to appreciate it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
extruding almost 1,000 people in layoffs due to an anemic advertising market and a need to meet projected revenue goals of about $40 billion
Does getting rid of workers increase *revenue*?
creation science book
We can send emails with MPEG attachments to the sys admins of the sites brought to their knees by /. links.
"You've been slashdotted."
A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle.
This should make everyone in little businesses getting raped by the market feel a bit better, seeing that massive corporations can't even hide from the recession.
Err, "boulder". (doh!)
FWIW, I find the definition of boulder to be quite interesting: "A large rounded mass of rock lying on the surface of the ground or embedded in the soil". Why not just say "a large rounded mass of rock", and leave it at that?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
after another hundred year government-enforced monopoly
This assumes, of course, that all the stockholders (in aggregate) care about is the results in the current quarter.
The dotbomb's stock prices were based largely upon speculation. You can't tell me that, a dotcom with P/E ratios in the thousands had stock prices based on the latest quarter's earnings. In these cases, during the "boom," shareholders (again in aggregate) were willing to forego current income in exchange for potential future market dominance.
It's a double-edged sword. If you have a killer plan, but can't get anything going in the near term, why should I invest my money with you? Similarly, if you've got your current market covered, but have no plans for growth in the future, why should anyone new invest?
In the latter case, what happens when your current market disappears (and it will)? You've got no company, and my stock is worth zilch.
A viable company has to have both a current value proposition, and a speculative function operating simultaneously, and the market will reward both.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Her name sounds EXTREMELY familiar, but I can't place it, and IMDB has nothing, just a Shelly Reynolds, which isn't her. Anybody know WHY her name sounds familiar? Or other work she's done?
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
You know, technically, Edwards received "something under six figures" as well.
"You've got Paula Jones!"
---
That would be called a "meteor".
Edwards got $100 initially, and the WAVs sounded like they were recorded on an old Magnecord PT6 reel recorder. the original WAVs had some component of a whistle up to speed leading them all, indicating they started the tape and pointed a cue, instead of rolling tape continuously, cueing the announcements, and putting nonmagnetic leader tape in between for cleaner digitization. so when AOL 3.0 came out, they rehired Edwards to reprise the tags, and he got considerably more... I have heard something in the $25,000 range. they also got the whistles out.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Who could have foreseen something like this happening," said Elwood Edwards. "Years ago my wife worked at AOL and asked me to record the greetings for the company. Now, as I think about the millions of AOL members who consider me as the 'mailman' of cyberspace, I'm amazed. I'm pleased that I've had a small part in making the computer world smaller and more personable."
Edwards has recently started his own business doing voice-overs for commercial and business broadcasts, radio and television. More information about Elwood Edwards and his voice-over services can be found at his Website:
http://members.aol.com/voicepro.
They must have fired there top managers if they raise $40 billion by laying of only 1000 people that means that each now if we could only get other company's to follow suite
I've never noticed it before but my thinking cap does sort of resemble a hockey helmet
I think he's got the last laugh... ;-)
"You've got rich!"
-earl
Orangejello (pronounced "orahn-jzello" -- I SWEAR this is REAL!!)
Did you know he's actually a twin? The other one is Lemonjello (le-MAHN-zhe-low).
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
What we need is a voice that can say f1rst p0st for those comments, when you view the them
Then again, my soundcard cannot handle more that 64 samples at once...
At $100 for his services, Mr. Edwards received $14 and change per word for "You've Got Mail," "Welcome," "Goodbye," and "File's done." This woman is not only saying "Good morning," "Good afternoon," "Good evening," and "Goodbye," she's also going to address people by NAME. According to the article, she's reading over 10,000 names, including alternate pronunciations. That's at least 10,007 words. $14 x 10,007 is over $100,000 already.
MSN is getting a bargain.
For more information, click here.
I maybe that I am stating the obvious, but this shows just how little AOL cares about people. I guess I should expect this, because they are a company, and therefore strive be as profitable as possible.
Since AOL Time Warner now owns Time magazine, I have already cancelled my subscription, and very clearly stated that I was doing it because of their monopolistic practices.
So the new voice of Microsoft is going to be somebody who says "I'm a total Luddite?" Hmmmm.
