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Burnt Toast Audio Says “🖕 Your Levels” [Archive Pull] · Never Post

0:02
Georgia: Hello, hello, producer Georgia here.
0:05
Georgia: In this month's archival episode,
0:07
Georgia: we're gonna bring back an especially fun segment
0:11
Georgia: made by me and guest producer, Luis Lopez.
0:15
Georgia: Luis is an audio producer, a very online person,
0:19
Georgia: and one of my close friends.
0:22
Georgia: And this episode was the product of weeks of conversations
0:26
Georgia: he and I had had in TikTok DMs about this one kind of really bad sounding audio we kept coming across.
0:37
Georgia: And I mean, the audio wasn't just bad. It was clipped completely,
0:45
Georgia: distorted beyond recovery, and so loud that you'd basically be completely screwed if you made the
0:52
Georgia: a foolish decision to scroll your feed while wearing headphones.
0:57
Georgia: Blowing out the microphone like this
1:00
Georgia: felt to us like this kind of mimetic language
1:04
Georgia: in and of itself, the sonic equivalent of a keyboard smash.
1:09
Georgia: Luis and I called this phenomenon "burnt toast audio."
1:14
Georgia: And in this episode, you'll hear us come to that term,
1:18
Georgia: define it, and explore why anyone would
1:21
Georgia: enjoy this kind of sonic affront in the first place.
1:25
Georgia: And I'm pleased to say that Burt Toast Audio
1:28
Georgia: is still very much out there.
1:31
Georgia: I hear it all the time.
1:34
Georgia: Honestly, I've been hearing a lot of new ways
1:37
Georgia: that people mess around with sound online.
1:41
Georgia: The latest thing I've noticed is that people will
1:44
Georgia: intentionally place themselves too far away
1:47
Georgia: from their microphone, like this,
1:51
Georgia: and start yelling to make up for that space.
1:55
Georgia: They're almost always doing this
1:57
Georgia: while talking about something that's a little scandalous
2:01
Georgia: or maybe ought to be whispered instead.
2:04
Georgia: And I usually interpret this as a way of underlining your point
2:09
Georgia: in like an exasperated way.
2:12
Georgia: I hear that distance in their voice
2:15
Georgia: and it feels like no matter what the person is saying,
2:19
Georgia: What they're really trying to tell me is,
2:22
Georgia: Jesus Christ, don't you get it already?
2:27
Georgia: And I can hear a clear line between that
2:31
Georgia: and burnt toast audio.
2:33
Georgia: This new trend plays with sound in, granted,
2:37
Georgia: a less sonically brutal way.
2:41
Georgia: But in the two years since Luis and I created
2:43
Georgia: the concept of burnt toast audio,
2:46
Georgia: The desire to break out of the system
2:50
Georgia: of perfectly normal sonic experiences hasn't changed.
2:56
Georgia: If anything, it's expanded
3:00
Georgia: because high quality sound remains something
3:02
Georgia: that is extremely reliably, even stubbornly available to us.
3:10
Georgia: If we wanted to, we could make perfectly acceptable
3:14
Georgia: sounding stuff with our iPhones.
3:16
Georgia: And many people do.
3:18
Georgia: But when so much of our visual experience online
3:22
Georgia: is digitally enhanced or smoothed or generated,
3:27
Georgia: sound still feels like the best way
3:30
Georgia: to add some grit and texture back in.
3:35
Georgia: To say, fuck your levels.
3:38
Georgia: And crucially, RIP to headphone users.
3:52
Luis: We've been thinking about crappy audio on the internet.
3:56
Luis: Crappy as in mediocre or amateur, audio that's been poorly recorded or poorly reproduced.
4:04
Luis: Being online, you get exposed to a lot of it.
4:07
Georgia: People record themselves way too close to the mic,
4:11
Georgia: or in a noisy place, or outside when it's windy.
4:15
Georgia: Maybe they want to record something
4:17
Georgia: that's happening right now
4:19
Georgia: so they don't set up their levels.
