Audio

There. I said it.

If it’s easier to just talk, then audio is the answer. Regarding audio and emotions, we can easily associate ourselves with music. Music has been, for a long time and still is, conveying emotions and feelings through sound. Often we can listen to that one specific song that strikes a particular feeling within us; something that “sets the mood.”

In terms of voice communication, a popular scene for this application is the world of gaming. At the University of Melbourne in Australia, a study was done on voice communication within a video game. They found that “players benefit from voice communications systems that make socially salient information available to them…” (Gibbs, Wadley, and Benda 96). With a microphone or a headset, one can be good to go to use voice chat.

In addition to providing important information, the speed at which one speaks is important in transmitting information fast without having to type long strings of text that may be mistyped if in a rush. This is crucial especially for fast-paced gaming environments, such as first person shooters. Coordination, as well, is substantially improved over voice chat than text because people can synchronize a plan of action or carry a continuous conversation without waiting for the other person to type.

As a result of this, many games have decided to integrate voice communication into the game itself rather than rely on third party sources. The demand for voice chat has become popular enough that users can choose to use either use the in-house voice program or run a stand-alone program such as Ventrilo.

So it’s like I’m using a digital telephone…

This brings us to a program called Skype. This program literally is a digital telephone. It allows the user to call someone else using Skype and make digital calls. Essentially, one can make free telephone calls using this program. With just an internet connection, a headset or microphone, and this program, long-distance teleconferencing has become easy, and best of all, free.

Most important audio chat provides voice fluctuations, important for discerning emotions, and thus raising the level of trust. Volume and tone of voice are important factors in determining particular feelings and developing that sense of human presence. Through voice chat we can gain something more than just words on a page, but an utterance of sound that we can relate to and know that someone else is really on the other side.

I have placed a popular clip here to show the coordination of gaming through audio.