Why do airplane announcements sound so garbled and hard to hear

In an interview with Thrillist, Nick Broste, a musician and sound engineer, explained why airplane announcements are difficult to understand. The explanation is quite simple.

Broste explains that much of the equipment used on airplanes is outdated or made from lightweight materials, which limits its durability.

Airplane manufacturers want to use very lightweight materials, so the speakers on airplanes are small and not very heavy. This means they don't have high sound fidelity and are easily distorted, says Broste.

The problem also lies with the quality of the crew's microphones. Although they are optimized for transmitting frequencies best heard for letters, numbers, and warning signals, they cannot capture a wide range of frequencies, leading to compressed and distorted sound. "What you hear is a very compressed signal, which is why the sound is so distorted," adds the expert.

An additional problem is the background noise that has to be dealt with while being on an airplane at an altitude of several thousand feet. Combined with equipment limitations, this makes announcements difficult to understand.

A third factor is the crew positioning the microphone too close to their mouths.

Broste explains that the sound is often distorted because the person holds the microphone too close to their mouth. This effect can be compared to recording a voice note with a phone held up to the mouth, leading to a "crushed" sound effect.

Airplane announcements often become the subject of viral videos on TikTok, where passengers joke about the difficulty of understanding them. One user wrote, "The pilot announces something, and it sounds like they've opened a window in the cockpit." Another added, "Why is there always so much crackling?"