Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[pcprogrammer]

The Orville, season 3 is a woke bunch of shit.   

As so may other tv series that start of okish and then turn to shit

[pcprogrammer]

I watched the first season of the Orville and had some laughs of it. Was doable as a bit of a time waste, but not for long.

Another series I started with was the Rookie and it was ok for the first couple of seasons, but now it is utter crap, to me at least.

[paulca]

I've been paying £10.99 a month for NetFlix UHD, but I haven't watched anything on Netflix for a year now.

Maybe I should cancel it.

[Ice-Tea]

Sometimes seemingly dumb choices have sound reasoning behind them. The longer my career, the slower I am to immediately question odd choices made by others more familiar with their industry.

Quoted for truth.

Unfortunately, anyone who has experience with their industry is then dismissed by the whiny outsiders as “biased”, a “shill”, or “sheeple”…

You can’t win.

Clearly lacking "can-do" attitude 

[TomKatt]

An amplifier is a poor example. Its often the last thing that you improve. Source and Loudspeakers are the first things to work on. Preferably Loudspeakers first because a Loudspeaker change gives you the most improvement among all other things. Provided your source or amplifier isn't from a cereal box.

I almost think that your speakers ought to be the highest quality (and therefore likely most expensive) parts of your system.

Years ago a picked up a set of Acoustic Research AR7 speakers.  These are true acoustic suspension, not just sealed without a port.  For their size, they sound amazing to me.  I don't need LOUD, I prefer 'good bass' (and that doesn't necessarily mean sub octaves, either).  Later on I picked up a similar design made by EPI.  Why they don't make acoustic suspension designs any longer I do not understand.  Originally, they were considered too power inefficient, but these days watts are no longer an issue.  You simply cannot find a 'real' acoustic suspension driver from any manufacturer these days, even if you wanted to build yourself.

[IDEngineer]

Old rule of thumb was 50% of your audio budget on speakers, 50% for everything else.

The electromechanical transducers are always the weak link. There's no point in worrying about fractional THD percentages when the original microphones and end-game speakers are distorting multiple integer percents. When I proved that to myself in an audio lab is when I stopped wasting money on expensive audio electronics... it's nice to see purity on a scope but you'll never actually hear it.

[paulca]

Old rule of thumb was 50% of your audio budget on speakers, 50% for everything else.

I probably ended up there.  My speakers are cheap, include an amp for £130.  My headphones where £180.  The headphone amp was bought in components from Farnell for £45, which built two of them.  Although in fairness, if you take a £40 BOM and convert it to a product you would be more looking like £200-250 retail?

Sounds about right.

[paulca]

I don't need LOUD, I prefer 'good bass' (and that doesn't necessarily mean sub octaves, either). 

This is my poison.  Bass.  It's why I used my electronics hobby skills to make an amp designed for my purposes.  Simply because the commercial efforts are all "nanny state" headphone amps with 20mA limiters for 99db.

If I was to put my headphones on, with a flat EQ and play an audio track at the usual volume level, I'm very likely to rip the headphones off and go "Ahhwwwooo".  Simply because my EQ usually has a low bass shelf with a corner freq of 80Hz gain of +10db.  1kHz with a wide Q drops the hearing damaging range down to about -6db.  Another slight cut around 4k and a very slight boost over 10k high shelf.

So the power is consumed by the bass end.  Normal amps will not supply that kind of current.  They are limited, because 99% of people will use them without EQ and if they max the volume out with all that 1k mid range it will deafen them.  Looking through IC catalogs and nearly every single "consumer" grade headphone amp IC is limited either by current (which will just distort the bass) or limited effectively at a db limit.  I think the most beefy one I could find from TI was 56mA.  Which is quite good as most are 20mA.  My amp is 2xOPA551s capable of 200mA or more.  Max I have ever seen the headphones do was 1.1 watts and that was intense as hell and not something I would do very often.

[shapirus]

it's nice to see purity on a scope but you'll never actually hear it.

...but you still know it's there ;)

[TomKatt]

While we're on the topic, I'll add the 'Loudness War' to my list...  Where have all the dynamics gone

That and the masses accepting lossy compressed media just so you can fill your 128G drive up with your entire library.  With physical media all but gone, it can be difficult to obtain high quality sources these days.  Thankfully, used CD's seem to be fairly inexpensive.

[paulca]

While we're on the topic, I'll add the 'Loudness War' to my list...  Where have all the dynamics gone

That and the masses accepting lossy compressed media just so you can fill your 128G drive up with your entire library.

Actually, I'm on the other side of that first argument.  Not with Audio, but movies.

Ever since consumer grade home movie watching went digital the producers have gone nuts with the dynamic range in both visuals and audio.

The last block buster I watched on Netflix I had to keep turning the volume up and down.  You'd have a scene where two people are practically whispering to each other and the sound of the cat licking it's arse was too loud and I couldn't hear it.  So I doubled the volume so I could hear it.  Then immediately it cuts to a battlefield scene with shells exploding everywhere and I thought things were going to start falling off shelves.  Volume down.... then it's back to the couple talking in whispers.  Fine in a cinema, NOT fine in a living room or bedroom.

I even broke a rule.  I enabled the dynamic volume compressor on the TV!

The same happens with the visuals.  That scene were they were talking, was in a dark tunnel.  You could barely see their faces the scene was that dark.  Turning up the gamma gain and you could see what was happening.  However the next scene is broad daylight, bright white screen and it looked washed out and too bright.

Again, fine for sitting in a dark cinema.  Not fine for watching a movie while you eat your dinner.

[TomKatt]

Ever since consumer grade home movie watching went digital the producers have gone nuts with the dynamic range in both visuals and audio.

