Choosing the Best Sound Format for Production
There are many issues facing an audio professional who is considering getting into surround production, either for music, film, DVD, Internet, or multi-media. Whether you are recording, mixing, editing, or mastering, there is a lot of information that you need to be comfortable with before you can succeed in surround sound. Although this collection is a good start, it is by no means an exhaustive list or in-depth manual. Hopefully it will give you a well-rounded introduction and good foundation on which to build the pursuit of your goals.
There are a number of critical issues that seem to surface every time we talk about the evolution of stereo into surround sound. Not unlike the evolution of mono into stereo, the finer points of mixing, panning, bass management, speaker placement, movie theater Vs home theater, disc formats and the alphabet soup of formats themselves, from THX to DTS to Dolby to LFE, to SACD to DVD, to DVD-A and so on, became the critical issue of the day.
Speaker placement is another hot topic. Starting with the ITU suggested specifications of stereo placement.
ITU: International Telecommunications Union. In surround sound, the ITU spec is referred to when talking about setting up speakers for 5.1. The ITU's guidelines are widely used and a very good place to start. To briefly summarize, they state that all speakers should be an equal distance from the listening position, with the center straight ahead, the Left and Right 30 degrees out forming a 60 degree arc across the front, and the surrounds at roughly 110 degrees. While on the subject of setting up your speakers, there are guideline...
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.... It also supports a 754kbps rate for DVD. In the theater, it is actually encoded onto a CD that plays back in sync with the film and is decoded into a very high quality 5.1 soundtrack. Its debut was with the release of Jurassic Park. The third thing that you need to know about DTS is that they have a large catalog of music CDs that play back on regular CD players with digital outs. When the digital output is
fed into a DTS decoder, of which several DTS equipped consumer receivers and processors exist, you get a high quality 5.1 music format. Many people don't realize that there is a viable 5.1 music format available today with a catalog of a couple hundred popular CDs available.
DTS-ES: This version of DTS is a 6.1 system with a center rear channel, similar to Dolby-EX.
Bibliography:
Www.sospubs.co.uk
www.audioxpress.com/reviews.
www.itu.int
Sonance is a well-established company providing high quality customized speakers for in-home entertainment. After launching their Sonance 1 model, they progressed into multi-room amplification and eventually designed the first built-in system that would support the iPod. Operating as a lean organization with only 60 employees, they relied heavily on a network of dealer and installer word-of-mouth advertising. By 1999 Sonance had reached $46 million in sales. Similar to other companies affected by innovations in technology, Sonance was forced to change strategic direction in the early 2000’s. The newly acquired leadership needed to redefine marketing efforts in response to increasing low cost competitors. Major
For this assignment, I chose to interview JL Audio cofounder Lucio Proni. JL Audio is a consumer/professional audio manufacturer located in Miramar, Florida that produces speakers for boats, cars, and home sound systems. Lucio Proni is an engineer and cofounder of the company with his high school buddy Jim Birch. During the mid-1970’s when they were on their summer break from the University of Florida, Lucio and Jim decided to mess around with component speakers and wound up building home loudspeakers for fun. They worked out of a garage in Lucios home and showed some of their speakers to their friends and some. Later on, a few of them even bought some, so they built a couple more to sell on the flea market. Lucio’s early success inspired
Lucio Proni is an engineer and cofounded of the company with his high school buddy Jim Birch. During the mid-1970’s when they were on their summer break from the University of Florida, Lucio and Jim decided to mess around with component speakers and wound up building home loudspeakers for fun. They worked out of a garage in Lucios home and showed some of their speakers to their friends and some. Later on, a few of them even bought some, so they built a couple more to sell on the flea market. Lucio’s early success inspired him to start a speaker business so he could make a living from his work. In 1975, he joined fellow business partner and friend, Jim Birch and founded JL Audio; their company name being an amalgamation of the first letters of their names. They didn’t really start out their business with a solid business plan, their early days were instead marked by a lot of trial and error. At first they tried to sell JL Audio products to local audio shops. They found some success doing this since a couple of the loca shops were interested in selling their home speaker systems and kits. In 1977, business became scarce and they encountered financial difficulties as a result. In troubling times like this, it was Jims’s business skills, Lucio’s quality workmanship, and their combined tenacity that got them through it all. As a child, Lucio was given some valuable advice from his father; he said that “if you’re not willing to put your heart into something, then don’t bother doing it”. This work philos...
...ipped with some of the best-known names in car audio. These companies include Delphi, Delco Electronics Systems, Alpine Electronics, Clarion, Audiovox, Visteon, Pioneer, Panasonic, Sanyo, and Motorola (“Car Units” 2002). These audio systems will definitely help in the performance of the overall radio because the speakers are top of the line and provide better quality than any others. Also, it will most likely improve the sale of the systems since the name brands will attract more buyers.
