SOUND IDEAS
AUDYSSEY INNOVATIONS BLOG

This year marks a century for Japanese electronics pioneers Denon.  Established in 1910 as the Nippon Chikuonki Shoukai (Japan Recorders Corporation) by American trader Frederick Whitney Horn, Denon has set milestones in professional and consumer electronics – including some of the earliest CD players (1981) and the first home theater receiver (1995).  You can find Audyssey technologies in every Denon receiver, including cutting-edge DSX in the AVR 4310-CI.  Denon President Hirofumi Ichikawa has been at the company for nearly three decades.  We spoke with him about Denon’s place in the early history of home theater.

When did you arrive at Denon? What projects did you work on when you got there?

In 1981 I joined what was then called the Nippon Columbia Company, which was a record company that had a hardware division.  I was an audio engineer and audio had been a major passion for me growing up and in college.  At Nippon, I worked on the very first component amplifier and pre-amplifier, both of which went under the Denon label.  Back in the 1980s (and especially in Japan) companies like Denon followed a strict master-disciple relationship.  My superiors were, therefore, very stern and they directed most of my engineering work and research for my first few years at the company.

Denon designed some of the earliest A/V equipment.  What was your role in those projects?

In 1984 we began to design what are now called AVRs.  I developed “Denon surround system,” which was one of the first surround formats for home theaters.  This was even before Dolby surround, DTS or any of the others that are now common in home and commercial theaters.

I had been interested in the possibility of home theater sound.  As a student I was an avid music and film buff, and so was very passionate about having good equipment to enjoy both sounds and pictures.  In the early days surround sound only made sense with music, but I started thinking about it as a medium for home entertainment more widely – for films, too. (more…)

Ever wondered who makes Audyssey technologies sound so amazing? It’s our engineers! So we’ve decided to invite you behind the scenes and meet the folks who put their brains to work creating the best sound technologies in the world. This month we sit down with quality assurance engineer Pauline Laciste and learn what makes her tick.

What do you do at Audyssey? I test products that implement Audyssey’s innovative technology. I help ensure everything is bug free!

Where did you study? What did you study? I majored in Music Composition at UC Santa Barbara. I also have a Master’s Degree in Music Technology from New York University.

What kind of engineer are you? I am a Quality Assurance Engineer.

When did you know you wanted to become an engineer? As an undergrad, I took an amazing computer music class taught by Curtis Roads. We had assignments to compose multichannel eletronic pieces for surround sound. That was when I used a mixing console for the first time, which triggered my fascination with audio engineering. (more…)

Wisdom Audio returns from visits to Australia and China, where they introduced their award-winning, high-performance architectural audio speakers to new markets. Founded in 1996, Wisdom Audio is the industry leader in planar magnetic architectural speaker systems for those who appreciate and understand high quality audio. Audyssey talks to Wisdom Audio President, Mark Glazier about the trip.

What makes Wisdom Audio special?

Our team has decades of experience in transducer design and can approach application and performance requirements with technological innovation. Most speaker companies buy their transducers from a handful of suppliers in the world. The Sage Series has become a statement among architectural speakers — offering exceptional quality that compares and, in some cases, surpasses that of freestanding speakers. Most architectural speakers manufactured today just are not designed for high performance.

What makes Wisdom speakers designed for high performance?

Well, for starters, Wisdom Audio speakers are active speakers, not passive; our systems are bi-amplified and use an electronic crossover. We design our own planar magnetic transducers. And, we offer Audyssey MultEQ Pro calibration within our SC-1 System Controller every Sage Series installation. (more…)

Ever wondered who makes Audyssey technologies sound so amazing? It’s our engineers! So we’ve decided to invite you behind the scenes and meet the folks who put their brains to work creating the best sound technologies in the world. This month we sit down with research engineer Nathan Dahlin and learn what makes him tick.

What do you do at Audyssey? I research and develop the algorithms and methods underlying many of our technologies. As a member of the research team, I take ideas from long-standing audio theory, more recent academic and professional publications and examine how they can be applied to projects at Audyssey. Some days are more scientific than others.

Where did you study? What did you study? I studied Electrical Engineering and Music Recording at the University of Southern California.

What kind of engineer are you? I’m a Research & Development Engineer.

When did you know you wanted to become an engineer? Probably around the time I got my electric guitar and realized somebody had to wire the thing before anybody could play it.

What’s the best thing about being an engineer? If it works, it’s correct. (more…)

On June 17, Billy Joel inducted Phil Ramone into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in New York, telling the audience, “Ramone is a writer’s producer. He had an impact on many of my songs; I listen to him because he knows what he is talking about.” Audyssey recently spoke with the multi-Grammy winner who laid out five points he thinks will resurrect the music industry.

To budding artists: Think of the sound

People need to feel the validity of your art. The adventure is important. Once you have written a song, record it well; think about how the sound will deliver your production. We must reach our music fans. (more…)

Volvo has just released the all-new 2011 Volvo S60, not only is it fully equipped for your first-rate driving experience, but also features a sound system tuned with Audyssey MultEQ XT for your premium audio listening pleasure.

