August 30, 2021 • 49 mins
We follow up with a bit more about what you need to know when selecting a screen for your home theater, plus all the options for sound. What's the difference between 5.1, 5.1.2 and 7.1? We explain!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech, and last week I
started talking about home theater basics, and I really started
(00:26):
with televisions and projectors, right, talking about the screen because
that typically is one of those things that draws our
attention first. Right, We talked a bit about L E
D screens, O L E D screens, projector screens, the
differences between h D t V four K and eight K,
what h d R or high dynamic range is, and
(00:49):
what refresh rates mean. But there are some other things
that I want to chat about before we move on
to sound. That's going to be the main focus of
this episode. But we've got some stuff I got to
clear up first because it does get confusing out there,
and I didn't cover absolutely everything. So for example, as
I mentioned in the previous episode, a lot of the
(01:10):
specs with television's really comes down to marketing. Okay, so
technology is is fun stuff, and there are a lot
of hard things we can talk about, like as in
defined things, Right, there are certain technologies where you've got
a certain set of specifications, and anything that meets those
(01:30):
specifications counts in. Anything that doesn't meet those specifications doesn't count.
But with home theater, there's a lot of marketing jargon
out there and a lot of different approaches to trying
to create the best experience, and it gets really muddled.
Companies find all sorts of different ways to quantify elements
(01:51):
in a television and then they slap that number on
a box. And these numbers can look really impressive, right
if you just see the number, or like some interesting
designation that's heavily trademarked, that might seem like, oh, this
is really cool, it's really advanced, it's really good. Other
companies will go a step further they incorporate some proprietary
(02:13):
technology and their televisions. That makes it even more confusing,
where this is something that you will only find in
TVs from this particular company, and you ask, well, what
does that mean, why is it there, what benefit does
it give me? And is it compatible with everything I
want to watch? So one of those companies that does this,
(02:36):
and it's by no means the only one. I don't
want to just single it out, but Samsung is one
of those companies. So I talked about oh LEDs O
L E D S. I did not, however, talk about
q LEDs, a technology that Samsung promotes, and its television's
q LEDs, according to Samsung, stands for quantum dot L
(02:58):
E D t V. So that raises an obvious question,
what the heck is a quantum dot. Technically, a quantum
dot is a nanoscale crystal that when UV light hits
that crystal, the crystal will emit various colors, and the
color that the crystal emits depends upon the crystal's size.
(03:23):
And that probably sounds a little bit weird. It kind
of sounds like Star Wars E right, like a chaiber crystal.
Your chiber crystal determines the color of your lightsaber blade.
Almost the same sort of concept here, except we're talking
about stuff on the nanoscale that, by the way, we're
talking about like nanometer that means one billionth of a meter,
so tiny that the quantum rules start to take effect.
(03:47):
And all things quantum and nanoscale are a little weird
because quantum mechanics do not necessarily work the same way
classic physics do, at least not the way we understand
it right. There's stuff it happens at the nano scale
that just does not happen at the macro scale, and
it seems almost magical to us because it's not the
(04:08):
experience we have. Maybe if you can actually see the matrix,
it all makes sense, like everything fits together. But right
now we still have incredibly intelligent physicists who are trying
to find ways of marrying the world of quantum mechanics
with our understanding of classical physics. Anyway, let's say you've
(04:28):
got a quantum dot that's six nanometers across, and you
hit that quantum dot with light that's around four fifty
nanometers in wavelength. That actually puts it in the neighborhood
of blue light. Blue is in that that frequency range
um that crystal or that wavelength range. I should say
that crystal then will emit red light. That's six nanometer
(04:53):
wide crystal. But if you were to build a quantum
dot that's five nanometers wide and you that one with
that same blue light, that crystal would emit orange light,
and so on. So by just changing the size of
the quantum dot, or making quantum dots of different sizes,
you can create different light effects even using the same
(05:18):
light source hitting all those different quantum dots. Quantum dots
have lots of other potential applications besides television screens. Uh.
The dots properties also depend on tons of different factors
in addition to size, such as the shape of the
crystal and whether or not the crystal is hollow or
if it's solid, And there's some really cool biomedical applications,
(05:40):
and beyond that, there's talk of quantum dots taking apart
in self assembling nanocrystals as a nanotechnology that can build
itself under the right conditions. But that's enough for us
to cover for now, because we could do an entire
episode about quantum dots and nanotechnologies and totally get off track.
So a Samsung q LED t V is actually a
(06:04):
variant on the l e ED l c D Television's
l c D standing for liquid crystal display. So l
e ED t vs use light emitting diodes that's what
LED stands for, as tiny lamps that provide the light
for a television screen. So all that light is coming
from these little l e ED light sources. A liquid
(06:26):
crystal display panel acts kind of like a shutter or
shade for each of those lamps, and it allows a
certain amount of light through to the screen in order
to achieve the proper brightness or luminosity of a scene.
And this also means that the little lamps are actually
always on in the background, and some l e D
(06:48):
screens aren't really able to show really dark colors effectively,
meaning you kind of get lousy contrast ratio compared to
oh LAD screens. Oh lads or organic light emitting diodes
are different, and that each pixel in an old LAD
screen emits its own light, and thus it can turn
off entirely and achieve a true black on screen instead
(07:11):
of this kind of dark gray, because there's actually a
light shining through a liquid crystal, and some of that
light is bleeding through the liquid crystal to get to
the screen. So with oh leads you don't have a backlight.
The old leads are both light and pixel and oh
LAD screens are emissive, whereas l e D screens are transmissive,
(07:33):
and a Q LEAD screen is also transmissive. It's a
type of l E D, so Samsung's Q l e
D screen includes a film of quantum dots in addition
to the L E D and l c D elements,
So the light passes through the film of the quantum
dots in addition to everything else, I imagine that probably
means that the lights behind the screen need to be
(07:54):
even brighter in order to you know, push the right
amount of light through all those it's including the extra
layer of the quantum dot film. But the quantum dots
are supposed to provide much more vibrant and realistic color representation,
so the colors you get on screen are supposed to
be more accurate and jump off the screen more effectively. Now,
(08:16):
q laed screens typically can produce a much brighter picture
than oh LAD screens do. So while oh lads are
great for contrast and they work really well in dim rooms,
q LED screens are more luminous and they can work
better in brighter rooms. So even if you have like
a lot of ambient light in your home theater space,
(08:36):
or you're not even building a home theater you just want,
you know, a good TV and you have to have
a lot of windows or whatever, or a lot of
other light in the space, these screens can be bright
enough where they can overcome that that ambient light that's
in your area. And they also work pretty well with
HDR content, that high dynamic range where you're trying to
(08:56):
reproduce colors in a really vibrant way. Now that is
not to say that que lads are better than oh LEDs,
but rather if you're in a bright setting, it can
seem that way. This, by the way, is one of
the reasons that's so dang hard to shop for television's
because typically you go to a store that's lit with
these bright, fluorescent, you know, lights, and it can mean
(09:20):
that a television that technically will deliver a superior performance
under normal viewing circumstances might not look the best simply
because you're in a very bright environment, not in a
home theater setting. That's why a lot of these places
will have like a home theater room set up where
at least a certain number of televisions can be shown
(09:40):
without being in that bright environment. Then again, maybe if
your home is brightly lit, then the experience you get
in the store is exactly what you need, because you
want to make sure that the screen you get is
one that you know you can see everything on. Something
else I didn't really cover in the last episode is
viewing angle, but that is actually important to Again, this
(10:03):
gets around the technology part. It's more about how you
position the technology. Most shopping guides for television's assume that
you will normally view the television pretty much dead on,
sitting you know, directly across from it, so like at
a zero degree angle straight line between you and the TV,
and the center of the television would be positioned more
(10:25):
or less at your eye level. Once you start moving
that around, like changing the viewing angle, you start to
encounter some issues, Like you would get the ideal experience
under those circumstances, and once you deviate from those circumstances,
you might encounter problems. For example, TVs that have l
c D screens can have areas that appear brighter or
(10:47):
darker from other viewing angles. So if you're sitting to
the side or you wouldn't necessarily see the picture exactly
as it should be. Or let's say your television is
mounted closer to the ceiling, it might not be ideal
either because your viewing angle is not the way that
you know was thought of as being ideal. Oh, LED
(11:09):
screens typically have a much more consistent viewing experience across
multiple angles, So if you do want to mount a
television close to your ceiling, then an old screen might
be the way to go because it won't be as
affected by that that extreme viewing angle as an l
c D television would. One other thing I do need
(11:30):
to mention about oh LED screens. This was actually brought
up by someone on Twitter, and I apologize. I tried
to find your tweet this morning, but I couldn't find it.
I don't know what has happened. I don't know why
it's disappeared from my mentions. But someone actually pointed out
in our last episode that, like plasma displays, oh LED
screens can experience burning. Burning happens when a screen holds
(11:54):
a particular image for a really long time. And I'm
talking like hours and hours of hour of holding that image.
So imagine like you have a video game playing and
you pause the game and the system never goes into
sleep mode. It just holds that image there, and then
you go on vacation for two months and you come back.
That's what I'm talking about. So in these cases, that
(12:16):
image of whatever was held on the screen for so
long burns into the display. Uh. In this case, it
means that the particular oh LED elements have held that
image so long that they kind of hold onto a
ghost of that image forever. So if you try watching anything,
you'll end up seeing sort of a transparent image of
(12:38):
whatever it was that was burned on the screen. Usually
what you'll get is actually image retention, not image burning,
which is more like the experience of having, you know,
a bright light flash in your eyes for a second,
and you get that after image, that retinal after image.