4:21
Georgia: There's a thousand reasons for audio to be bad,
4:24
Georgia: and there are countless examples of bad audio online.
4:29
Georgia: Give me a lot of snow in Iowa!
4:30
Clip: Charge your tablets, get your papers out of the bag,
4:33
Clip: get everything!
4:34
Clip: This is not your paper job.
4:35
Clip: Is Papa John a person or is he just like a character?
4:39
Clip: Oh my gosh!
4:40
Clip: Oh my God, it looks so much like this in the picture.
4:42
Clip: Not my books!
4:43
Clip: Apple is not a person!
4:45
Clip: You're not trouble to close right now!
4:48
Luis: You hear it so much that it's easy for crappy audio to just become background noise.
4:54
Luis: But as an audio producer, I'm thinking about audio all the time.
4:59
Luis: If I hear a mic that's clipping, if the voice starts to distort and create noise, I immediately
5:05
Luis: It's like a blurry picture.
5:09
Luis: In fact, there is a case to be made that it's better when it sounds bad.
5:13
Luis: It's doing something.
5:16
Luis: Something that it wouldn't do if the recording was clean.
5:19
Luis: There is a desire for audio to clump, distort, degrade, totally against the rules.
5:26
Luis: But this rule-breaking communicates an essential aspect of internet culture.
5:32
Luis: Bad is good.
5:34
Luis: or at least certain flavors of bad are good.
5:39
Luis: ♪ Put your head on my shoulder ♪
5:42
Georgia: So, listen along with me.
5:45
Georgia: You're sitting on the couch and scrolling TikTok,
5:48
Georgia: sort of half paying attention.
5:50
Georgia: The sound is just playing out of your iPhone speakers
5:54
Georgia: into the room, so the quality is already okay-ish.
5:59
Georgia: And this video pops up by a woman named Tiara Skye.
6:02
Clip: Hello, hello, it's the beach with the massive camel toe.
6:06
Georgia: Tiara's whole thing is running up to people on the street
6:10
Georgia: at night with a microphone
6:12
Georgia: and asking them unexpected questions
6:14
Georgia: to catch them off guard.
6:16
Clip: Are you gonna be at least being tonight?
6:18
Clip: I might be.
6:19
Clip: (laughing)
6:21
Georgia: You watch a few and then you get
6:24
Georgia: to this one particular video.
6:26
Clip: Do you know who's the red black devil?
6:28
Clip: Oh, sorry.
6:31
Georgia: Tiara is in a long red dress with a white fur coat.
6:35
Georgia: It's night and she's just approached a woman on the street.
6:39
Georgia: The sound is already bad.
6:41
Georgia: Tiara is using this handheld corded microphone
6:44
Georgia: that seems to only pick up distorted rough sounding audio.
6:49
Clip: Can you say that to black people?
6:51
Clip: Oh, sorry.
6:54
Georgia: After being asked the question,
6:56
Georgia: the girl hesitates and laughs.
6:58
Georgia: She's definitely been put on the spot.
7:00
Clip: Sorry.
7:02
Georgia: But then, Tiara decides to change the subject.
7:06
Georgia: How are you doing today?
7:08
Georgia: And that's when something really fabulous happens.
7:13
Clip: I'm feeling good because today is my birthday.
7:20
Clip: Birthday!
7:22
Clip: Wow.
7:22
Georgia: Tiara's voice just totally overpowers the technology.
7:27
Georgia: It's like the mic just can't capture her full body exaltation about the fact that it's
7:34
Georgia: this girl's birthday.
7:36
Luis: The mic doesn't just fail.
7:38
Luis: It gives up.
7:41
Luis: And the video abandons its original premise completely and becomes a masterful failure
7:47
Luis: in audio recording.
7:49
Luis: Individual syllables struggle to burst through the saturation.
7:53
Luis: And if you close your eyes and focus only on the video's sound, it's like time stops.
