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Is there any reason why comms of literally every variety in SW, be they ship to ship or helmet to helmet or whatever, have little better sound fidelity than contemporary ones? By the time your civilization can BDZ planets, I would think you could have a reliably clear-sounding radio/wireless/Clarketech communicator. Is this ever addressed?

Well, in any military situation, there's going to be heavy ECM if the enemy hasn't been totally annihilated, and as for the holocomms, remember that they are enabling live communications across intergalactic distances, so the quality might get a little degraded.

Sure, but I'm talking about things like Han getting clearance from the Executor to land on Endor and other less than urgent situations. I can't recall one instance of decent, pure sound quality in a transmission in Wars.

In the X-Wing books, it is mentioned that the comm gear for the Rebels is somewhat intentionally bad to protect the identities of the people using it.

TithonusSyndrome wrote:Sure, but I'm talking about things like Han getting clearance from the Executor to land on Endor and other less than urgent situations. I can't recall one instance of decent, pure sound quality in a transmission in Wars.

For the executor thing, maybe they were transmitting through the shield? they had to open it to clear the Tydrium to land.

Most of the comms equipment we see used is military in nature, and thus designed for optimum efficiency and reliability over quality.

also IIRC, when Amidala contacted the Trade Federation reps aboard the droid control ship at the start of episode one, the transmission seemed pretty clear.

So you mean besides the real life reason that George Lucas wanted to evoke old World War 2 fighter dogfights?

I recall reading somewhere (although I have no idea which book), that the Rebels deliberately kept their comms on the lowest possible power-setting they could, while still getting the signals through, to reduce the chance of it being intercepted by the Empire. Of course, that doesn't make a huge amount of sense when you're in a space battle with said Empire, where the ECM means that not having reliable communications is more of a potential issue than the Imperials listening in, but there you have it.

Comm quality in ST?