That can happen with oh led screens, but that's temporary.
The retained image will fade and before long you wouldn't
(12:58):
even remember that was on there. But it is possible
for those kind of ghostly images to become a permanent fixture.
If it's held long enough, it goes beyond being an
afterimage and it becomes burning. One way this can happen
is if you have a television that's set to a
specific channel, and let's say that channel has a logo
up on screen pretty much all the time. So you've
(13:20):
got a television running, say a twenty four hour news
station like CNN or Fox News or something. The logo
in the corner can actually eventually burn into the screen.
If you're just showing that all the time and the
TV never goes off. Now, for most people, this isn't
a problem because most people typically watch a variety of
things and that prevents burning from happening. Uh if it's
(13:43):
like a TV that's in say an office setting, and
it always has CNN on, well, then you're more likely
to see burning with a no LED screen under those cases.
I like to think of this as, uh, those oh
LAD components that hold onto the image are really just
saying this is all I know how to do now,
which frankly is a mood that I identify with. And
(14:05):
technically l c D based televisions can also have burn
into but it is far less common it. It requires,
like like I said, ages and ages and ages of
holding the same sort of image for it to happen
with your typical l c D based televisions. But even
with oh LAD, it's something that the average person is
not likely to encounter. So while it is possible, I
(14:28):
don't want to discourage people from, say, going to look
at oh LED screens because it's not likely to happen
to you. All Right, That, I think means we're finally
ready to transition away from visuals and talk more about sound.
So we're gonna take a quick break and when we
come back, we're gonna pick up with the sound component
(14:51):
of home theater systems, which for a lot of home
theater enthusiasts, they argue that as the most important component.
That you know, your screen is important, obviously, but that
your sound is even more important than that. So if
you were to like budget out of home theater, you
would want to put more money towards your sound system
(15:11):
than your television or your screen and projector. I don't
know that I agree with that. I probably do because
I do really like sound. I mean, I'm in podcasting
after all. But um yeah, we're gonna get into that
after this quick break. So we'll be right back now
(15:36):
to talk about sound. We're gonna need to have a
quick refresher on what sound actually is because it is
important and longtime listeners of tech stuff y'all know all
this by heart by now, but we get new folks
all the time. So let's talk about the physics of sound,
all right. So sound, when you really break it down,
is essentially vibration. It's atoms and molecules that are vibrating
(15:59):
against each other in a way that extends outward from
the point of origin, and it extends outward in all
directions from the point of origin. So as long as
there are enough molecules of whatever, this vibration is moving
through the medium. In other words, sound can travel. That's
why sound doesn't travel in space, because there's a lack
(16:20):
of molecules that are close enough to vibrate against each other,
so sound can't travel out there. We talk about the
speed of sound a lot, particularly with stuff like air
travel or you know, projectiles, but that phrase is deceptive
because sounds speed is dependent upon the medium through which
it travels, so sound does not travel at the same
(16:40):
speed through everything. Sound will travel at a different speed
through solids versus liquids, versus gases, and it gets even
more complicated from there. Most of the time we can
just say speed of sound to mean how fast sound
travels through the air, because that's how we typically experience sound.
But even this needs some qualifiers because sound will travel
(17:01):
at different speeds through cold air then it will through
hot air, and different speeds through dry air than it
will through humid air, so we actually do have to
get very specific. That usually means we say sound travels
at three per second through dry air at twenty degrees celsius,
which is sixty degrees fahrenheit. So why does that temperature matter. Well,
(17:23):
if you remember your physics, when you heat gases up,
they expand and the molecules get more energy and they
move around a lot more. Colder gases are more dense,
the molecules move less. In fact, if you can cool
down the gas to absolute zero, the lowest temperature you
can get, you stop molecular movement entirely. But typically we
(17:46):
are not talking about temperatures that cold. Sound will travel
faster through warm air than cold air, and you can
think of the molecules as being a little bit more
loosey goosey, and so they'll move around more easily, and
thus vibration will pass through this more easily. There's less
resistance anyway. Now that's super important for our home theater discussion.
(18:06):
It's just good to have a basic handle on the
physics of sound before you start talking about sound setups. Now,
some things that are super important about how sound behaves
is that when it moves through one medium and encounters another,
things change. So, for example, let's say you're swimming underwater
and someone above water is shouting your name. If you
(18:29):
hear that at all, it's going to be pretty muffled,
which is weird because you know, sound travels pretty well
through liquids. I mean, whales are able to sing to
each other miles apart. Right, Sound can travel enormous distances underwater.
But when sound encounters a boundary between two mediums or
or media, if you prefer like moving from the air
(18:52):
to the water, then typically one of three things happens.
Sound waves get absorbed, which means, you know it, they
just kind of get absorbed by physical material and they
no longer bounce around. Or sound waves get refracted, or
sound waves get reflected, and this is super important for
home theater setups. So let's just get refraction out of
(19:14):
the way, because most of you don't need to worry
about it unless you plan to set up your home
theater system inside a glass cube and then watch everything
from outside the cube, which you know, don't do that.
Between the refraction of sound and the glare that you're
gonna get on the glass, it would be a subpar experience.
But with a refraction, waves traveling through one medium will
(19:35):
change direction and speed as well as wavelength as they
pass through the boundary of the one medium into another,
such as from a gas to a liquid, or vice
versa um. If you've ever noticed that a straw and
a glass of water looks as though it's in one
position above the water line and a different position below it,
like it's offset, that's because light waves are refracting as
(19:58):
they pass from the air to water. So light behaves
in a very similar way. Sound does the same. Anyway,
we're gonna leave that behind because refraction is not as
important to us as reflection and absorption. If the density
of the two mediums is extreme, Like if there's a
difference in density where you're going from like gas to
a hard solid, you're more likely to see reflection than
(20:22):
you are refraction. With a reflection, a wave of traveling
through one medium encounters a dense obstacle and then bounces
off that obstacle. It cannot absorb into it, it cannot
refract through it, so it bounces off it reflects. So
in a home theater, sound traveling from speakers might encounter
like a hardwood floor and thus bounce off the floor,
(20:44):
and the angle of bounce is interesting. The law of
reflection tells us that waves will bounce off an obstacle
at an angle equal to the angle of approach. So,
in other words, if sound is coming in at a
thirty five degree angle, when it's hitting the ground, it
will bounce off at a thirty five degree angle from
the ground. If it's forty five degrees coming in, it
(21:06):
will be forty five degrees coming out. If it's ninety degrees,
it will be ninety degrees. Knowing this is really important
because this comes into effect when we start talking about
things like soundbars, which we may or may not get
to in this episode. I'll find out when I get there,
all right. Because of this fun fact of the law
of reflection, people can create really cool effects in spaces,
(21:28):
physical spaces. Folks figured this out a long, long long
time ago, which is part of the reason why certain buildings,
like certain churches and cathedrals in Europe, for example, are
built in really similar styles. And part of the desired
outcome was to create a structure that would reflect sound well.
Because remember these things were built in the days before
(21:50):
amplified sounds, so you didn't have microphones and speakers and stuff,
and you had musical composers who would create sacred music
knowing about the reflective effects, and they would create some
truly remarkable pieces of music that to this day sound
incredible if you happen to be inside one of those
(22:10):
structures when a group performs it, because it was made
for those spaces and those reflections end up creating effects
that enhance the music. If you were to hear it
outside of that building, it would sound like a totally
different piece and you would lose some of that complexity.
But the reason I bring it up here is that
if you do have a lot of hard surfaces in
your home theater room, like hardwood floors, woodwalls, maybe like
(22:36):
a flat hard ceiling, then you're gonna get a lot
of sound reflection, and that's not necessarily a good thing.
If you want to create an immersive audio experience, then
you want to be able to control how sound is
going to reach the audience. So let's say it's you,
like you're planning on being the person who primarily uses
(22:58):
this home theater. You want to be able to control
how sound gets to you, so that Let's say you're
watching a really creepy horror movie and you want the
sounds to be really specific and directional, so that when
something happens, say off to the left to your left
on screen, then you hear it on your left side.
Maybe even more positional than that, maybe it sounds like
(23:20):
it's coming up from behind your left shoulder. Well, you
have to create a setup where all this can happen.
And for that reason, a lot of home theater enthusiasts
prefer to have carpeted floors, and they prefer to have
walls that either have some form of baffling on them,
like foam or fabric panels that absorb sound rather than
(23:40):
reflect it, or they will put their home theater in
a place that has like drywall, which is pretty good
at absorbing sound. It doesn't reflect sound quite as badly
as say a flat wood wall would. Same thing is
true for the ceiling. Some homeowners when they're playing in
a home theater, they'll use carpet tiles, and they'll cover
the ceiling with carpet tiles to try and dampen sound
(24:04):
and absorb it so that you're not getting reflections off
the wrong speaker. If you're hearing a reflection that's coming
from the right speaker in your left ear, then it's
sending the wrong information to your brain right, it's telling you, oh, hey,
something's happening off to the left, when really it should
be happening to the right. So it's all about control.