The old adage 'Too much of a good thing' remains as relevant as ever 

And I'm with you on the movie dynamics - and I too have enabled compression on many (something I would have considered heresy in my younger days).   I have a pc based media center, which is handy for allowing a VST processing audio chain.

Which makes me think of yet another pet peeve - "smart" televisions...  Planned obsolescence built into what seems like an afterthought running on limited hardware for the worst experience possible when it works, and spys on you when in the background.  I've never bothered plugging a tv into my network.

[shapirus]

Ever since consumer grade home movie watching went digital the producers have gone nuts with the dynamic range in both visuals and audio.

How true is this. I keep raising my gamma setting in the video player, because the darker scenes are too dark, and the audio side of things is exactly as you described. Unusable unless you're in headphones or in a cinema. I'm looking for a realtime dynamic compression audio filter to take care of this.

[shapirus]

While we're on the topic, I'll add the 'Loudness War' to my list...  Where have all the dynamics gone

https://dr.loudness-war.info/

[themadhippy]

  Where have all the dynamics gone

Here Here,came to the conclusion several years back remastered=run it through a compressor.

[paulca]

  Where have all the dynamics gone

Here Here,came to the conclusion several years back remastered=run it through a compressor.

My brother's trade is sound production.  He explained it to me when he was working in a radio station.  It's about maximising the bandwidth you have at the same time as protecting the levels outbound to the transmittor.

Allowing large gain swings from the studio can result in issues for the transmittor and it will cause issues for too many "casual listeners" if the DJ is allowed to raise and lower the volume.

So they use a multiband compressor.  A normal compressor won't work because dance music with a heavy bass beat will cause the compressor to "breath" with the beat.  So they use a multiband compressor and compress each part of the range individually.

What this basically gives you is a very, very strict volume and EQ normalizer.  It will undo anything the DJ does with the EQ or the volume.  So when people tune in they get a constant, stable volume, no matter what is playing.

In pop music, just like in adverts on TV, it's about maximising the levels and energy in the track, while also compressing it so much that it's unlikely to "get away" from the listener in terms of volume.  It makes it idiot proof to play loud basically.

Personally I did some digital DJing for a few years, when making actual CD mix "tapes" it is actually really difficult to master.  You want a consistent maximum volume that will not clip, but with uncompressed wide dynamic range audio, like a heavily EQ'd dance record, that is very, very diffitult if not impossible.  When I asked my brother about this he just said, "There is career in just mastering", it's not easy.  My solution, like nearly everybody else was a hard limiter, aided and supported by a fairly agressive compressor.

[TomKatt]

I understand the rationale, but fail to understand why producers choose to normalize at the mastering level for the distributed media...  Why not leave the compression to others to apply as needed?  Radio stations can process their own.  Need to DJ?  Do what you did.  At least that way the option is there.  When the producers apply compression at the master level, they've reduced the quality of the recording to the consumer paying money for it, and eliminated any ability to restore it.

I have absolutely no experience in the broadcast field, but I suspect that radio stations would process the audio regardless of how it arrives...  Would they ever really just take a CD off the shelf and broadcast what comes out of the player?  It seems redundant.

[themadhippy]

Fully aware of the need for compression on radio stations,but hey why not do that thing they used to do,release a radio friendly version ,instead of forcing us to listen to flat insipid  music thats had all the life squeezed out of it,and it aint just in recorded music.In live music nowadays with digital desks you can chuck a compressor on every channel,bus and output,gives the engineer a nice easy life as they dont need to keep bouncing around the desk tweaking the kick  down a notch or pushing the third triangle up a bit,the result is flat boring gig missing the raw excitement.

[TimFox]

I always smirk when reading descriptions of volume compression and other issues with popular music.
Last summer in Santa Fe, I attended a live concert featuring Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" for clarinet, violin, 'cello, and piano.
I was truly amazed at the acoustic dynamic range, especially at the quiet end where the sound was just above the background level due to ventilation.
Such works are rarely played on the automotive sound system in the pickup truck stopped to my left at a traffic light.

[TomKatt]

Such works are rarely played on the automotive sound system in the pickup truck stopped to my left at a traffic light.

There's certainly no accounting for taste 

Which might explain the whole problem.

[TomKatt]

I didn't say that. Looks like you quoted someone else but attributed me to what he said.

LOL - I said that 
I think something got mucked up when the person quoting me captured my quote from you about amps and speakers.

[PlainName]

Hoovle

I wasn't quite sure if that's a real thing or a nickname, so I googled it. And got search results almost entirely filled with links to Google!

[paulca]

I didn't say that. Looks like you quoted someone else but attributed me to what he said.

LOL - I said that 
I think something got mucked up when the person quoting me captured my quote from you about amps and speakers.

Yes.  You are right.  My appologies.  I made a mistake in editing the 'quote' tags and... "fixed it"   Apparently I just made it worse.

[paulca]

My point is. Don't forget everything else is also watching you too, not just your smart tv.

This is more what worries me.  It's not what one particular advertising agency want's to capture from me to go into their massive vat of millions of similar "average people"

It's what happens when you start to correlate across those datasets.  It is surprisingly easy to take a possible cartesian  set of billions of trillions of combinations and have some machine learning pull out the 10,000 possible cross dataset individuals....  in a few hours.

Not even that is worrying.

It's not the advertising company I'm worried about and it's not "now" i'm worried about.  I do not have that data, I do not control that data, I cannot guarantee it stays with that advertising company and I cannot guarantee I will like the way it is used in the future and I cannot know by whom it is used or for what and ... if that will be good or bad for me.

More plainly.  Your data is out there.  The bottom line is, you don't know who "they" are and you certainly don't know what they "want".  So how they hell do people so quickly answer they are fine with it?

[IDEngineer]

That is the perfect photo and movie reference!