8:00
Luis: We get freeze frames of an outburst that never could have happened if the recording had gone
8:06
Luis: well.
8:06
Clip: Birthday!
8:09
Clip: Happy birthday to you!
8:14
Georgia: The clipping is what makes this video something.
8:19
Georgia: Just in case you need the numbers to prove it, this TikTok has been viewed 7.6 million
8:25
Georgia: times and has been liked 1.8 million times.
8:30
Georgia: And even the comments can't find the right way to express how that clipping makes them
8:35
Georgia: feel.
8:36
Georgia: So many of the comments on this video, and we're talking tens of thousands of comments,
8:42
Georgia: so many of them use emoji more than text.
8:46
Georgia: It's like the clipping has broken not only audio recording but also written speech, as
8:52
Georgia: if even that isn't sufficient to capture what's going on here.
8:56
Georgia: This video is an especially good display of overloaded audio, but pretty much all of Tiara's
9:03
Georgia: videos sound distorted.
9:05
Georgia: I don't know what kind of microphone she's using, but it's very good at recording bad
9:11
Georgia: audio.
9:12
Georgia: Even if she's just talking, her voice is raggedy at the edges,
9:17
Georgia: like the microphone could give up at any second.
9:21
Georgia: But when other people speak, it sounds fine.
9:24
Georgia: And that tells us that she's not doing this by accident.
9:28
Georgia: It's not the microphone, it's how she's using it.
9:32
Georgia: Tiara is holding the mic so close to herself
9:35
Georgia: that it has no other option but to blow out.
9:39
Georgia: She wants it to sound bad.
9:40
Georgia: We can assume that. So why?
9:49
Georgia: Well, because it means something to do that.
9:53
Georgia: And she's not the only person who intentionally distorts what could be
9:58
Georgia: quote unquote normal sounding audio to make it worse.
10:03
Georgia: It's a sound that's familiar to a lot of us on the internet.
10:06
Clip: >> Bruh.
10:08
Clip: >> And his name is John Cena.
10:17
Luis: When we do get the decency of a warning before listening to anything like this, it'll usually
10:23
Luis: go something like RIP headphone users.
10:27
Luis: Audio like this is shocking and discomforting at best, and dangerous and potentially harmful
10:33
Luis: to our hearing in the worst cases, if we listen to it too loudly of course.
10:38
Luis: And yet people make it and share it, and people listen to it for fun.
10:45
Georgia: And the joy comes, at least in part, because this is so far beyond the scope of what could
10:52
Georgia: be considered regular or acceptable audio.
10:55
Georgia: The entire point is to overwhelm you in the way that the audio equipment itself is being
11:01
Georgia: overwhelmed.
11:03
Georgia: It's too loud.
11:04
Georgia: It's too distorted.
11:06
Georgia: It's too much.
11:08
Luis: intentional over-cooking. We could compare it to deep-fried memes, these washed-out,
11:14
Luis: grainy, and strangely colored images run through many filters and often accompanied by equally
11:20
Luis: weird text, and they do have a lot in common. But we'd like to propose a different culinary term.
11:28
Luis: Burnt Toast Audio. But why burnt toast? And why would anyone find that appealing?
11:37
Luis: Well, when you burn your last piece of toast and you have no other choice, that's breakfast,
11:42
Luis: I guess.
11:43
Luis: It'll be wrong, and with every bite you'll be tasting how wrong it is, and no amount
11:49
Luis: of butter or jam can remove that lingering char from your mouth.
11:55
Luis: Now, imagine you're served burnt toast every day for breakfast.
12:00
Luis: Eventually, you'd get used to it.
12:03
Luis: You'd have to.
12:05
Luis: the burnt taste will never leave. It's there to stay, like the burn marks on the sound waves
12:12
Luis: that redlined for too long. And after getting a taste of it again and again in your daily
12:19
Luis: doom scroll, you realize that it's not so bad. And you're starting to like it.