(24:25):
And I think it talked a bit about windows in
our last episode, and not only is it important to
have good curtains or shades for windows to help cut
down on ambient light and reduce glare, it's also important
to cover those windows so that you don't have a flat,
hard surface that sound can bounce off of. Now, I
know talking about sound reflection may seem like I'm way
(24:45):
off track as far as tech goes, But the reason
I wanted to cover it is I would hate for
anyone to go out and make a massive investment in
a home theater system. I mean, these things can get
wicked expensive. I looked at one for the purposes for
the purpose is a research for this episode, not to
put it in my home because I just can't afford this.
But I looked at one where it said like this
(25:07):
one's not terribly expensive, and it was a ten thousand
dollar system that was just for the sound system, not
not even including like a television or projector or anything
like that. Ten grand that's a huge amount of money.
I mean unless you're like really rich, in which case, hey,
do you want to go to lunch? But it's a
huge amount of money. I would hate for anyone to
(25:27):
even start looking at putting towards an investment for a
home theater without understanding these elements of sound and how
the room that they choose might cause issues on the
setup that they want. So these decisions all have to
go hand in hand. You have to figure out, you know,
what the physical spaces, how you want to change that
(25:49):
physical space, if at all, in order to accommodate your system,
and what system would best work within that space. Now,
in most cases, you can find ways to address these
issues so that they're not too much of a pain
in the took is. Uh, they aren't game breakers or
anything like that. But again, if you're really looking to
create that incredible home theater uh you know experience, you
(26:13):
have to take all this into account. So it it
means that you have to know about the potential problems
you could run into so that you can figure out
solutions to them before you, you know, break the wallet
in order to pay for a killer system. All right,
So let's talk about sound setups now, way back in
the nineteenth century. Don't worry, this will be short, but
(26:36):
this was shortly after the invention of the telephone. There
were people like Clement Adair who showed how two receivers
or speakers could provide an interesting listening experience, with each
speaker playing a slightly different aspect of that that sound.
So Adder had set up telephones at the Paris Opera
(26:57):
and positioned the telephones around the edge of the stage,
and he ran transmission lines to a suite of rooms
in a nearby building, so you could visit this exhibit.
Is during an exhibition and Paris. You could sit down
and you would hold up a pair of receivers, so
you would hold one tier left ear and one tier
right ear. And because the receivers were connecting to different
(27:20):
telephone transmitters back at the Paris Opera, you would get
a slightly different listening experience for each ear. Maybe one
of the transmitters would be closer to the left side
of stage and the other one closer to the right
side of stage, so you would get a kind of
stereophonic experience. Right you would be closer to what it
would be like if you were there in the space yourself. Right. Obviously,
(27:43):
when we're in a room, sound can be coming at
us from all sorts of different directions, from different sources.
But if we're watching something and it only has one speaker,
then all the sound, all the elements of sound within
a scene are coming from one direction, one source. Well,
this was a germ of an idea that would kind
(28:04):
of sit unused for a long time because we just
didn't have the technology to be able to transmit different
sounds two different speakers. Then we got an engineer named
Alan Blumline. He created a method to record two separate
channels of sound from the same you know, source, and
each channel could go to a specific speaker, so you
(28:27):
could have stereo sound this way. Right, you could designate
certain sounds to be on the left side versus the
right side. Now, this was in the nineteen thirties, and
it was in response to the problem that at that
time cinemas were reliant upon a single channel of sound.
So even if you had multiple speakers set up in
your theater room, each speaker would be putting out the
(28:48):
same sound signal, Right, you would get the exact same
sound coming out of each speaker's They'll be mono sound,
no matter how many speakers you you hooked up, so
you would have no sense of directionality when it came
to the source of the sound. There'd be no connection
between where something was happening up on screen and where
it seemed to be happening in the soundscape around you.
(29:08):
So if a woman on the left side of your
screen shoots a pistol at someone on the right side,
you know you'd hear the gun go off, but it
would just come be allowed bang. There'll be no indication
of what side that came from. It would just be
associated with the visual bloomlines. Inventions allowed for more nuanced
soundscapes and bloom lines work would go on to impact
(29:31):
multiple industries like the music industry as well as film
and television. But we're really interested in television's here, so
we're gonna stick with that now. Stereo sound took a
really long time to get to television's, at least to
be fully integrated into the TV experience. Back in the
nineteen fifties, ABC did kind of an experiment with The
(29:52):
Lawrence Welk Show, and the network provided stereo sound decades
before anyone could broadcast in stereo. So how did they
do that, well, it was kind of a cheat. See,
the television signal carried a monophonic sound channel, so a
single channel of sound recorded from this show, as was
(30:14):
the style at the time, or rather as was the limitation.
But ABC also happened to own a radio network, and
if you had a television and a radio in the
same area, and you could tune your TV into The
Lawrence Wolke Show and your radio into the radio broadcast
version of the Lawrence Wolke Show, you could take advantage
(30:34):
of stereo sound because ABC set up microphones in the
studio that went to the monophonic feed for television, so
they were specific for the TV side, and they had
a separate array of microphones set up to go to
a different mono channel, this time to the radio. So
two different mono channels that when you hear them combined
(30:57):
creates a stereo experience. The mis were in different locations
in the sound stage, but by combining both you get
this more full, fleshed out audio experience. This was obviously
a really clujie way to get stereo sound. Disney did
the same thing too, by the way, working with ABC
(31:17):
the show Walt Disney Presents produced the Peter Chaikowski Story.
People Disney did this too, by the way, working with
ABC the Show Walt Disney Presents produced the Peter Tchaikovsky
Story and paired it with simulcasts both on AM and
FM radio, so putting all that together would create the
(31:40):
stereo effects while watching the program. While stereo sound became
common with recordings like vinyl records and UH on the
radio starting in the nineteen sixties and the following decades,
and film really got into stereo sound in the nineteen seventies,
stereophonic television wouldn't become a thing until the late nineteen
(32:00):
seventies in Japan and the mid nineteen eighties in the
United States. I'll talk about it more, but first let's
take another quick break. All right, Let's talk about stereo
TV and why it took so long to take off.
Even after it was becoming a thing with like you know,
(32:24):
records and film and stuff, there was really a chicken
in the egg problem going on at the time. Consumers
were reluctant to sink a lot of money into television
sets that were compatible with stereo, or otherwise buying TV
sets that you could connect to a stereo system like
a Hi Fi stereo system and have the sound play
(32:45):
out on big speakers as opposed through the television itself.
This was a big investment and there really wasn't much
content you could enjoy in stereo. So even after the
engineers figured out how to broadcast stereos sound out to
two listeners to viewers, there wasn't much that was actually
(33:07):
done that way. You had television stations that didn't want
to invest in the stereo transmission equipment. It's not like
they could use the same stuff they were using for
the mono uh equipment, you know, content. So that meant
that there wasn't much you could use these four It's
kind of like the early days of h D t V.
(33:28):
You could buy an HDTV in the early days and
you had nothing to watch on it because everything was
still broadcasting standard definition. Uh. So that meant that it
took some time for both sides to kind of get
adoption rates going. You know, consumers had to feel like
this was the way things were going to be, and
TV stations and producers had to feel like there was
(33:52):
a demand to supply that kind of content. But eventually
stereo television did become commonplace, as did stereo recorded media,
and for home theater enthusiasts, this usually meant that you
would hook up your television either two speakers directly, or
more often, you would feed the audio output from your
television into a device called a receiver, which could transmit
(34:16):
the channels of audio to specific speakers, giving you the
stereo sounds so that you had a left channel and
a right channel. UH these days where well beyond simple stereo,
and the audio options can be daunting, particularly since there's
a wide range of options that aren't always applicable for
every source of media. For example, if you've shelled out
(34:37):
the big, big bucks for a Dolby Atmos system complete
with all the speakers you would need to make that
a reality, and you find out that the media you're
watching doesn't support Dolby Atmos, well you're not going to
be able to enjoy the entire immersive effect. There are
technologies that try to compensate for that. They're very similar
(35:00):
in some ways to upscaling technologies with ultra high definition televisions,
where there's an attempt to fill out UH stuff so
that you can watch lower quality or in this case,
listen to lower quality stuff. But on a high quality system,
it's not perfect. It's not like it can magically create
(35:22):
surround sound where there was no surround sound before, but
it's better than you know, just just standard stereo. So
with that in mind, if you are building out a
home theater, it's good to make a list of questions
that you need to answer so that you can start
going down the right direction. So, are you planning on
a home theater that's built around music? You know you're
(35:45):
not thinking about a home theater space for TV. You
want a really good music experience. Well, in that case,
there might not be much point to building out a
surround sound system because the standard format for music is stereo,
not surround sound. Are you planning on watching a lot
of cable or broadcast television, Well, you might want to
(36:08):
look into surround sound, but you should know that a
lot of programming still isn't necessarily broadcast in surround sound,
so you wouldn't get a ton of benefit out of
that either. In many cases. In this case, it would
be a really good idea to see if whatever shows
or content you plan on watching, if it actually is
already in surround sound when it's being broadcast out. If
(36:30):
it's not, there's no point in building out a surround
sound system. If you plan to watch a lot of
movies or play the latest Triple A video game titles, well,
then surround sounds likely to play a big part of
that experience. But let's start on the small end, all right.
So stereo means we do have those two channels of sound, right,
one channel for the left, one channel for the right.
