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Comment by madez | Hacker News Reader

The speech in the video is hardly understandable (at least for me). Is there a transcript anywhere?

Edit: You seriously think a comment asking for a transcript because the voice seems hard to understand deserves being down voted?

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Vimeo videos don't have automatic captioning, unfortunately. If you are finding it hard to hear there may be a problem with your speakers or your hearing. Or possibly your soundcard - check that you're not using some sort of equalizer that's supposed to 'optimize' things for music or so using EQ curves.

If everything else sounds fine and it's only this one video, then I'm not sure what to say. The speaker has a distinctive English accent and a somewhat nasal voice (so it has a somewhat narrow frequency range) but is perfectly understandable for me.

Everything else sounds fine. Its hard for me to understand him because of his accent, selectively fast speech and "somewhat nasal voice". After the beginning I could follow him but the first 30 seconds are hard for me.

Might be worth getting a hearing test. Perhaps you have selective hearing loss in that frequency range. (I'm sure there are more likely explanations, but couldn't hurt to check.)

While I agree with you that a hearing test is no the worst thing one can do, ironically, some parts were so loud that I had to remove my headphones.

That could actually support the same conclusion. It's a common misconception that hearing loss is general quieting across the board. What's more common is to have selective loss in some frequency ranges. That could encourage you to turn up the volume to ear those ranges better, which then might result in sounds in other range being uncomfortably loud.

Edit: more likely though is probably your speakers or something losing frequencies though!

Excuse the unintentional typo pun! And the missed 's' on 'ranges'. And the double 'though' in the edit. For the first two at least I can blame low batteries in my wireless keyboard...

It seems very clear to me. Perhaps there's a problem with your browser sound?

No, the narrator is definitely whispering.

I could easily understand him, but yes, the narrator sounds like he's almost falling asleep, or he is recording in a room with a sleeping baby and doesn't want to wake it. I assume your comment is receiving so much resistance because apparently a lot of people find his voice "soothing", and people don't realize that a soothing voice is not necessarily the best for communicating information.

But why - for everything good in this world - would they down-vote then?

I didn't down-vote, but I expect the comment comes across as antagonistic. Objectively, he isn't whispering. Whispering means sounds are not voiced, which is not the case here. So at best this is an exaggeration. Bluntly stated as it is, it likely seems unnecessarily negative in tone to some.

Tone is interpretation. I think we should prefer to error on the side of doubt before down-voting.

Let's assume they didn't down-vote because of interpreted tone but instead because they disagreed on the statement that the speaker whispered.

Why don't they put forth an perfectly good, objective criticism like you just did with

    Objectively, he isn't whispering. Whispering means sounds
    are not voiced, which is not the case here.

instead of down-voting?

I think down-voting should not be used for expressing disagreement.

Destructive behaviour is a good reason for down-voting.

Was his comment destructive? He used the word "whisper" non-conformant with the definition you brought. I don't think that was intentional and I think it was easy to get what he was trying to say. Other people also noted the "golf commentator voice". His behaviour was not destructive.

Down-voting is misused. I don't know how the community feels about this, but I see it as an issue.

Are you kidding? He is very well spoken. English is not my first language, and I had no problem understanding him.

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