12:27
Georgia: Then you start to seek it out. Burnt toast audio has a layer of intention to it. It's
12:34
Georgia: either made to sound bad on purpose, or it's shared, with purpose, because it sounds bad.
12:42
Georgia: The poor quality is what makes these clips funny, and it's what makes them meaningful.
12:50
Luis: That relationship to intention is the key to all of this, because there is an inherent
12:56
Luis: contradiction between the internet and those of us who use it.
13:01
Luis: The internet offers immediacy, quantity in addition to and often in place of quality.
13:08
Luis: And people value authenticity, something that statistically few things on the internet will
13:14
Luis: have.
13:15
Luis: Although, of course, what counts as authentic is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder.
13:20
Luis: In any case, here you are with the tools at hand to record a piece of content and you're
13:26
Luis: able to share it right away.
13:28
Luis: And what's going to happen?
13:30
Luis: Will you create content that follows professional standards or content that defies them?
13:37
Georgia: For example, it's difficult to imagine something more immediate than live streaming.
13:43
Georgia: And gamers who stream on Twitch have their own relationship to this burnt toast type
13:48
Georgia: of audio.
13:49
Georgia: Sure, they have a headset mic or whatever, but when they totally freak out when they
13:55
Georgia: die in the game...
13:59
Luis: it is again. A pristine high quality recording of this scream might be funny, but it wouldn't
14:07
Luis: have this burnt toast flavor to it. It wouldn't be of the internet. And we know audio distortion
14:17
Luis: is nothing new. Whole music genres exist because of how much we love distorting guitars. Voices
14:23
Luis: on the phone have gone from a nostalgic "leave your message" band pass filter to an uncanny
14:28
Luis: warrable while the person on the other end finds better Wi-Fi.
14:33
Luis: But that's not burnt toast audio.
14:36
Luis: Because burnt toast audio is audio that is bad not only because the person who creates
14:41
Luis: it knows it's bad or doesn't care, but because they expect the listener to understand the
14:48
Luis: badness as a choice.
14:49
Luis: ♪ Pineapple upside down ya ♪
14:51
Luis: ♪ In the toilet I make a brown ya ♪
14:53
Clip: ♪ At my wedding I won't wear a gown ya ♪
14:55
Clip: ♪ I would rather wear a lady gaga mattress ♪
14:57
Clip: ♪ Let's go ♪
14:59
Georgia: The point of a live stream is to grant access,
15:03
Georgia: to record yourself gaming for other people
15:05
Georgia: to watch you in real time.
15:07
Georgia: And as a viewer, it feels like that level of access
15:11
Georgia: should come with a lack of artifice.
15:15
Georgia: (screaming)
15:19
Georgia: Even if someone streams professionally as their real job,
15:24
Georgia: it's still possible that they'll blow out their mic
15:26
Georgia: in a moment of game-induced fury.
15:30
Georgia: And when that happens, it's a tell,
15:33
Georgia: like a reminder that this is a real person, a real emotion.
15:37
Georgia: It's letting you as the viewer in.
15:40
Georgia: As the audience, we want that bad audio
15:44
Georgia: because, in a way, it feels more real
15:48
Georgia: than other kinds of media.
15:49
Clip: Please, Ed.
15:52
Clip: No!
15:52
Clip: No!
15:53
Clip: I can't, I hate this.
15:54
Clip: You see the day, see the day,
15:56
Clip: why are you walking back, you have to roll with steel!
15:58
Clip: (laughing)
15:59
Clip: You're finally too slow.
16:02
Clip: (mumbling)
16:04
Georgia: But what's desirable online
16:07
Georgia: would be seen as an absolute failure
16:09
Georgia: in other more traditional kinds of media.
16:13
Georgia: Like, if a microphone blew out during the news broadcast,
16:17
Georgia: That would be unprofessional.
16:19
Georgia: It would be a mistake.
16:24
Luis: And in this internet code, we crave mistakes.
16:29
Luis: We don't care that clipping may sound unprofessional
16:32
Luis: because what we're looking at is not professional,
16:35
Luis: at least not in the same way.