(36:51):
That's pretty simple. Typically you're also talking about a subwhiffer
to handle the low frequencies, and we'll talk about subwhiffers
more extensive later on. Surround sound requires at least three speakers,
but typically you're looking at either five or seven plus
the subwiffer. Uh. Then you've also got your receiver or mixer.
(37:13):
This is a device that sends the proper channel of
sound to each proper speaker. Right, it controls the mixing
level of them all as well. So let's say you
want to crank up the base so that the action
film you're watching makes your house shake. You could do that,
or maybe you're thinking, you know, I'm not getting as
(37:33):
much out of the left side as I thought because
of the way this room is so you might want
to boost the left side a little bit so that
on a technical level you would say the left side
is putting out more volume than the right, but on
an experience level, you could say, no, it feels this
is what feels right to me. That's what is really
(37:53):
important with these receivers and mixers is that they keep
the signal nice and clean, that they're not mixing those
those signals up, and that you're able to have this
very fine control over the quality of those signals, including
things like how much of each range of frequencies gets
sent out to speakers, like if you want to tweak
things like the trouble for example. Uh So, ultimately, when
(38:17):
you really get down to it, this is all about
getting the relative right sound levels out of each speaker
so that your home theater sounds the way you want
it to. That's what it really means. When you strip
away all the language, all the jargon, all the knobs,
all those different numbers, it's really just about getting the
experience right so that it's what you wanted, the thing
(38:39):
that you were imagining when you were building out your
home theater. That's really what the only part that really matters,
the numbers not so important. It's the experience that matters,
and also a caveat surround sound works best for larger
home theaters, like larger rooms for home theaters, if you
have a relatively small room for your theater setup, it
(39:03):
could actually be better to go with a stereo approach
or a sound bar, and also probably with a subwhiffer,
maybe not a super powerful subwhiffer if it's a small space,
but still a subwiffer. Now you might be tempted to
trick out even a small room with all the extra speakers,
like I want a seven point one system in there.
But when you are working with smaller spaces, you can
(39:27):
have a lot of crossover issues with sound, which muddy
the whole directionality thing right Like if the sound from
the right side is in your ears hard to distinguish
from the sounds from the left side, you haven't really
accomplished anything. And with smaller spaces that can be a
real issue. And at that point you've already spent a
ton of money on a setup that just doesn't create
(39:49):
the experience you wanted. So a stereo with a subwiffer
or a sound bar in a subwiffer might work. A
lot better for those kinds of spaces. Let's break down
the s on sound experience a bit further to talk
about what all those different channels and speakers are for.
So on the most basic level, the whole idea is
very similar to stereo. Each speaker in the surround sound
(40:11):
system is carrying a specific channel of sound that relates
to the speaker's physical location with your within your home
theater and the sounds location within whatever media you're consuming.
So that means that when you're building out your home
theater system, it's important to position the speakers around your
you know, preferred seating area in order to get the
(40:34):
effect you want. This means, by the way, that if
you are sitting in a different position than you know,
the ideal space, you do get us slightly less than
ideal experience because just as the way the sound is directed, Um,
it's not like it's gonna be necessarily a world ender
like you'll notice immediately, but depending upon the size of
(40:56):
the room and the equipment you're using and how you've
set it all up, it can be you know, something
that you actually notice if you were to sit, say
at the far extreme left side of your home theater
versus the center. You might be able to tell the difference. Now.
The first big film to use a surround sound approach
was Fantasia, a Walt Disney production, and Disney famously required
(41:18):
theaters to install incredibly expensive sound systems and equipment in
order to play Fantasia as it was intended so that
the sound would appear to kind of travel around and
even through the audience. For example, during the piece fly
of the Bumblebee, Walt Disney wanted to create an effect
that would make it sound as though a bumblebee were
really flying through the audience, and that meant Disney had
(41:40):
to record multiple channels of sound and then funnel those
channels two specific speakers at a specific timing around a
theater and carefully tweaking all the channel levels of sound
so that this specific sound would appear to travel around
the audience. It was a technical marvel. I mean, it
was truly a phenomenal technological achievement. It was also insanely expensive,
(42:06):
and Phantasia did not set the box office on fire,
so this became a bit of a sore point with
some theater owners because they spent a huge amount of
money for a system that was specifically designed for a
film that was not a hit, So tough call there.
In surround sound systems, you typically see numbers like five
point one or seven point one. Sometimes you'll see two
(42:29):
point one or five point one point two. Uh. The
point one in this case that refers to the subwiffer,
and the other number tells you how many channels of
sound there are, plus how many speakers are involved with
your typical systems. So, uh, with two point one, you've
got the simple left channel, you've got the right channel,
you get your subwiffer. You'd want to set the speakers
(42:50):
up to the left and the right of the television,
you know, left speaker on the left side, right speaker
on the right side, angled so that they are pointing
toward wherever you're going to be sitting to watch television,
presumably in a position that's directly across from the TV.
The sub whiffer, however, you can pretty much put anywhere
in the room as long as you can, you know,
(43:10):
still plug it into the receiver and if necessary, and
external power outlet. A lot of subwhiffers require extra power
because they're pushing around a heavier diaphragm inside the speaker.
But then we get into the five point one and
seven point one. This is where it gets a little
more complicated. So what does a five point one system mean, Well,
(43:31):
it means the system supports five horizontal channels of audio
plus the subwhiffer, and typically you've got a center channel,
so this speaker should sit like in line between you
and the television. Often these speakers are mounted below or
above the TV. This is where you usually get the
majority of stuff like dialogue, unless it's something like a
(43:54):
character who's off screen and their dialogue is coming from
you know, a specific side, but usually like dialogue and
stuff like that gets fed through the center channel primarily.
Then you've got your left and right front speakers, which,
like a two point one system, you would position to
either side of your television. On the left side and
the right side. You would have them angled towards where
(44:17):
you plan to sit. But then you also have left
and right surround channels, and these speakers you would typically
mount to the left and right behind your seating area.
So let's say you've got a couch, you would have
these mounted behind your couch, but more off to the
side than they are behind you right, so more off
to your left and to your right than they are
(44:39):
directly behind you. If you were to measure out the
angle between your view of the TV and the speakers.
So let's say that you know your your line of
sight to the television marks the zero degree mark, then
the angle would be somewhere around a hundred ten to
a hundred twenty degrees. Uh so, so beyond like directly
to your left or right a little bit, and um
(45:01):
hundreds degrees to d degrees to your left and another
to the right. Collectively, the speakers would create the soundscape
that would have you surrounded by glorious noise. But then
we get to seven point one, and I'm sure you've
already gathered. Seven point one means that you've got seven
channels of sound and thus seven speakers plus the sub wiffer.
The setup is a little bit different. Here. You still
(45:23):
have the center and you have the front left and
front right speakers, just like five point one. Then you've
still got the sub wiffer, but the surround channels now
split from two channels, which were you know, back left
and back right for five point one, and now it's
four channels. So in this setup you would typically have
one set speakers essentially directly to your left and directly
(45:44):
to your right, so a ninety degree angle between your
view of the TV and you know your left and
right side, So these are pointing straight at your ears
and other words, but you know, not at not like
super close. They're off good distance on either side. Um,
so those would be those two speakers. Then you would
have rear two speakers that would be a little bit
(46:05):
more behind you than the five point one. Remember five
point one was at an angle of like a hundred
two degrees. These would be more like a hundred thirty
five to a hundred fifty degrees from your point of
view of the TV, so so more behind you than
the five point one version was. Then we've got a
variation on this called Dolby atmos. So Dolby atmos repurposes
(46:26):
two of the speakers in a seven point one system, Specifically,
the two speakers that are positioned behind you, those ones
that are at the one hundred fifty degrees viewing angle. Uh,
theyse become height speakers, meaning you're to mount these higher up,
maybe even suspend them from the ceiling itself, and these
speakers then projects sound overhead of the audience, and that
(46:51):
can create some really interesting effects when paired with media
that supports Dolby Atmos, the overhead channels can add more
specificity to the location of sounds, making the experience way
more immersive. And the whole reason behind this was that
the folks that don't be figured that people would be
able to hear sound coming from above more effectively than
they would hear sound coming from behind them because our
(47:13):
ears are not really shaped in such a way that
they're great for catching sound that's coming from behind us. Uh.
Sometimes the Dolby Atmos gets the designation of five point
one point two, meaning you have five channels of regular
horizontal surround sound the center front, left, front, right, and
then the left and right channels. Then you have the subwiffer,
(47:34):
then you have the two channels of overhead audio. Confused yet,
there are actually some other seven point one configurations, but
they get really in the weeds, and for most people,
I feel it wouldn't be helpful. I will go into
a little bit detail in our next episode to kind
of talk about them, but I'm not going to spend
a whole lot of time on it because it just
gets really, really nerdy in the home theater space, and
(47:57):
for a lot of people, I think it's overkill, but
we will touch on that in our next episode. So
in our next episode, we are going to talk a
little bit more about sound. We'll talk why we want
a subwoper in the first place, for example. We'll chat
a little bit about some of the other things we
have to take into consideration with sound, and we'll also
look at some of the other components that we would
(48:19):
want in a home theater system, like the media sources
and stuff, because obviously, having the best equipment in the
world isn't gonna do any good if you're not feeding
it media that can take advantage of it. So that'll
be our next episode. That's it for this one. If
I've left something out or there's something specific you want
to know more about when it comes to home theater,
(48:40):
reach out to me. I love hearing from you. The
best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text Stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, you visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(49:03):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, h
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech, and last week I
started talking about home theater basics, and I really started
(00:26):
with televisions and projectors, right, talking about the screen because
that typically is one of those things that draws our
attention first. Right, We talked a bit about L E
D screens, O L E D screens, projector screens, the
differences between h D t V four K and eight K,
what h d R or high dynamic range is, and
(00:49):
what refresh rates mean. But there are some other things
that I want to chat about before we move on
to sound. That's going to be the main focus of
this episode. But we've got some stuff I got to
clear up first because it does get confusing out there,
and I didn't cover absolutely everything. So for example, as
I mentioned in the previous episode, a lot of the
(01:10):
specs with television's really comes down to marketing. Okay, so
technology is is fun stuff, and there are a lot
of hard things we can talk about, like as in
defined things, Right, there are certain technologies where you've got
a certain set of specifications, and anything that meets those
(01:30):
specifications counts in. Anything that doesn't meet those specifications doesn't count.
