For this assignment, I decided to listen to and compare one of the oldest and one of the newest recordings on the StoryCorps website. This allowed me to have a unique experience because the recordings are very different, in almost every way. The first was released in 1990 and is titled Coney Island, while the other is from this month and is titled “Try to be happy.” : A Father Shares his Wisdom.
The first thing that stood out to me about this older recording is that it is 18 minutes long. It was broadcast on NPR as a documentary, rather than an in-studio interview or podcast. I believe this format wouldn’t be as successful nowadays because there’s too much going on and with no video for context, it can be not very clear. Otherwise, the pacing is good, as there are three different stories from Coney Island. The audio recording starts with early 20th-century music and fails, to recreate the atmosphere of Luna Park. The quality isn’t great or terrible. It has a fuzzy quality, probably because the microphones aren’t as high-tech and there isn’t proper acoustic treatment. The narrator sounds exactly like the AI-generated ads that play on YouTube.
This audio story is much shorter, two minutes and fifty-five seconds to be exact, but it sort of works because this is not a typical documentary. My only critique is that the first story, although the audio wasn’t as clear, was complete, while this story lacks context. The audio is crisp and firm, supplemented with music at the beginning and ending. The podcast-style conversation takes place between a father and daughter, which allows for the main speaker to be more vulnerable, but the time leaves me wanting more.
This “experiment” of mine showed me that audio quality is not the most important thing in audio storytelling. These StoryCorpses are very different, so folly, for example, wouldn’t work in the newer recording, but I still think that the older recording was a better final product.