16:37
Luis: A gamer on Twitch could be a millionaire,
16:40
Luis: but they're using the tools of the internet to do their job.
16:44
Luis: It's of the internet in a way that a news broadcast is not,
16:49
Luis: which means that in a certain way,
16:52
Luis: this media prioritizes accessibility
16:55
Luis: over this more standard sheen of professionalism.
17:00
Luis: It's not hyper-produced,
17:02
Luis: and moreover, it can't seem to be hyper-produced.
17:06
Luis: Even if streamers have the best, most expensive equipment,
17:10
Luis: They can still give that DIY feel to their content.
17:14
Luis: They make it look and sound
17:17
Luis: like any of their followers could do the same thing
17:19
Luis: with whatever tools they have at hand.
17:22
Luis: Not only does it contradict the rulebook,
17:25
Luis: it exists for that very contradiction.
17:35
Georgia: And that rejection isn't just a bratty response
17:39
Georgia: to pre-approved audio standards.
17:42
Georgia: It comes with a very interesting weight to it.
17:46
Georgia: In the essay "Rough Music, Futurism,
17:48
Georgia: and Post-Punk Industrial Noise Bands"
17:51
Georgia: by Mary Russo and Daniel Warner,
17:53
Georgia: they talk about this idea of challenging
17:56
Georgia: the dominant code with something harsher.
17:59
Georgia: In that context, it was replacing sound,
18:02
Georgia: something people want to hear, with noise,
18:06
Georgia: something people don't want to hear.
18:08
Georgia: (crickets chirping)
18:10
Georgia: It might be a bit much to say
18:13
Georgia: that blowing out a microphone by screaming,
18:15
Georgia: "Oh my God, happy birthday!"
18:18
Georgia: is some deliberate punk act of rejection of the status quo.
18:23
Georgia: But it is intentionally refusing the option
18:26
Georgia: of better sounding audio.
18:29
Georgia: And there is joy to be found
18:31
Georgia: in basically saying, "Fuck your levels."
18:34
Georgia: There's a desire to hear what we don't want to hear.
18:37
Georgia: There's this paradox.
18:40
Georgia: But in the essay, Russo and Warner
18:42
Georgia: mention a really interesting idea
18:45
Georgia: of aestheticizing the tumultuous activities of modern life.
18:49
Georgia: In other words, interpreting the chaotic nature
18:53
Georgia: of living in the world through a look, a vibe,
18:56
Georgia: or in this case, a sound.
18:59
Georgia: Brutto's audio is its own aestheticization
19:02
Georgia: of this very online internet forward feeling.
19:07
Georgia: A lot of the sounds we've used here serve
19:10
Georgia: as these emotional shortcuts.
19:12
Georgia: ♪ Birthday ♪
19:14
Georgia: These short form bite-sized memes
19:17
Georgia: that can be used in place of writing out,
19:20
Georgia: this is how I feel when I see this.
19:21
Clip: ♪ Happy birthday ♪
19:25
Luis: There's a sort of real ones no situation here.
19:29
Luis: Not everyone will get it.
19:31
Luis: It's a kind of lexicon, an internet slang, so to speak.
19:36
Luis: And beyond that, it takes the communication
19:39
Luis: in our everyday online lives-
19:41
Luis: the voice notes, the TikToks, the threads-
19:45
Luis: and throws them into the fire, scorching them to a crisp.
19:49
Luis: It's exaggeration to the point of destruction.
19:54
Luis: It's beyond aesthetics.
19:57
Luis: Like the comments on Tiara's video,
19:59
Luis: It's something that's hard to put into words.
20:03
Luis: It's almost anti-aesthetics.
20:06
Luis: It's fucked your aesthetics, aesthetics.
20:21
Mike: That is the show we have for you this week.
20:23
Mike: We're gonna be back here in the main feed
20:25
Mike: on or around Thursday, June 18th.
20:29
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20:38
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