But with home theater, there's a lot of marketing jargon
out there and a lot of different approaches to trying
to create the best experience, and it gets really muddled.
Companies find all sorts of different ways to quantify elements
(01:51):
in a television and then they slap that number on
a box. And these numbers can look really impressive, right
if you just see the number, or like some interesting
designation that's heavily trademarked, that might seem like, oh, this
is really cool, it's really advanced, it's really good. Other
companies will go a step further they incorporate some proprietary
(02:13):
technology and their televisions. That makes it even more confusing,
where this is something that you will only find in
TVs from this particular company, and you ask, well, what
does that mean, why is it there, what benefit does
it give me? And is it compatible with everything I
want to watch? So one of those companies that does this,
(02:36):
and it's by no means the only one. I don't
want to just single it out, but Samsung is one
of those companies. So I talked about oh LEDs O
L E D S. I did not, however, talk about
q LEDs, a technology that Samsung promotes, and its television's
q LEDs, according to Samsung, stands for quantum dot L
(02:58):
E D t V. So that raises an obvious question,
what the heck is a quantum dot. Technically, a quantum
dot is a nanoscale crystal that when UV light hits
that crystal, the crystal will emit various colors, and the
color that the crystal emits depends upon the crystal's size.
(03:23):
And that probably sounds a little bit weird. It kind
of sounds like Star Wars E right, like a chaiber crystal.
Your chiber crystal determines the color of your lightsaber blade.
Almost the same sort of concept here, except we're talking
about stuff on the nanoscale that, by the way, we're
talking about like nanometer that means one billionth of a meter,
so tiny that the quantum rules start to take effect.
(03:47):
And all things quantum and nanoscale are a little weird
because quantum mechanics do not necessarily work the same way
classic physics do, at least not the way we understand
it right. There's stuff it happens at the nano scale
that just does not happen at the macro scale, and
it seems almost magical to us because it's not the
(04:08):
experience we have. Maybe if you can actually see the matrix,
it all makes sense, like everything fits together. But right
now we still have incredibly intelligent physicists who are trying
to find ways of marrying the world of quantum mechanics
with our understanding of classical physics. Anyway, let's say you've
(04:28):
got a quantum dot that's six nanometers across, and you
hit that quantum dot with light that's around four fifty
nanometers in wavelength. That actually puts it in the neighborhood
of blue light. Blue is in that that frequency range
um that crystal or that wavelength range. I should say
that crystal then will emit red light. That's six nanometer
(04:53):
wide crystal. But if you were to build a quantum
dot that's five nanometers wide and you that one with
that same blue light, that crystal would emit orange light,
and so on. So by just changing the size of
the quantum dot, or making quantum dots of different sizes,
you can create different light effects even using the same
(05:18):
light source hitting all those different quantum dots. Quantum dots
have lots of other potential applications besides television screens. Uh.
The dots properties also depend on tons of different factors
in addition to size, such as the shape of the
crystal and whether or not the crystal is hollow or
if it's solid, And there's some really cool biomedical applications,
(05:40):
and beyond that, there's talk of quantum dots taking apart
in self assembling nanocrystals as a nanotechnology that can build
itself under the right conditions. But that's enough for us
to cover for now, because we could do an entire
episode about quantum dots and nanotechnologies and totally get off track.
So a Samsung q LED t V is actually a
(06:04):
variant on the l e ED l c D Television's
l c D standing for liquid crystal display. So l
e ED t vs use light emitting diodes that's what
LED stands for, as tiny lamps that provide the light
for a television screen. So all that light is coming
from these little l e ED light sources. A liquid
(06:26):
crystal display panel acts kind of like a shutter or
shade for each of those lamps, and it allows a
certain amount of light through to the screen in order
to achieve the proper brightness or luminosity of a scene.
And this also means that the little lamps are actually
always on in the background, and some l e D
(06:48):
screens aren't really able to show really dark colors effectively,
meaning you kind of get lousy contrast ratio compared to
oh LAD screens. Oh lads or organic light emitting diodes
are different, and that each pixel in an old LAD
screen emits its own light, and thus it can turn
off entirely and achieve a true black on screen instead
(07:11):
of this kind of dark gray, because there's actually a
light shining through a liquid crystal, and some of that
light is bleeding through the liquid crystal to get to
the screen. So with oh leads you don't have a backlight.
The old leads are both light and pixel and oh
LAD screens are emissive, whereas l e D screens are transmissive,
(07:33):
and a Q LEAD screen is also transmissive. It's a
type of l E D, so Samsung's Q l e
D screen includes a film of quantum dots in addition
to the L E D and l c D elements,
So the light passes through the film of the quantum
dots in addition to everything else, I imagine that probably
means that the lights behind the screen need to be
(07:54):
even brighter in order to you know, push the right
amount of light through all those it's including the extra
layer of the quantum dot film. But the quantum dots
are supposed to provide much more vibrant and realistic color representation,
so the colors you get on screen are supposed to
be more accurate and jump off the screen more effectively. Now,
(08:16):
q laed screens typically can produce a much brighter picture
than oh LAD screens do. So while oh lads are
great for contrast and they work really well in dim rooms,
q LED screens are more luminous and they can work
better in brighter rooms. So even if you have like
a lot of ambient light in your home theater space,
(08:36):
or you're not even building a home theater you just want,
you know, a good TV and you have to have
a lot of windows or whatever, or a lot of
other light in the space, these screens can be bright
enough where they can overcome that that ambient light that's
in your area. And they also work pretty well with
HDR content, that high dynamic range where you're trying to
(08:56):
reproduce colors in a really vibrant way. Now that is
not to say that que lads are better than oh LEDs,
but rather if you're in a bright setting, it can
seem that way. This, by the way, is one of
the reasons that's so dang hard to shop for television's
because typically you go to a store that's lit with
these bright, fluorescent, you know, lights, and it can mean
(09:20):
that a television that technically will deliver a superior performance
under normal viewing circumstances might not look the best simply
because you're in a very bright environment, not in a
home theater setting. That's why a lot of these places
will have like a home theater room set up where
at least a certain number of televisions can be shown
(09:40):
without being in that bright environment. Then again, maybe if
your home is brightly lit, then the experience you get
in the store is exactly what you need, because you
want to make sure that the screen you get is
one that you know you can see everything on. Something
else I didn't really cover in the last episode is
viewing angle, but that is actually important to Again, this
(10:03):
gets around the technology part. It's more about how you
position the technology. Most shopping guides for television's assume that
you will normally view the television pretty much dead on,
sitting you know, directly across from it, so like at
a zero degree angle straight line between you and the TV,
and the center of the television would be positioned more
(10:25):
or less at your eye level. Once you start moving
that around, like changing the viewing angle, you start to
encounter some issues, Like you would get the ideal experience
under those circumstances, and once you deviate from those circumstances,
you might encounter problems. For example, TVs that have l
c D screens can have areas that appear brighter or
(10:47):
darker from other viewing angles. So if you're sitting to
the side or you wouldn't necessarily see the picture exactly
as it should be. Or let's say your television is
mounted closer to the ceiling, it might not be ideal
either because your viewing angle is not the way that
you know was thought of as being ideal. Oh, LED
(11:09):
screens typically have a much more consistent viewing experience across
multiple angles, So if you do want to mount a
television close to your ceiling, then an old screen might
be the way to go because it won't be as
affected by that that extreme viewing angle as an l
c D television would. One other thing I do need
(11:30):
to mention about oh LED screens. This was actually brought
up by someone on Twitter, and I apologize. I tried
to find your tweet this morning, but I couldn't find it.
I don't know what has happened. I don't know why
it's disappeared from my mentions. But someone actually pointed out
in our last episode that, like plasma displays, oh LED
screens can experience burning. Burning happens when a screen holds
(11:54):
a particular image for a really long time. And I'm
talking like hours and hours of hour of holding that image.
So imagine like you have a video game playing and
you pause the game and the system never goes into
sleep mode. It just holds that image there, and then
you go on vacation for two months and you come back.
That's what I'm talking about. So in these cases, that
(12:16):
image of whatever was held on the screen for so
long burns into the display. Uh. In this case, it
means that the particular oh LED elements have held that
image so long that they kind of hold onto a
ghost of that image forever. So if you try watching anything,
you'll end up seeing sort of a transparent image of
(12:38):
whatever it was that was burned on the screen. Usually
what you'll get is actually image retention, not image burning,
which is more like the experience of having, you know,
a bright light flash in your eyes for a second,
and you get that after image, that retinal after image.
