Bedrag Justesen

If anybody wants to try watching films or TV without a centre speaker, on most AV amps you can switch the centre speaker to 'off' in the set-up menu. When you do so, usually the dialogue which is normally mixed to output through the centre speaker is blended into the front left and front right speakers instead. The 'phantom' centre channel can actually work brilliantly well for a couple of reasons. There well be no 'voice' difference by using a typically smaller speaker, the phase of the dialogue has always generally been placed in the centre of the stereo image spread between two speakers. as with headphones, so it realistically appears to emanate from the centre, even though there is no actual speaker there. That's roughly what we had with Dolby Surround. I had an old Toshiba TV which had four separate speakers which worked very well like that. When these models were replaced by Dolby Pro-Logic Surround TVs with a built-in centre speaker they didn't sound anything like as good, until they gradually made the centre speaker larger and more powerful, eventually doubling it up. Movie enthusiasts with extremely expensive (£20k+) set-ups often use a phantom centre channel arrangement. When it comes to rear effects, they are somewhat clichéd, helicopters, bullets, ocean waves, birdsong, orchestral score, ghostly echoes, blah, blah. Admittedly, once you have them, you miss them more than you might think, when they are gone. Mostly rear channels are supplementary ambience rather than 'wow did you hear that!' which is probably why particular films become demonstration benchmarks. Having listened to many soundbars I'm not overly convinced of their surround effects capability, but their feature of adjusting the dialogue level from a stereo input by pulling out the centre phased audio definitely works, as does having a separate subwoofer to fill out the bottom octaves. Before soundbars it wasn't uncommon for TVs to have a line output for a subwoofer, which when combined with their four separate surround speakers could work really well. One friend had a 15" Canadian subwoofer which was barely breathing at normal levels, whilst watching television, but it really smoothed out the surround sound from television programmes, a whole extra layer of low frequency creaminess. When watching a full Dolby Digital or DTS film on DVD it actually shook the walls - of the detached house next door. Without doubt the main problem, especially for elderly neighbours (say over 50) is their lack of high frequencies, as hearing acuity drops with age above around 8-10khz. This is compounded by audio 'engineers' mixing music and sound effects underneath presenters speaking, even on news & current affairs programmes. Younger producers may believe they are jazzing things up, but older viewers struggle to hear the speech clearly, because of the sibilance and white noise floor effect of the background music. The drumming introducing BBC News with shipping forecast type beeps is an infamous example. I've lost count of the number of complaints made to BBC and ITV about high level background music drowning out the words. They take no notice whatsoever. A Bose soundbar with variable dialogue volume can help make speech clearer for those struggling, either that or resort to subtitles. I don't believe the younger generation will ever fetishize hi-fi or surround systems in the manner wrinklies have. Sitting alone in the dark, the green glow of stacked NAIM electronics, complementing the red strobe shining onto the inky satin vinyl blackness of Nursery Cryme, gently revolving at 33.3 rpm, as the acrylic lid reflects back your sad stare, deep into the abyss of unrequited teenage lust. They'll never get that from an I-Pod.

Paid straight into your bank account. That will do nicely.

What's the difference ?

Don't let XYY spoil it by singing along out of tune.

What about signing on ?

Mono was fine. Along came stereo twice as good. Quadraphonic twice as good again. The ultimate would be having four speakers, even in your car, with an 8-Track cartridge. Quadraphonic headphones through two ears. Watch films with Dolby Surround through four speakers. All is well with the world. Where it started to go wrong was the addition of a fifth speaker for centre channel, Dolby Surround Pro-Logic, dedicated dialogue for extra clarity of speech. Where do you place it ? It won't fit on your TV, it won't fit under your TV, it doesn't look right at the side. Let's make it a tiny cube, then it will fit anywhere. Oh but it sounds terrible, really tinny, no bass. Let's make all five speakers tiny cubes, but have a separate big speaker for all the bass. That'll work great. Hmm....it sounds rubbish with music. Yes it does, but you should buy a separate hI-fi system for playing your music and listen in another room. From now on you need two set-ups, one for film and TV, one for music. Hmm... I'm not sure. I don't have two rooms ! OK use the 5.1 surround sound system for everything, it won't be proper hi-fi but it's not bad. OK then, but that means I'm paying £2k for 'not bad' when I want the best! By the way, you need to update your surround sound system, now you need six little speakers. A centre rear effects channel. OK but it will have to go behind the sofa. Wait, hang on, there's a new format, instead of 6.1, with one centre rear effects channel, you need two centre rear effects channels, it's called 7.1. Oh right, I'll put them behind the sofa. What ? Now I need ANOTHER pair of centre rear effects channels ? What's that called ? Don't tell me, 9.1 ! Hang on I've seen in the magazines there's something called Dolby Atmos coming out with extra speakers for height channels. You need at least one pair, so that's 11.1, but to do it properly you should buy two pairs, that's 13.1, actually 14.1 because you should fit a front centre height channel. Oh and everybody recommends using TWO subwoofers now, one at the front, one at the back, so that's 14.2. You'll need to buy a new amplifier to decode the new surround formats, and an additional amplifier to power your 14 speakers. Your subs have 1200 watts each built-in. You'll also need a new Blu-ray player to play the new 4k discs. Hmm...I'm not sure. Now we have three kids, a dog, and a cat, her indoors is a right fucking pain in the arse about wires and speakers all over the place. We don't buy discs anymore. Mostly we just watch Netflix. Tell you what mate, fuck it, take it all off my hands as part-exchange for one of those Boss soundbar things, the best one you've got in the shop ! Oh you haven't got a shop, just your front room and a website, and you sell stuff on ebay ? Oh shit, I didn't realise things are that bad. By the way have you got a stylus like this ? Don't want to pay more than a fiver though. Cheers.

The media could turn against him. #DEMS2020

Never misunderestimate Dems.

Femi twat.

Has Mohammed Amin gone yet ? It's been over an hour.

Has Mohammed Amin gone yet ?

All set. Boris is PM. Place your bets for cabinet posts.

Boris Johnson is PM. 92153 Jeremy Hunt 46656