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AV Rant #370: Two Hours

March 7th, 2014

The name says it all. If you can stick around until the end, you’ll hear Rob’s review of the new Ascend Acoustics Sierra II bookshelf speakers. He talks about the ease of upgrading from the Sierra I speakers, the sonic characteristics, and whether he feels it is worth the money. We are still flush with topics but keep them coming – if we get backlogged enough, we’ll do a second podcast in a week to catch up (we probably should have done that already). This week we have questions from listeners Abby about speaker wire characteristics (inductance, gauge, etc.) and termination types, Nick about what types of speakers are best for surround sound, and Jason on the different color decoding methods. We also cover questions and comments from Steve, Eliezer, Joel, Mike, Jay, and Andrew on everything from subwoofers to soundbars. Thanks for listening. Now, don't forget to:

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  1. Rob H
    March 8th, 2014 at 09:33 | #1
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    Shout out to AV Rant Listener Gary!

    Gary filled in our missing Recommendations segment on the podcast for last week and this week.

    We can’t think of why you would ever need another podcast besides AV Rant (j/k, of course ), but if you’re into all things geeky, and especially if you’re into some of the best shows on TV and would like to hear some folks podcast about them…

    The Sound on Sight podcasts: http://www.soundonsight.org/radio/

    And if you’re interested in everything to do with radio technology, This Week in Radio Tech has got you covered!

    http://thisweekinradiotech.com/

  2. Rob H
    March 8th, 2014 at 09:35 | #2
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    Gary’s got some more topic discussion for us

    The “X-Curve”.

    What the heck is it? What’s it all about?

    Scott Wilkinson and Brian McCarty broke it down quite nicely on a recent Home Theater Geeks podcast episode:
    http://youtu.be/uyIWMSe41hY?t=31m35s

    And there’s a full discussion thread about the X-Curve going on over at the Home Theater Shack forum:
    http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/rew-forum/19187-film-industrys-x-curve-suitable-home-theater.html

  3. Rob H
    March 8th, 2014 at 09:38 | #3
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    HUGE thanks to AV Rant Listener Abby!

    Abby is a Sound Designer, Sound Editor, Foley Artist, Actress…she does it all! She was kind enough to write us a great explanation of what all is going on when it comes to dialogue panning in TV and movies, which is something we talked about last week.

    Abby also sent us a link to her boss’ online magazine. It’s all about sound for film, and Abby has written some of the blog entries over there, so check it out!

    http://thedigitpost.onsugar.com/

    Here are her words about dialogue panning:

    ——————————–

    Hey guys – I am in the middle of listening to your most recent podcast and felt obligated to put my two cents in regarding dialog panning and TV mixes for film – as this is an area I know something about.

    First off, it’s actually quite easy to pan dialog when mixing a film; writing panning automation in Pro Tools is as simple as moving a big dot along an x-y axis in real time during a scene and then making some adjustments afterward. It’s the panning equivalent of somebody moving a fader up and down to adjust volume. So, the reason you don’t see extravagant dialog panning in most films is twofold, basically:

    1) The opportunity usually isn’t there VISUALLY. A director would have to shoot and edit a scene with this sort of panning in mind, where a character moves across, then off, screen while talking. You’re simply unlikely to see this much in film. I haven’t seen Rango yet so I can’t speak to it specifically, but it sounds like the director had this kind of audio pyrotechnics in mind when he story-boarded/built these scene from scratch. Most directors think visually, and sound comes in a distant second, and so rarely is the sound editor ABLE to do funky things like pan dialog all over the place. The rule of thumb in the sound editing world is if you see it on screen, it should be center channel, and only if an object (or person) moves across and off screen will there be panning accordingly. Occasionally there’s a shot with one character off screen talking to one character who’s on screen, and that’s where you’re gonna see a line or two coming from off Left or Right – but usually it isn’t HARD left or right; there’s going to be a percentage coming through the center speaker as well. The nature of pan automation is such that the panning around a 5.0 (sub doesn’t get panned) is very fluid and rarely (if ever) is a sound going to be isolated in only one channel. In the mixes we do where I work, even the music is mixed at 90% Left-Right – meaning there’s 10% bleed of that music into your center channel. But I’ve gone off topic – point being, usually scenes aren’t shot in such a way as to ALLOW dialog to drift all over the place from speaker to speaker – a director really has to shoot and edit a scene with that in mind in order to create that opportunity.

    2) The other reason you don’t hear dialog moving all around very much is just like Tom said – most mixers and directors feel like that’s a gimmick, and will pull people OUT of their suspension of disbelief, rather IN to a film. In other words, it can get old (i.e. annoying) real fast. So much of what goes into sound design is meant to NOT be noticed; a director never wants the sound of a film to distract from the story.

    And regarding mixes for home theater watching – now, I can only speak from my indie-film based background, but from what I can tell, usually these mixes are an afterthought, and are mostly just taking the theatrical mix and adjusting the dynamic range to suit home-theaters. Quiet stuff and small details are brought up in the mix, while louder stuff is brought down a bit in relation, and the whole average loudness of the mix is brought up three or four dB (I think – that’s a fuzzy number so don’t hold me to it). Bigger decisions that were made during the theatrical mix (like panning) are not changed. And believe me, when the director is mixing his or her film for theatrical, that director is not thinking about matching timbre across the front three channels of a home theater, or whether or not a person at home even has a surround set up. The director will only be caring about what the film sounds like in a theater.

    ————————–

    So there you have it!

    Makes total sense. And thanks so much to Abby for taking the time and explaining it all to us!

    Be sure you’re all caught up on Netflix’ “Orange is the New Black” ahead of its Season 2 debut on June 6. Abby plays “Gina” on the show! So how cool are we, all talking to actors and such?

  4. Rob H
    March 8th, 2014 at 09:41 | #4
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    Check out AV Rant Listener Abby’s cool DIY speaker wire project!
    https://twitter.com/Savage937/status/440238024413442048

    Abby followed this guide:
    http://diyaudioprojects.com/Power/Low-Inductance-DIY-Speaker-Cables/

  5. Rob H
    March 8th, 2014 at 09:42 | #5
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    Mohu Channels

    CNET posted an early hands-on of Mohu’s new Kickstarter campaign device. It’s an OTA tuner, media streamer, web browser box:

    http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-media-receivers/mohu-channels/4505-6739_7-35835333.html

  6. Rob H
    March 8th, 2014 at 09:43 | #6
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