That can happen with oh led screens, but that's temporary.
The retained image will fade and before long you wouldn't
(12:58):
even remember that was on there. But it is possible
for those kind of ghostly images to become a permanent fixture.
If it's held long enough, it goes beyond being an
afterimage and it becomes burning. One way this can happen
is if you have a television that's set to a
specific channel, and let's say that channel has a logo
up on screen pretty much all the time. So you've
(13:20):
got a television running, say a twenty four hour news
station like CNN or Fox News or something. The logo
in the corner can actually eventually burn into the screen.
If you're just showing that all the time and the
TV never goes off. Now, for most people, this isn't
a problem because most people typically watch a variety of
things and that prevents burning from happening. Uh if it's
(13:43):
like a TV that's in say an office setting, and
it always has CNN on, well, then you're more likely
to see burning with a no LED screen under those cases.
I like to think of this as, uh, those oh
LAD components that hold onto the image are really just
saying this is all I know how to do now,
which frankly is a mood that I identify with. And
(14:05):
technically l c D based televisions can also have burn
into but it is far less common it. It requires,
like like I said, ages and ages and ages of
holding the same sort of image for it to happen
with your typical l c D based televisions. But even
with oh LAD, it's something that the average person is
not likely to encounter. So while it is possible, I
(14:28):
don't want to discourage people from, say, going to look
at oh LED screens because it's not likely to happen
to you. All Right, That, I think means we're finally
ready to transition away from visuals and talk more about sound.
So we're gonna take a quick break and when we
come back, we're gonna pick up with the sound component
(14:51):
of home theater systems, which for a lot of home
theater enthusiasts, they argue that as the most important component.
That you know, your screen is important, obviously, but that
your sound is even more important than that. So if
you were to like budget out of home theater, you
would want to put more money towards your sound system
(15:11):
than your television or your screen and projector. I don't
know that I agree with that. I probably do because
I do really like sound. I mean, I'm in podcasting
after all. But um yeah, we're gonna get into that
after this quick break. So we'll be right back now
(15:36):
to talk about sound. We're gonna need to have a
quick refresher on what sound actually is because it is
important and longtime listeners of tech stuff y'all know all
this by heart by now, but we get new folks
all the time. So let's talk about the physics of sound,
all right. So sound, when you really break it down,
is essentially vibration. It's atoms and molecules that are vibrating
(15:59):
against each other in a way that extends outward from
the point of origin, and it extends outward in all
directions from the point of origin. So as long as
there are enough molecules of whatever, this vibration is moving
through the medium. In other words, sound can travel. That's
why sound doesn't travel in space, because there's a lack
(16:20):
of molecules that are close enough to vibrate against each other,
so sound can't travel out there. We talk about the
speed of sound a lot, particularly with stuff like air
travel or you know, projectiles, but that phrase is deceptive
because sounds speed is dependent upon the medium through which
it travels, so sound does not travel at the same
(16:40):
speed through everything. Sound will travel at a different speed
through solids versus liquids, versus gases, and it gets even
more complicated from there. Most of the time we can
just say speed of sound to mean how fast sound
travels through the air, because that's how we typically experience sound.
But even this needs some qualifiers because sound will travel
(17:01):
at different speeds through cold air then it will through
hot air, and different speeds through dry air than it
will through humid air, so we actually do have to
get very specific. That usually means we say sound travels
at three per second through dry air at twenty degrees celsius,
which is sixty degrees fahrenheit. So why does that temperature matter. Well,
(17:23):
if you remember your physics, when you heat gases up,
they expand and the molecules get more energy and they
move around a lot more. Colder gases are more dense,
the molecules move less. In fact, if you can cool
down the gas to absolute zero, the lowest temperature you
can get, you stop molecular movement entirely. But typically we
(17:46):
are not talking about temperatures that cold. Sound will travel
faster through warm air than cold air, and you can
think of the molecules as being a little bit more
loosey goosey, and so they'll move around more easily, and
thus vibration will pass through this more easily. There's less
resistance anyway. Now that's super important for our home theater discussion.
(18:06):
It's just good to have a basic handle on the
physics of sound before you start talking about sound setups. Now,
some things that are super important about how sound behaves
is that when it moves through one medium and encounters another,
things change. So, for example, let's say you're swimming underwater
and someone above water is shouting your name. If you
(18:29):
hear that at all, it's going to be pretty muffled,
which is weird because you know, sound travels pretty well
through liquids. I mean, whales are able to sing to
each other miles apart. Right, Sound can travel enormous distances underwater.
But when sound encounters a boundary between two mediums or
or media, if you prefer like moving from the air
(18:52):
to the water, then typically one of three things happens.
Sound waves get absorbed, which means, you know it, they
just kind of get absorbed by physical material and they
no longer bounce around. Or sound waves get refracted, or
sound waves get reflected, and this is super important for
home theater setups. So let's just get refraction out of
(19:14):
the way, because most of you don't need to worry
about it unless you plan to set up your home
theater system inside a glass cube and then watch everything
from outside the cube, which you know, don't do that.
Between the refraction of sound and the glare that you're
gonna get on the glass, it would be a subpar experience.
But with a refraction, waves traveling through one medium will
(19:35):
change direction and speed as well as wavelength as they
pass through the boundary of the one medium into another,
such as from a gas to a liquid, or vice
versa um. If you've ever noticed that a straw and
a glass of water looks as though it's in one
position above the water line and a different position below it,
like it's offset, that's because light waves are refracting as
(19:58):
they pass from the air to water. So light behaves
in a very similar way. Sound does the same. Anyway,
we're gonna leave that behind because refraction is not as
important to us as reflection and absorption. If the density
of the two mediums is extreme, Like if there's a
difference in density where you're going from like gas to
a hard solid, you're more likely to see reflection than
(20:22):
you are refraction. With a reflection, a wave of traveling
through one medium encounters a dense obstacle and then bounces
off that obstacle. It cannot absorb into it, it cannot
refract through it, so it bounces off it reflects. So
in a home theater, sound traveling from speakers might encounter
like a hardwood floor and thus bounce off the floor,
(20:44):
and the angle of bounce is interesting. The law of
reflection tells us that waves will bounce off an obstacle
at an angle equal to the angle of approach. So,
in other words, if sound is coming in at a
thirty five degree angle, when it's hitting the ground, it
will bounce off at a thirty five degree angle from
the ground. If it's forty five degrees coming in, it
(21:06):
will be forty five degrees coming out. If it's ninety degrees,
it will be ninety degrees. Knowing this is really important
because this comes into effect when we start talking about
things like soundbars, which we may or may not get
to in this episode. I'll find out when I get there,
all right. Because of this fun fact of the law
of reflection, people can create really cool effects in spaces,
(21:28):
physical spaces. Folks figured this out a long, long long
time ago, which is part of the reason why certain buildings,
like certain churches and cathedrals in Europe, for example, are
built in really similar styles. And part of the desired
outcome was to create a structure that would reflect sound well.
Because remember these things were built in the days before
(21:50):
amplified sounds, so you didn't have microphones and speakers and stuff,
and you had musical composers who would create sacred music
knowing about the reflective effects, and they would create some
truly remarkable pieces of music that to this day sound
incredible if you happen to be inside one of those
(22:10):
structures when a group performs it, because it was made
for those spaces and those reflections end up creating effects
that enhance the music. If you were to hear it
outside of that building, it would sound like a totally
different piece and you would lose some of that complexity.
But the reason I bring it up here is that
if you do have a lot of hard surfaces in
your home theater room, like hardwood floors, woodwalls, maybe like
(22:36):
a flat hard ceiling, then you're gonna get a lot
of sound reflection, and that's not necessarily a good thing.
If you want to create an immersive audio experience, then
you want to be able to control how sound is
going to reach the audience. So let's say it's you,
like you're planning on being the person who primarily uses
(22:58):
this home theater. You want to be able to control
how sound gets to you, so that Let's say you're
watching a really creepy horror movie and you want the
sounds to be really specific and directional, so that when
something happens, say off to the left to your left
on screen, then you hear it on your left side.
Maybe even more positional than that, maybe it sounds like
(23:20):
it's coming up from behind your left shoulder. Well, you
have to create a setup where all this can happen.
And for that reason, a lot of home theater enthusiasts
prefer to have carpeted floors, and they prefer to have
walls that either have some form of baffling on them,
like foam or fabric panels that absorb sound rather than
(23:40):
reflect it, or they will put their home theater in
a place that has like drywall, which is pretty good
at absorbing sound. It doesn't reflect sound quite as badly
as say a flat wood wall would. Same thing is
true for the ceiling. Some homeowners when they're playing in
a home theater, they'll use carpet tiles, and they'll cover
the ceiling with carpet tiles to try and dampen sound
(24:04):
and absorb it so that you're not getting reflections off
the wrong speaker. If you're hearing a reflection that's coming
from the right speaker in your left ear, then it's
sending the wrong information to your brain right, it's telling you, oh, hey,
something's happening off to the left, when really it should
be happening to the right. So it's all about control.
