Home Theater Geeks (Audio)

Don North, president and chief designer at Riva Audio, talks about the company's WAND (Wireless Audio Network Device) whole-home audio speakers, the Arena and Festival. Topics include driver designs, passive radiators, built-in class-D amps, Wi-Fi networking, closed versus open architecture, casting, Trillium technology that creates a large stereo soundfield from a single cabinet, high-res audio, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Don North

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Calibrator David Abrams and host Scott Wilkinson talk about the LG 65C7 OLED TV. Topics include the features of this TV, the pre-calibration measurements of grayscale and colorimetry, the SDR calibration results, the effect of the color-management system (CMS), which actually works well in the 2017 LG OLEDs, the HDR calibration results, looking at the colorimetry with and without taking tone-mapping luminance errors into account, Dolby Vision calibration, real-world content, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: David Abrams

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Grammy-nominated surround-sound engineer and electronic musician David Miles Huber talks about his new ambient album, GAMmA. Topics include how he conceived the project and started recording, his exclusive use of hard-panned stereo tracks for each instrument, working in several studios in Seattle, Berlin, and Belgium, combining electronic and acoustic instruments, performing several different mixes in 2.0, 5.1, and Auro 3D, high-resolution audio, answers to chat-room questions, and more. We also hear two completely different mixes of the same track that are both available on the Pure Audio Blu-ray and from his website.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: David Miles Huber

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Journalists Chris Chinnock of Insight Media and Mike Heiss of Residential Systems and TWICE join host Scott Wilkinson to talk about what we learned about the future of display technology at DisplayWeek 2017. Topics include color conversion of blue light to longer-wavelength colors using quantum dots and phosphors, the various forms of QLED technology (photo-enhanced, photo-emissive, electro-emissive), an early demonstration of a full-color electro-emissive QD display, bendable OLED screens, micro LED, microdisplays, AR/VR, lightfield displays, a transparent flat-panel directional speaker, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guests: Chris Chinnock and Michael Heiss

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On the 40th anniversary of the theatrical release of Star Wars, 3-time Academy Award-winning re-recording mixer Mike Minkler talks about his work on that seminal movie. Topics include how he first got hired to work on the sound, the process of pre-mixing various sound elements, the first use of front-back panning, the birth of separate low-frequency effects (called "Baby Boom" at the time), Dolby Stereo, Dolby A noise reduction, the transition from magnetic to optical soundtracks, how THX was born to assure the quality of commercial presentation, the movie's impact on the cast and crew the first time they saw it, how the future of movie sound was influenced, answers to chatroom questions, and much more. May the force be with you!

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Mike Minkler

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Darin Fong talks about his headphone-virtualization software called Out of Your Head. Topics include a quick summary of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), how Darin wanted to simulate the effect of listening to a speaker-based stereo system in headphones, how he measures HRTFs in different rooms with different speakers to create presets, and how the software accepts the audio from a media player and applies the selected preset to create a binaural-audio file. We also play a few examples (be sure to listen on headphones to hear the effect!) and discuss various applications and plans for future developments. Plus answers to chatroom questions and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Darin Fong

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In the first of an ongoing series of TV reviews on HTG, calibrator David Abrams starts with a description of his studio environment and measurement and calibration process, followed by a detailed analysis of the Sony A1E OLED TV. We talk about the X-tended Dynamic Range control and what it does, then take a close look at the grayscale and color measurements in standard dynamic range (SDR) at different window sizes and settings of X-tended Dynamic Range. We also look at the grayscale and color measurements in HDR with a 10% window and X-tended Dynamic Range set to High. Plus, answers to chatroom questions and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: David Abrams

Subscribe to Home Theater Geeks at https://twit.tv/shows/home-theater-geeks

Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show.

In the first of an ongoing series of TV reviews on HTG, calibrator David Abrams starts with a description of his studio environment and measurement and calibration process, followed by a detailed analysis of the Sony A1E OLED TV. We talk about the X-tended Dynamic Range control and what it does, then take a close look at the grayscale and color measurements in standard dynamic range (SDR) at different window sizes and settings of X-tended Dynamic Range. We also look at the grayscale and color measurements in HDR with a 10% window and X-tended Dynamic Range set to High. Plus, answers to chatroom questions and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: David Abrams

Subscribe to Home Theater Geeks at https://twit.tv/shows/home-theater-geeks

Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show.

Kaushik Sunder, research scientist at Ossic, talks about how humans hear in three dimensions. Topics include the anatomy of the ear, head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), and how they affect the spectral balance of what we hear based on the direction from which a sound comes as well as individual characteristics such as the shape of the outer ear and size of the head. He also discusses binaural recording, and we listen to a clip of such a recording he made in Bali; for more of Kaushik's binaural recordings, go to https://soundcloud.com/soundmaps_beingthere. Finally, he describes the Ossic X headphones and how they reproduce 3D immersive sound. Also, answers to chatroom questions and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Kaushik Sunder

Subscribe to Home Theater Geeks at https://twit.tv/shows/home-theater-geeks

Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show.

Kaushik Sunder, research scientist at Ossic, talks about how humans hear in three dimensions. Topics include the anatomy of the ear, head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), and how they affect the spectral balance of what we hear based on the direction from which a sound comes as well as individual characteristics such as the shape of the outer ear and size of the head. He also discusses binaural recording, and we listen to a clip of such a recording he made in Bali; for more of Kaushik's binaural recordings, go to https://soundcloud.com/soundmaps_beingthere. Finally, he describes the Ossic X headphones and how they reproduce 3D immersive sound. Also, answers to chatroom questions and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Kaushik Sunder

Subscribe to Home Theater Geeks at https://twit.tv/shows/home-theater-geeks

Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show.