They also need to come up with some soothing, high positive energy Aquarius phrases for the following:
"This application has performed an illegal operation and will be shutdown"
"Please wait"
"Would you like to reboot now?"
"We are going to MSN today"
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Isn't the "you've got mail" voice from xbiff++, before AOL existed?
Just watch a lot of episodes of Murphy Brown...
Why pay someone 5+ figures for their voice when you can just copy any voice? I guess these Microsoft guys really don't read slashdot enough
3 25 3&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/31/133
It's El, not Ed.
The guy that does most of the big movie preview voice-over's sometimes commands $1 million per movie preview voice-over, I think. Voice-over work is nothing new for making big bucks.
And Deborah Pratt (Donald P. Bellasario's wife) was the voic of Ziggy on Quantum Leap (in later episodes).
El Edwards has a website with more of his voice work. Not surprisingly, it's an AOL member page. I listened to his demo briefly and I could swear I heard a faint tinge of desparation in his voice.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
>USER- *click yes*
>MSN- "Are you sure?"
>USER- *click yes again*
>MSN- "You must reboot"
Unless, of course, it contains a .vbs attachment, in which case it's automatically opened with a cheery:
"Hello! Someone send you this file to get your advice!"
I've got to say if the paperclip is annoying to people.. Gilbert is the exact voice I would think of.
Is that a subliminal way of admitting how Christian/God fanaticals are always looking to convert people of other faiths into theirs? I know a few guys who are of these sort, they yapper about how Jesus Christ is the greatest, and they question my religion. "Why do you believe in a bald meditating man?". Fuck you, religion is something personal, it can't be institutionalized. Damn, these people sin against their own parents for God's sake (oh I just said "God", does that make me a believer, I question myself), they say they've converted to Christianity and hope their parents will someday also repent from their sins. What sins? The sin of having another religion, from what I can comprend. One day I'm going to lash out against them, one day.
Why do I believe in a bald meditating man? Why do you believe in some bearded guy who got nailed to a tree? What makes the Bible a more truthful source of information than the teachings of Buddha?
Trust me to be trolling.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
it's nice to see some attention being paid to sound. The most frustrating part of being a sound designer in the games industry is the lack of respect and the last minute rush. They think it's okay to spend 3 years on models and textures, but you get 3 months to do all the sounds.
You've got modded down!
I'm glad it's free, but unfortunately it didn't seem to run on Linux very well. She should consider using more of a cross-platform voice or something...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
MS probably already has her under a contract, kinda like how the people who voice The Simpsons aren't supposed to do their voices in public. I guess it would be a bit more difficult if it was her normal voice they were using, but i am sure she has some rules, releasing her voice to the press may be one of them.
When they're not "lying on the surface of the ground or embedded in the soil" they're ususally called "catapult missles".
Dont you mean, " You've got to be kidding"? :)
Download MSN Explorer. She is the voice that greets you when you log on. Good morning, good afternoon...etc. I know it's not something most of the people on this board would ever download, but if you want to hear her voice that badly, it IS free!
(Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures.)
Ed...
"You've got screwed!"
der dee der.
The Star Trek computer voice was done by Gene Roddenberry's (S.T. Creator) wife Majel Roddenberry... and I don't know WHAT she got paid for it.
(She also played Lwaxana Troi in STTNG)
Krispy Cream is people
I would think that if this were the other way around, women's rights activists would have been all over MSN. Nothing like a pack o' bitches unleashed on M$. mmmm.
I cant wait for AOL to sue Micros~1 for saying "You've got mail". They'll probably go with something like "You have a new e-mail message, but you havent properly verified your key for your installation of WindowsXP. We are notifying the proper authorities. Please call us at 1-900-444-3321."
_14k4
www.poorheart.com
slashdot_at_poorheart.com
C:\PROGRAM FILES\Internet Information Server\Media\Sounds\
CodeRed.WAV "You've got worms!"
There's also this link on Yahoo News, courtesy of the world authority on layoffs ;). And of course, that has its own message boards on the subject as well.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
.....does a company have "under 6 figures" to give somone for saying "You got mail". Here is what microsoft should have done if they wanted to save money since AOL is pre-installed on every computer.