I work in the event technology field and have been responsible for managing the setup and operation of sound, visual, lighting and tele-communications technology for events. Success requires the synchronization of disparate technologies and following a timeline of events that may require on the fly reevaluation and modification. Inevitably technology will fail, either through its own internal fault or in the connections between devices, by electrical/internet problems and/or when media compatibility/playback issues fail or do not perform as
The product is renowned for its audio engine powered by 7.1 channel virtual surround audio that comes with an onboard sound processing and offload processing through internal sound card. It has noise filtering feature and a distinct amplified microphone. What makes 7.1 surround sound popular is its realistic multidimensional sound effects providing and immersive game play as it mimics the sounds perceive in the real gaming world. It uses many drivers positioned strategically to provide the right mix of sounds for more distinct user experience.
MPEG Audio Layer 3, which is what this anarchic instigator of war file format is known as, but to us it is a MP3 which is a part of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specifications which could be used for movies. MP3's compresses CD-quality sound by a factor of 12 or more while still providing a great high quality sound to it. A MP3 is now becoming mainstream format for music like records, tapes, and CD's which are currently being used, but to play MP3's a program is needed like Winamp or Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The MP3 has become the most commonly used but unofficial file format to encode digital music for downloading off the Internet. The Internet is the heart of the MP3, without it, this new format would never survive because the Net allows surfers to download songs in a matter of minutes without cost or leg...
No comparable products currently exists that could directly compete with HSS. Indirect competitors, on the other hand, come in the form of research methodologies, which are currently employed by music executives to evaluate a song’s hit potential. These include: focus groups, call-out researching, online testing and, occasionally, a music executive’s “gut instinct.” The first three are expensive options, costing anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000 to analyze a song, and time consuming. Another perceived competitor: music producers. Polyphonic should not believe this notion.
Surround sound bar was created to accommodate consumer’s needed space for their surround sound set up. As tv gets thinner and multiple cable and wires exposures seems unattractive and could be a potential tripping hazard, a sound bar with a wireless rear and subwoofer speaker set seems to be an ideal set for sound system enthusiast. Vizio understand this and has created a very affordable and convenience set up for the consumers. Some added features that Vizio and other brand added for the surround bar system is the capability to support Google cast that create their own Wi-Fi connection that is compatible services like Spotify, Pandora, Google play and Bluetooth streaming. Vizio is going after Sonos brand who happens to be one of the top brand
Bose is one of the best sound systems on the market. This is a wireless system with a signal range of 30 feet, allowing you to place it anywhere in the room. Because it is wireless, it will be very easy to set up.The system includes 5 sleep speakers and a wireless bass module. The system provides high quality sound, which will make you feel that you are sitting in the movie theater, at a concert, or in a video game. This is one of the least expensive, high quality sound systems, as the price ranges from $1,240 to $1,500.
Exton, Peter, “The Room Acoustics of the Guangzhou Opera house”, Harold Marshall Group Consultant 2010, Marshall Day Acoustics
The DVD player is not only used for playing the data present in a DVD, but also to write the content onto a DVD. As told earlier, a DVD has pits and bumps like a BD in its tracks which hold information. This information can be a video, audio or mixture of both. When a DVD player reads this data, the smooth surface of the disk is taken as “0” and the pits are read as “1”. It reads the DVD and converts the data to binary code. Unlike a BD, a DVD uses a red laser with a wavelength of roughly 600 nanometers. This is 180 nanometers less than a CD however 200 more than a BD. This enables it to have a higher density of pits and bumps than a CD but less than a BD. Originally only single layer DVDs were released but then double layer discs were later released. Single layer discs can hold up to 4.7 GB of data and double layered discs can hold up to 17 GB of data. A DVD does not have the capacity to hold hi-def movies. So a MPEG-2 compression system is introduced. As this is used, the data will be encoded onto the DVD as elements of the changing frames. This has to be successfully decoded and decompressed by the DVD player.
Most of the applications in terms of speech and audio compression may seem obvious at first, but what most do not realize is the scale at which it is used. Some of the more common examples include: telephone communications, compact disc players in the form of digital audio coding, stereo sound systems, speech recognition and playback, noise reduction/filtering after voice recognition and speech synthesis [1]. The uses of DSP for speech and audio compression is certainly not limited to these examples, but just these alone are examples that the general public use through various devices on a daily basis often without realizing the function of the systems and processes that go into their operation.
See Appendix A for more information. The studio consists of one large room where there is a living area at one end and a control ‘room’ at the other (See Appendix B). At the living end of the room the wall consists of large windows, the air conditioning in the room is a fully external system with isolated ducts. The control section of the space will be arranged so that the desk faces the live space and the monitors form an equilateral triangle with the engineer’s head so as to achieve the best listening position (See Appendix C). See Appendix D for more information on studio design....
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universally understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films; Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films; Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society using sound and editing.