Category: Tech

The next time I travel, I’ll be carrying this ridiculously inexpensive, excellent sounding, audio kit.

[Note: A “nit” is a measurement of the amount of light coming off of a surface, like a TV or video projector screen.]

tastewar sent me a YouTube link. I replied, and realized I’d just written a blog post. Here’s the video with my reply.

I’m always amazed at how many people are making money, even earning a living, by being on YouTube. This guy has done a lot of research, and he does a good job of explaining everything. But he picks up the story after the actual start of the analog-to-digital history.

Speeding up the laborious film editing process was indeed the original goal, which has expanded out from there. But it began with the Lucasfilm Edit Droid. Avid bought Edit Droid from Lucas. When I lived in Tewksbury, where Avid was based, there was a satellite link connecting Avid with Skywalker Ranch. There’s a video about the Edit Droid that I used in a 2022 post.

Putting the ILM into FILM

The springboard for Slidebean’s video is his annoyance at what, to me, appears to be more mosquito noise than color banding. Either way, it’s a lossy compression artifact.

Movie theater digital projectors are 4K 3-chip DLP systems. That gigantic image has no more resolution than the 65-inch (?) set the Slidebean guy watches.

I agree with his emphasis on color depth. Blu-ray follows Rec 709. What a movie theater’s projector has over 2K Blu-Ray’s 8-bits per channel (RGB) color depth, is 10- or 12-bits of color per channel.

Something I’ve been trying to figure out when I play a 4K movie on my projector is, does the deep color find its way to the screen? The projector is “full HD” 2K, not 4K, but it supports 12-bit color. I assume it’s an HDMI handshaking thing.

I like his comment about no longer using HDR in his videos. A true “WOW” movie experience, in my opinion, requires a video projector. Giant TVs are still TVs. Watching a projector that’s intended for home theater use (rather than business presentation, or gaming, or whatever) requires a completely dark room.

The lamp that’s presently in my JVC projector is nearing its end-of-life, which means it’s much dimmer than when the bulb was new, 1800 use-hours ago. Yet, when a movie abruptly cuts from a very dark, extended scene to a bright scene, it will cause most anyone to feel their pupils straining to close.

With so many movies being dark, with few nits of light coming off the screen, I fail to see the need for brighter images at home, except when watching a TV that is competing with another light source. Which isn’t the same as watching a movie and hoping for a “WOW” moment.

I’ve been wondering when The Pitt on HBOMax would get around to ransomware. The “business model” of ransomware is bad guys encrypting files in a victim’s database and not releasing them until a ransom has been paid.

I don’t recall the entry point of ransomware ever being a brute force attack on infrastructure, as presumed in this week’s Pitt episode. It’s typically a quiet intrusion; somebody opening e-mail with a malware payload, or being tricked into clicking on a link that installs malware.

One technical basis of ransomware is having a known file system, such as NTFS in Windows Server and Enterprise Edition. Which is why, nine years after retiring from a hospital information system software company, I’m wondering if this weakness has been addressed.

This post comes with sensitivity to the hearing impaired.

I have big ears. In my younger years I could hear TV CRT flyback transformers, operating at just under 16 kHz, like a dog whistle. On some TV sets the high frequency sound was really loud. “You don’t hear that?” I’d ask. No, they didn’t. Forty years ago I was at Q Audio on Vassar Street in Cambridge, MA. Looking to buy my first CD player, I was listening to one from Sony. The speakers were an esoteric model, the Spica TC-50. It was known for having a distinctively detailed sound. As a recording faded out, I asked the sales guy, “What’s that grainy sound, moving from the right to the left channel?” He replied, “What sound?” As was eventually revealed in the audio magazines, the grainy sound was low-level linearity distortion in early digital-to-analog converters.

The point being, for most of my life I’ve enjoyed having wicked good hearing. As I mentioned a while ago, at the end of 2024 I began having an issue with my left ear. It became bad enough that I was feeling down about it. More so than I realized, now that I’m doing very much better.

The links section of this site has the headphone and hearing test I use to make self-checks reliable and repeatable:

https://onlinesound.net/tone-generator

Over the past year, the hearing level in my left ear has been weaker overall, compared to my right ear. Bass perception was definitely not good, and there was also a significant drop in the 6-8 kHz range. The tone shifted over to the right when sweeping through those frequencies. There was also a persistent whistling sound in my left ear. Tinnitus.

When listening to music, mono recordings and stereo recordings with sounds that should be dead center, were perceived as being a bit over to the right. This really annoyed me. Combined with a loss of high frequency hearing in both ears, I was so dismayed that I stopped listening to IEMs and headphones.

I tried ear wax drops, twice, without results, so I figured that wasn’t the problem. But at my annual “Medicare Wellness Visit,” my doctor said wax was the likely problem. He told me it was hard and packed, so the safe treatment was to stick with ear wax removal drops. After multiple treatments they finally worked. The gunk that came out of my ears was gross, but the sounds going in my ears are fantastic! Loud sounds can make my ears ring, but aggressive sinus irrigation helped reduce the tinnitus so much I don’t have to think about it.

The first thing after clearing my ears was to put on a pair of IEMs and run the tone generator. The left and right channels were the same volume! Bass in the left was as nice and solid as on the right, with no more drop-off between 6-8 kHz! Even more amazing was the improvement in my high frequency hearing. Solid to 13.5 kHz, and even a bit higher if I turned up the volume. Music sparkled again! I cried. Excellent results for a man my age. What a mood lifter this is!

So now I want to recommended two things. First, have a doctor look in your ears. If there’s a wax problem, get it taken care of.

Second, get this IEM. With the caveat that a good fit is everything with an in-ear monitor, the state-of-the-art sound of the Truthear Gate is truly remarkable. The fact it’s currently available for only $17.50 is even more remarkable.

https://www.amazon.com/TRUTHEAR-GATE-Dynamic-Headphone-Interchangeable/dp/B0D5R334SH/

This is Amir’s review over at Audio Science Review.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/truthear-gate-17-iem-review.61784/

If an IEM sounds awful, it is a must to check for tight seal. I have run into this countless times, finding an IEM that measures well to sound terrible. I then mess with the IEM, moving it around, pushing it in and out, etc. If there is any change then there is a problem and usually I can solve that with a larger tip. It is so easy to jump to conclusion about the fidelity as no other transducer has this issue (most headphones or speakers).

Above even explains brightness as without bass, that is what you experience. … If you get things right, IEMs can do things that even the best headphones sometimes can’t.

– Amir, Founder of Audio Science Review