....(Their Code)
StupidNewMailSound=new File("C:\AOHell\gotmail.wav");
if(mail) {
StupidNewMailMessage.play();
}
(More Code Goes Here)
IANAL, but I think this would work because Microsoft will not be distributing the sound. Then microsoft would instantly have the power of the "You've Got Mail" guy.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
AOL now realizes it is becoming a monopoly in its own right, so they don't need to advertise anymore, so they don't need a marketing department, so they're laying all those guys off. Makes sense to me.
It is more likely to be the case that they are firing their technical staff. Sales and marketing generate revenue, everyone else is overhead...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Alternate pronunciations, eh? How about "It's spelled 'Raymond Luxury Yacht', but it's pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove.'"
"You're a very silly man, and I'm not going to read you your email."
AC's cheerfully ignored
If a company did not lay people off after a large acquisition, it would be an atypical situation. Most acquisitions are mainly driven by the need/want of the services that the acquired company provides, redundant personnel are given their walking papers, and the combined company is seen by stockholders to be operating more efficiently. These layoffs shouldn't be a surprise at all, it's the way the business world works.
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
I found it odd to read an article on the internet, extolling the virtues of human voices instead of just the written word, and it contained no way to actually HEAR Shelley Reynold's voice! I mean, they could at least have provided links to somewhere on MSN's web site or even to a home page for her where people could check out her portfolio. I found myself wondering, "Just WHAT does she sound like?" but, I am NOT so interested as to sign up for MSN to find out! Can anyone provide links so we can hear what all the talk is about?
I'll sign up for the ISP that starts geek voice-overs.
/var/mail/you is empty-- get some friends!"
"Dude,
stupid troll.
Jeez, how many folks are left working at Netscape?
They had a big fat zero jobs openings posted as of today, out of the 100+ across all of AOL (excluding Time-Warner). My knee-jerk reaction is to ask what how badly this is going to muck up in-house Mozilla development.
"Merging into heavy traffic at near light speed!"
"Our inertial mass ever increasing!"
AOL would offend far fewer people if they just had some honest commercials.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
"You've got SirCam!"
---
$100 is short of six figures as well.
Seriously though, these seems like a lot of rationalization to justify pinching AOL's approach to their service. Not that AOL came up with it, but MSN seems like its trying hard to be AOL in drag.
One more thing: wasn't the voice of the Borg female? I forget...
Beware typoes.
"Do the voice again! Do the voice again!" - Drunken bar patron badgering El
http://windows.scares.us
"You've got monopoly?"
What about:
"Error: The operation has completed successfully"
or is that already sufficiently fscked up?
Was he also Peter on the (Real) Ghostbusters cartoon?
Does it seem odd to anyone else that this article about the new voice for MSN is about three times longer than the one about the DMCA and Dimitri from the other day?
I guess we can see where the press' priorities are.
"And the happiest day of my life was when the doctor said I didn't have worms anymore."
Her I could listen to.
Especially if she could read me my email.
Guess I have to wait a few years.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I see it like this: with the help of the merger, AOL now realizes it is becoming a monopoly in its own right, so they don't need to advertise anymore, so they don't need a marketing department, so they're laying all those guys off. Makes sense to me.
:)
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Hey well maybe people will not use MSN because you'll have to download 10,000 2MB .wav files just so you can hear your name... then again maybe not and the hard drive people will again make a killing ... ahhhh people are sheep :)
P.S. Before you flame the 2MB thing is a joke: although you never know with M$
The Anti-Blog
It is still worriesome that a person who thinks that way makes 6 figures. But they had to go somewhere when Psychic Friends went bankrupt...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"It picks up a certain audio decibel [...]"
What kind of non-sentence is that? Isn't that like saying that a bouler has "a certain mass kilogram"?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!!!11!
poiNT, click "your pc/system is now infactdead with Billy'sBugs(tm) kode blew payper LieSense virus. if you wish to .continue this session, you Mu$t deposit the required bad toll. failure to complie will result in your system remaining infactdead indefiaNTly."
have you seen these guise? if you do, be advised that they are considered to be alarmed & disingenuous, as their payper LieSense scam is being eXPosed for what it isN'T.
AOL: "You've got mail!"
MSN/Win9x: "You've got mail! Now go tell your friends to use MSN!.