MultEQ removes the distortion caused by the cabin’s acoustics, enabling crisp clear audio quality with improved natural sound. With Audyssey MultEQ XT, car speakers are calibrated and your system is equalized for optimal performance to satisfy even the most discerning audiophile.

You can catch the all-new Naughty Volvo S60 on tour at a dealership near you. Put it on your calendar today: (more…)

Ever wondered who makes Audyssey technologies sound so amazing? It’s our engineers! So we’ve decided to invite you behind the scenes and meet the folks who put their brains to work creating the best sound technologies in the world. This month we sit down with software engineer Megha Daga and learn what makes her tick.

What do you do at Audyssey? I am a DSP Engineer and I create great sound.

Where did you study? What did you study? I studied Electrical Engineering at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in Indore India and earned my master’s at Purdue University.

What kind of engineer are you? Curious. I always want to know how things work.

When did you know you wanted to become an engineer? I think I was 3 years old. I got a remote controlled car and wanted to know how the remote made the car turn, accelerate and stop. Then, when I got my first mobile phone, I really had to know how it worked and decided to get my master’s degree.

What’s the best thing about being an engineer? Making mind-boggling products.

What’s the greatest audio invention of all time? Thomas Edison’s phonograph. How did he think of that?

Pick the five albums and five movies you’d bring to a desert island. (more…)

The TV market is in the midst of rapid changes. While TV screens get larger every year, the TV cabinets themselves get thinner and more streamlined, sometimes at the expense of sound quality. Increasing conservation measures from regulators such as Energy Star and the California Energy Commission mean TVs are also greener. But the size and energy conservation create real challenges for TV manufacturers. That’s where Audyssey comes in. Audyssey EQ, ABX and Dynamic Volume solve these tricky audio problems. We spoke with Sanyo’s Coordinating Industrial Designer Bradley Bird about how this suite of Audyssey technologies helped Sanyo’s new TVs stay slim, green and sounding great.

Tell me about the Audyssey technologies you chose for Sanyo’s new TV releases

Audyssey EQ, Dynamic Volume and ABX are going into all of the new Sanyo TVs between 26” and 52”. These all feature USB connectivity and the larger ones add multiple HDMI and Component inputs. We consider the Audyssey package a tremendous benefit for our customers.

Why did Sanyo turn to Audyssey?

We really needed technology that could compensate for the slimmer redesign and the more stringent energy conservation requirements. Our customers want increasingly minimal TVs with the speakers embedded in the frame and invisible from the front – I mean invisible, no one even wants speaker grills anymore.

Add to that the more stringent Energy Star regulation and we were faced with a serious challenge: how to meet these aesthetic and regulatory requirements without compromising sound quality? It turned out that the suite of Audyssey technologies not only helped maintain, but even improved the sound on our TVs. (more…)

When you walk into a movie theater, you usually see 12 to 16 speakers hanging on the walls. In addition, there are typically four systems behind the screen and hidden from view. What’s up with that? How do we get today’s 5.1 channels distributed to them and what’s changing?

The movies pioneered multichannel sound. Fantasia in 1940 had five loudspeaker channels^[i], and that was the first introduction of surround sound to the public.  But even in 1940, the engineers found that if they played the two surround channels out of just two loudspeakers, those sitting nearby would get creamed with level, while those sitting closer to the front hardly heard them in a mix. So the idea of an array of loudspeakers to play the surrounds has old roots. In fact, the two theaters equipped for Fantasound used many loudspeakers to reproduce the two surround channels.

So the idea that the number of loudspeakers you see represents the number of channels is wrong; many may be driven by one input signal. The most common configuration today is 5.1, where there are three main channels, left, center, and right, behind the screen, along with one or more subwoofers. So that’s 3.1 of the channels counted. The other two channels drive the left and right halves of the array of loudspeakers in the room, with the back wall speakers split between left and right.

Several years ago, pressure to get sound literally to come from behind you led sound designer (and multiple Oscar^®[ii] winner) Gary Rydstrom to ask for a separate rear channel^[iii]. The problem for cinema is that if you sit in the middle of the house and sound pans from the fronts to the surrounds, it only seems to come from your sides, because those are closer to you than those on the back wall. So it’s not really surround. By having a separate back surround, the effect can be overcome. Commercial implementations of this are Dolby Surround EX and dts Surround ES in theaters. These might be called “quasi 6.1” systems, because there is not perfect separation of back from sides, but usually good enough for the effect to work.^{[iv] [v] (more…)}

When we launched Audyssey DSX one year ago, I never expected the incredible response that we received from home theater enthusiasts.  It turns out that the much dreaded SAF was less of a factor than I thought, and people will actually put nine or eleven speakers in their house.  Who knew?

Audio systems today have already reached the limits of human perception in frequency response and dynamic range.  Yet 5.1 channel surround sound is not completely convincing.  It can easily be distinguished from the real thing because human perception can hear many more directions than what current systems provide.  This is what we set out to address with Audyssey DSX.

But, if the gods grant us more channels, where should we place them?  The answers come from research in acoustics and psychoacoustics.  Our sense of “being there” is enhanced when we hear not only the direct sounds from the front, but also sounds that arrive later from very specific directions.  When our hearing starts to provide cues that match what are our eyes are telling us about the space, something magical happens: immersion. (more…)