(24:25):
And I think it talked a bit about windows in
our last episode, and not only is it important to
have good curtains or shades for windows to help cut
down on ambient light and reduce glare, it's also important
to cover those windows so that you don't have a flat,
hard surface that sound can bounce off of. Now, I
know talking about sound reflection may seem like I'm way
(24:45):
off track as far as tech goes, But the reason
I wanted to cover it is I would hate for
anyone to go out and make a massive investment in
a home theater system. I mean, these things can get
wicked expensive. I looked at one for the purposes for
the purpose is a research for this episode, not to
put it in my home because I just can't afford this.
But I looked at one where it said like this
(25:07):
one's not terribly expensive, and it was a ten thousand
dollar system that was just for the sound system, not
not even including like a television or projector or anything
like that. Ten grand that's a huge amount of money.
I mean unless you're like really rich, in which case, hey,
do you want to go to lunch? But it's a
huge amount of money. I would hate for anyone to
(25:27):
even start looking at putting towards an investment for a
home theater without understanding these elements of sound and how
the room that they choose might cause issues on the
setup that they want. So these decisions all have to
go hand in hand. You have to figure out, you know,
what the physical spaces, how you want to change that
(25:49):
physical space, if at all, in order to accommodate your system,
and what system would best work within that space. Now,
in most cases, you can find ways to address these
issues so that they're not too much of a pain
in the took is. Uh, they aren't game breakers or
anything like that. But again, if you're really looking to
create that incredible home theater uh you know experience, you
(26:13):
have to take all this into account. So it it
means that you have to know about the potential problems
you could run into so that you can figure out
solutions to them before you, you know, break the wallet
in order to pay for a killer system. All right,
So let's talk about sound setups now, way back in
the nineteenth century. Don't worry, this will be short, but
(26:36):
this was shortly after the invention of the telephone. There
were people like Clement Adair who showed how two receivers
or speakers could provide an interesting listening experience, with each
speaker playing a slightly different aspect of that that sound.
So Adder had set up telephones at the Paris Opera
(26:57):
and positioned the telephones around the edge of the stage,
and he ran transmission lines to a suite of rooms
in a nearby building, so you could visit this exhibit.
Is during an exhibition and Paris. You could sit down
and you would hold up a pair of receivers, so
you would hold one tier left ear and one tier
right ear. And because the receivers were connecting to different
(27:20):
telephone transmitters back at the Paris Opera, you would get
a slightly different listening experience for each ear. Maybe one
of the transmitters would be closer to the left side
of stage and the other one closer to the right
side of stage, so you would get a kind of
stereophonic experience. Right you would be closer to what it
would be like if you were there in the space yourself. Right. Obviously,
(27:43):
when we're in a room, sound can be coming at
us from all sorts of different directions, from different sources.
But if we're watching something and it only has one speaker,
then all the sound, all the elements of sound within
a scene are coming from one direction, one source. Well,
this was a germ of an idea that would kind
(28:04):
of sit unused for a long time because we just
didn't have the technology to be able to transmit different
sounds two different speakers. Then we got an engineer named
Alan Blumline. He created a method to record two separate
channels of sound from the same you know, source, and
each channel could go to a specific speaker, so you
(28:27):
could have stereo sound this way. Right, you could designate
certain sounds to be on the left side versus the
right side. Now, this was in the nineteen thirties, and
it was in response to the problem that at that
time cinemas were reliant upon a single channel of sound.
So even if you had multiple speakers set up in
your theater room, each speaker would be putting out the
(28:48):
same sound signal, Right, you would get the exact same
sound coming out of each speaker's They'll be mono sound,
no matter how many speakers you you hooked up, so
you would have no sense of directionality when it came
to the source of the sound. There'd be no connection
between where something was happening up on screen and where
it seemed to be happening in the soundscape around you.
(29:08):
So if a woman on the left side of your
screen shoots a pistol at someone on the right side,
you know you'd hear the gun go off, but it
would just come be allowed bang. There'll be no indication
of what side that came from. It would just be
associated with the visual bloomlines. Inventions allowed for more nuanced
soundscapes and bloom lines work would go on to impact
(29:31):
multiple industries like the music industry as well as film
and television. But we're really interested in television's here, so
we're gonna stick with that now. Stereo sound took a
really long time to get to television's, at least to
be fully integrated into the TV experience. Back in the
nineteen fifties, ABC did kind of an experiment with The
(29:52):
Lawrence Welk Show, and the network provided stereo sound decades
before anyone could broadcast in stereo. So how did they
do that, well, it was kind of a cheat. See,
the television signal carried a monophonic sound channel, so a
single channel of sound recorded from this show, as was
(30:14):
the style at the time, or rather as was the limitation.
But ABC also happened to own a radio network, and
if you had a television and a radio in the
same area, and you could tune your TV into The
Lawrence Wolke Show and your radio into the radio broadcast
version of the Lawrence Wolke Show, you could take advantage
(30:34):
of stereo sound because ABC set up microphones in the
studio that went to the monophonic feed for television, so
they were specific for the TV side, and they had
a separate array of microphones set up to go to
a different mono channel, this time to the radio. So
two different mono channels that when you hear them combined
(30:57):
creates a stereo experience. The mis were in different locations
in the sound stage, but by combining both you get
this more full, fleshed out audio experience. This was obviously
a really clujie way to get stereo sound. Disney did
the same thing too, by the way, working with ABC
(31:17):
the show Walt Disney Presents produced the Peter Chaikowski Story.
People Disney did this too, by the way, working with
ABC the Show Walt Disney Presents produced the Peter Tchaikovsky
Story and paired it with simulcasts both on AM and
FM radio, so putting all that together would create the
(31:40):
stereo effects while watching the program. While stereo sound became
common with recordings like vinyl records and UH on the
radio starting in the nineteen sixties and the following decades,
and film really got into stereo sound in the nineteen seventies,
stereophonic television wouldn't become a thing until the late nineteen
(32:00):
seventies in Japan and the mid nineteen eighties in the
United States. I'll talk about it more, but first let's
take another quick break. All right, Let's talk about stereo
TV and why it took so long to take off.
Even after it was becoming a thing with like you know,
(32:24):
records and film and stuff, there was really a chicken
in the egg problem going on at the time. Consumers
were reluctant to sink a lot of money into television
sets that were compatible with stereo, or otherwise buying TV
sets that you could connect to a stereo system like
a Hi Fi stereo system and have the sound play
(32:45):
out on big speakers as opposed through the television itself.
This was a big investment and there really wasn't much
content you could enjoy in stereo. So even after the
engineers figured out how to broadcast stereos sound out to
two listeners to viewers, there wasn't much that was actually
(33:07):
done that way. You had television stations that didn't want
to invest in the stereo transmission equipment. It's not like
they could use the same stuff they were using for
the mono uh equipment, you know, content. So that meant
that there wasn't much you could use these four It's
kind of like the early days of h D t V.
(33:28):
You could buy an HDTV in the early days and
you had nothing to watch on it because everything was
still broadcasting standard definition. Uh. So that meant that it
took some time for both sides to kind of get
adoption rates going. You know, consumers had to feel like
this was the way things were going to be, and
TV stations and producers had to feel like there was
(33:52):
a demand to supply that kind of content. But eventually
stereo television did become commonplace, as did stereo recorded media,
and for home theater enthusiasts, this usually meant that you
would hook up your television either two speakers directly, or
more often, you would feed the audio output from your
television into a device called a receiver, which could transmit
(34:16):
the channels of audio to specific speakers, giving you the
stereo sounds so that you had a left channel and
a right channel. UH these days where well beyond simple stereo,
and the audio options can be daunting, particularly since there's
a wide range of options that aren't always applicable for
every source of media. For example, if you've shelled out
(34:37):
the big, big bucks for a Dolby Atmos system complete
with all the speakers you would need to make that
a reality, and you find out that the media you're
watching doesn't support Dolby Atmos, well you're not going to
be able to enjoy the entire immersive effect. There are
technologies that try to compensate for that. They're very similar
(35:00):
in some ways to upscaling technologies with ultra high definition televisions,
where there's an attempt to fill out UH stuff so
that you can watch lower quality or in this case,
listen to lower quality stuff. But on a high quality system,
it's not perfect. It's not like it can magically create
(35:22):
surround sound where there was no surround sound before, but
it's better than you know, just just standard stereo. So
with that in mind, if you are building out a
home theater, it's good to make a list of questions
that you need to answer so that you can start
going down the right direction. So, are you planning on
a home theater that's built around music? You know you're
(35:45):
not thinking about a home theater space for TV. You
want a really good music experience. Well, in that case,
there might not be much point to building out a
surround sound system because the standard format for music is stereo,
not surround sound. Are you planning on watching a lot
of cable or broadcast television, Well, you might want to
(36:08):
look into surround sound, but you should know that a
lot of programming still isn't necessarily broadcast in surround sound,
so you wouldn't get a ton of benefit out of
that either. In many cases. In this case, it would
be a really good idea to see if whatever shows
or content you plan on watching, if it actually is
already in surround sound when it's being broadcast out. If
(36:30):
it's not, there's no point in building out a surround
sound system. If you plan to watch a lot of
movies or play the latest Triple A video game titles, well,
then surround sounds likely to play a big part of
that experience. But let's start on the small end, all right.
So stereo means we do have those two channels of sound, right,
one channel for the left, one channel for the right.
(36:51):
That's pretty simple. Typically you're also talking about a subwhiffer
to handle the low frequencies, and we'll talk about subwhiffers
more extensive later on. Surround sound requires at least three speakers,
but typically you're looking at either five or seven plus
the subwiffer. Uh. Then you've also got your receiver or mixer.