MSN/WinXP: "You've got mail! Click here to pay $0.35 to read the first 1024 characters..."
this is why these big mergers are trouble....we will have one big isp and someday we will have to go through the entire breakup thing again. When will they learn? I guess you can't expect more from S Case and his buddies.
----------
http://www.wordnature.com/ says I'm Certified "Daft"
Got Rhinos?
Reynolds will receive something under six figures
DAMN!!! I'll say whatever the hell you want me to say! Knowing Microsoft, she will probably get paid like, $100 per word. Share the wealth!
"I honestly believe I have enough positive energy ? this is totally an Aquarius-type deal ? if I record these things thinking very positively, I kind of believe metaphysically it cheers people up. They'll get a positive hit," Reynolds says.
I think Ms. Reynolds has taken a few too many positive hits herself.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I remember when Microsoft used to pay college professors only $200 to talk about them.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Instead of that pittance that Reynolds will recieve, I think that she should demand that microsoft pay her like they want us to pay:
Per seat, per month. For every copy of these messages out there, she should demand a monthly payment. Then, when M$ says, "That's absurd! It's way too much money!" Then someone else can point in the direction of their subscription based licensing proposal and laugh.
Of course, they'd probably just fire her and get some stooge from the secretarial pool who'll work for crack. But hey, it's a funny thought.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
I work for a company which has started recording precisely this sort of thing for various applications to be used as give-aways when we launch our new web site in the fall. What I discovered in preparing the script for one of these things as a general "Windows" set is that the way Windows assigns sounds is completely useless!
What, exactly, is an "Asterisk" supposed to sound like? Is "Asterisk" a specific type of GPF I haven't discovered yet? (just when I though I'd seen every BSOD imaginable....)
Gee... no wonder windows is so terrible somedays. Next time my computer crashes ill know its going throught its Taurus phase!!!!
Probably nobody, I mean, "yuulghvv gllk mmallll" probably violates some parental control setting...
maybe you don't read enuf /. but I remember a post about content providers considering charging ISP's to allow users to access there content...
The earlier poster just grazed the surface of this issue. A key financial percentage that analysts like to look at is revenue or'Earnings per Employee' as an indicator of employee productivity as it reflects good management practices and corporate health.
The issue is not how many employees are being laid off, but what services are being outsourced. Oursourcing services such as call centers and HR, as well as IT infastructure management, etc. look on paper the same as layoffs, in that such outsourcing reduces the number of 'Regular Fulltime Employees' thus improving the revenue percentage shown as Earnings per Employee. This is a common practice and we shouldn't be suprised that AOL is making use of them.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
must be pretty strong in redmond
MSN- "You've got mail, are you sure you want to read it?"
USER- *click yes*
MSN- "Are you sure?"
USER- *click yes again*
MSN- "You must reboot"
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Its what you call stock value manipulation. Basically you fire people to make the profits seem larger and hence get high stock value. From I understand CISCO tried the same thing and it back fired on them, ie the stock value still took a hit. This is one of the problems with public companies, and probably the reason it can go bad after the IPO, since they concentrate on stock value instead of the product.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
If AOL/TW hadn't sold WCW (World Championship Wrestling) to the WWF for the incredibly low price of ~$7.5 million.
WCW, once worth hundreds of millions, had become a huge money pit losing nearly $80 million in 2000, so selling it was probably an easy decision for the new AOL execs. However, they took an offer from the WWF for $2.5 million up front and $5 million in ads, when they had other offers including one totally $48.3 million, with $5 million up front and $2.15 million a year for the next 20 years.
A few million dollars make not seem like a lot compared to the $40 billion in revenues they're trying to reach, but it could potentially have saved a few jobs truly cut for financial reasons.
Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures
James Earl Jones got $1mil (I think?) just to say "CNN" for the CNN network comercials....
Man I wish I had a voice speaking job....
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Last September almost a year ago, I turned down a job there. They did not pay that well for the DC area they were hoping the Stock Options would offset the salary. I took a job somewhere else and I am glad I did. I would probably be getting layed off right now.
The city is being overrun by a herd of Lucy Liu's.
haven't MSN users always been hearing voices?
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
I don't understand what's odd with that?
MSN hires only the best.
...I think he should just get $1 for each free aol trial cd. $100 can't compesate for being one of the most heard voices in America.
Any idea whether this will have an effect on Mozilla or the Open Directory Project?
Tim
During the boom, even companies that didn't want to grow (that is, wanted to build up existing markets instead of trying to rush into new ones and buy companies, etc.) were pretty much forced into it by shareholder expectations. And now shareholder expectations are working the other way - even solvent companies with working business models are compelled to cut back spending and lay people off, just because that's what "analysts" want to see.
And it will only get worse.
Hopefully this will help illustrate why half-arsed attempts by ISPs to provide 'content' to their subscribers are to be avoided. It might have looked like a good idea a couple of years ago when the advertising market was buoyant and share prices were based on - well, who knows, but having some trite 'portal' probably helped to boost them further.
But if even specialist content companies like Salon - whose only purpose is to provide content and make money from adverts - find it hard to survive, what's the point in service providers wasting resources on that too?
An ISP provides a certain level of service, for which you pay a fixed monthly subscription - which isn't subject to the whims of the advertising market. What's wrong with sticking to a tried and tested formula?
(Okay, so this is AOL, and they feel they have to do *something* to exploit those users who don't change their browser home page... but I still wish they wouldn't bother.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
if 100000 corporates/companies fire 30% of all staff, and fire 25 million people then the spending power of the country gets to drag down reducing GDP etc... then all the OLD people on pension funds will loose 1/2 their funds and starve.
Who wins? All the execs, and managers already earning $200k+ with millions in options.
*high five*
op ivy sig lines kick ass
Guttermouth is a really good band.
Here is a good link speaking about this:
Who should pay?
Why do you think that is? Because the people in the market look further ahead than one quarter. As a matter of fact, they look ahead as far as they possibly can (typically two-three years).
If you think that the people in the market judge performance on one trailing quarter and one future quarter, and you think you can judge performance better than that, bring your money and have a seat. Pick a company with a plan that is two quarters out, buy some stock, and make some money. Or pick a different company whose plan is going to stop working after one more quarter, and short-sell them.
"You've got HOT WET TEENS ACHING TO PLEASE YOUR EVERY ORIFICE! YOU! WILL! CUM!"
OK, maybe not...
-Legion
Oh, fantastic. I can imagine it now:
"You've got spam!" [Score: -50, Redundant. -ed.]
"You've got an attachment virus! Executing now..."
"You've got a BSOD!"
"You've got a monopoly!"
-Legion
"But we no one will ever fix it because viruses are profitable to so many industries that now RELY on insecure apps/OSes"
I thought that the second article isn't about a chick doing sounds for MSN but another article about Xena the princess warrior.
Yeah..... makes you wonder...
Is this a shake out of coders/hardware employees or a shake out of the marketdroids? Anyone got info on that.......
They should've gotten Stephen Hawking to do it :(
Goes without saying that any voiceovers or "sound and technology" as computer scientist call them, are very expensive. Female voiceovers because of the excruciatingly small number of women in the business of speaking in public, are the most expensive. You always hear stories about how Julia Roberts commanded the highest fee in the history of acting to come out of her 10 year "maternity leave". Well voiceovers are no different. When was the last time you heard a female voiced movie trailer?
Good grammatical point indeed. :) :) Corrections and details welcome!
I fear I still have to correct the physics of it. The decibel unit isn't a unit per se; it's 1/10th of a bel. A bel is a logarithmic quantity: it means you express a unit logarithmically. In effect, a 60 decibels (6 bels) sound is ten times louder than a 50 decibels sound. So, the words 'audio decibel' aren't that stupid.
Now, my physics courses are far behind me, but I believe the 'real' unit behind sound is joules, used to express the energy of the mass of air displaced by a sound. Or something like that anyway.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
The concept is: A speaker's voice in decibels is only a measure of amplitude - the same thing the cops in Traverse City, MI used to use a meter to tell us to "tone it down" (another misnomer) as we (the band) played at various bars making a living.
What this person is really trying to convey is that a certain "frequency pattern" or waveform that is "attractive" has been put forth from Ms. Reynolds' (trained) vocal organs. (not "chords" - those are combinations of two or more notes in harmony)
db
Cig:
ôô