(37:13):
This is a device that sends the proper channel of
sound to each proper speaker. Right, it controls the mixing
level of them all as well. So let's say you
want to crank up the base so that the action
film you're watching makes your house shake. You could do that,
or maybe you're thinking, you know, I'm not getting as
(37:33):
much out of the left side as I thought because
of the way this room is so you might want
to boost the left side a little bit so that
on a technical level you would say the left side
is putting out more volume than the right, but on
an experience level, you could say, no, it feels this
is what feels right to me. That's what is really
(37:53):
important with these receivers and mixers is that they keep
the signal nice and clean, that they're not mixing those
those signals up, and that you're able to have this
very fine control over the quality of those signals, including
things like how much of each range of frequencies gets
sent out to speakers, like if you want to tweak
things like the trouble for example. Uh So, ultimately, when
(38:17):
you really get down to it, this is all about
getting the relative right sound levels out of each speaker
so that your home theater sounds the way you want
it to. That's what it really means. When you strip
away all the language, all the jargon, all the knobs,
all those different numbers, it's really just about getting the
experience right so that it's what you wanted, the thing
(38:39):
that you were imagining when you were building out your
home theater. That's really what the only part that really matters,
the numbers not so important. It's the experience that matters,
and also a caveat surround sound works best for larger
home theaters, like larger rooms for home theaters, if you
have a relatively small room for your theater setup, it
(39:03):
could actually be better to go with a stereo approach
or a sound bar, and also probably with a subwhiffer,
maybe not a super powerful subwhiffer if it's a small space,
but still a subwiffer. Now you might be tempted to
trick out even a small room with all the extra speakers,
like I want a seven point one system in there.
But when you are working with smaller spaces, you can
(39:27):
have a lot of crossover issues with sound, which muddy
the whole directionality thing right Like if the sound from
the right side is in your ears hard to distinguish
from the sounds from the left side, you haven't really
accomplished anything. And with smaller spaces that can be a
real issue. And at that point you've already spent a
ton of money on a setup that just doesn't create
(39:49):
the experience you wanted. So a stereo with a subwiffer
or a sound bar in a subwiffer might work. A
lot better for those kinds of spaces. Let's break down
the s on sound experience a bit further to talk
about what all those different channels and speakers are for.
So on the most basic level, the whole idea is
very similar to stereo. Each speaker in the surround sound
(40:11):
system is carrying a specific channel of sound that relates
to the speaker's physical location with your within your home
theater and the sounds location within whatever media you're consuming.
So that means that when you're building out your home
theater system, it's important to position the speakers around your
you know, preferred seating area in order to get the
(40:34):
effect you want. This means, by the way, that if
you are sitting in a different position than you know,
the ideal space, you do get us slightly less than
ideal experience because just as the way the sound is directed, Um,
it's not like it's gonna be necessarily a world ender
like you'll notice immediately, but depending upon the size of
(40:56):
the room and the equipment you're using and how you've
set it all up, it can be you know, something
that you actually notice if you were to sit, say
at the far extreme left side of your home theater
versus the center. You might be able to tell the difference. Now.
The first big film to use a surround sound approach
was Fantasia, a Walt Disney production, and Disney famously required
(41:18):
theaters to install incredibly expensive sound systems and equipment in
order to play Fantasia as it was intended so that
the sound would appear to kind of travel around and
even through the audience. For example, during the piece fly
of the Bumblebee, Walt Disney wanted to create an effect
that would make it sound as though a bumblebee were
really flying through the audience, and that meant Disney had
(41:40):
to record multiple channels of sound and then funnel those
channels two specific speakers at a specific timing around a
theater and carefully tweaking all the channel levels of sound
so that this specific sound would appear to travel around
the audience. It was a technical marvel. I mean, it
was truly a phenomenal technological achievement. It was also insanely expensive,
(42:06):
and Phantasia did not set the box office on fire,
so this became a bit of a sore point with
some theater owners because they spent a huge amount of
money for a system that was specifically designed for a
film that was not a hit, So tough call there.
In surround sound systems, you typically see numbers like five
point one or seven point one. Sometimes you'll see two
(42:29):
point one or five point one point two. Uh. The
point one in this case that refers to the subwiffer,
and the other number tells you how many channels of
sound there are, plus how many speakers are involved with
your typical systems. So, uh, with two point one, you've
got the simple left channel, you've got the right channel,
you get your subwiffer. You'd want to set the speakers
(42:50):
up to the left and the right of the television,
you know, left speaker on the left side, right speaker
on the right side, angled so that they are pointing
toward wherever you're going to be sitting to watch television,
presumably in a position that's directly across from the TV.
The sub whiffer, however, you can pretty much put anywhere
in the room as long as you can, you know,
(43:10):
still plug it into the receiver and if necessary, and
external power outlet. A lot of subwhiffers require extra power
because they're pushing around a heavier diaphragm inside the speaker.
But then we get into the five point one and
seven point one. This is where it gets a little
more complicated. So what does a five point one system mean, Well,
(43:31):
it means the system supports five horizontal channels of audio
plus the subwhiffer, and typically you've got a center channel,
so this speaker should sit like in line between you
and the television. Often these speakers are mounted below or
above the TV. This is where you usually get the
majority of stuff like dialogue, unless it's something like a
(43:54):
character who's off screen and their dialogue is coming from
you know, a specific side, but usually like dialogue and
stuff like that gets fed through the center channel primarily.
Then you've got your left and right front speakers, which,
like a two point one system, you would position to
either side of your television. On the left side and
the right side. You would have them angled towards where
(44:17):
you plan to sit. But then you also have left
and right surround channels, and these speakers you would typically
mount to the left and right behind your seating area.
So let's say you've got a couch, you would have
these mounted behind your couch, but more off to the
side than they are behind you right, so more off
to your left and to your right than they are
(44:39):
directly behind you. If you were to measure out the
angle between your view of the TV and the speakers.
So let's say that you know your your line of
sight to the television marks the zero degree mark, then
the angle would be somewhere around a hundred ten to
a hundred twenty degrees. Uh so, so beyond like directly
to your left or right a little bit, and um
(45:01):
hundreds degrees to d degrees to your left and another
to the right. Collectively, the speakers would create the soundscape
that would have you surrounded by glorious noise. But then
we get to seven point one, and I'm sure you've
already gathered. Seven point one means that you've got seven
channels of sound and thus seven speakers plus the sub wiffer.
The setup is a little bit different. Here. You still
(45:23):
have the center and you have the front left and
front right speakers, just like five point one. Then you've
still got the sub wiffer, but the surround channels now
split from two channels, which were you know, back left
and back right for five point one, and now it's
four channels. So in this setup you would typically have
one set speakers essentially directly to your left and directly
(45:44):
to your right, so a ninety degree angle between your
view of the TV and you know your left and
right side, So these are pointing straight at your ears
and other words, but you know, not at not like
super close. They're off good distance on either side. Um,
so those would be those two speakers. Then you would
have rear two speakers that would be a little bit
(46:05):
more behind you than the five point one. Remember five
point one was at an angle of like a hundred
two degrees. These would be more like a hundred thirty
five to a hundred fifty degrees from your point of
view of the TV, so so more behind you than
the five point one version was. Then we've got a
variation on this called Dolby atmos. So Dolby atmos repurposes
(46:26):
two of the speakers in a seven point one system, Specifically,
the two speakers that are positioned behind you, those ones
that are at the one hundred fifty degrees viewing angle. Uh,
theyse become height speakers, meaning you're to mount these higher up,
maybe even suspend them from the ceiling itself, and these
speakers then projects sound overhead of the audience, and that
(46:51):
can create some really interesting effects when paired with media
that supports Dolby Atmos, the overhead channels can add more
specificity to the location of sounds, making the experience way
more immersive. And the whole reason behind this was that
the folks that don't be figured that people would be
able to hear sound coming from above more effectively than
they would hear sound coming from behind them because our
(47:13):
ears are not really shaped in such a way that
they're great for catching sound that's coming from behind us. Uh.
Sometimes the Dolby Atmos gets the designation of five point
one point two, meaning you have five channels of regular
horizontal surround sound the center front, left, front, right, and
then the left and right channels. Then you have the subwiffer,
(47:34):
then you have the two channels of overhead audio. Confused yet,
there are actually some other seven point one configurations, but
they get really in the weeds, and for most people,
I feel it wouldn't be helpful. I will go into
a little bit detail in our next episode to kind
of talk about them, but I'm not going to spend
a whole lot of time on it because it just
gets really, really nerdy in the home theater space, and
(47:57):
for a lot of people, I think it's overkill, but
we will touch on that in our next episode. So
in our next episode, we are going to talk a
little bit more about sound. We'll talk why we want
a subwoper in the first place, for example. We'll chat
a little bit about some of the other things we
have to take into consideration with sound, and we'll also
look at some of the other components that we would
(48:19):
want in a home theater system, like the media sources
and stuff, because obviously, having the best equipment in the
world isn't gonna do any good if you're not feeding
it media that can take advantage of it. So that'll
be our next episode. That's it for this one. If
I've left something out or there's something specific you want
to know more about when it comes to home theater,
(48:40):
reach out to me. I love hearing from you. The
best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text Stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, you visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(49:03):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, h
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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