Also how much more personality his newer videos have. The older ones are plain informative with the occasional sprinkle of irony. The newer ones are irony with the occasional sprinkle of plain information. (Not to say they are less educational, they are just as good - if not better - but different)
I’ve been watching this channel for a long time. I didn’t know, until now, that your name is Alec. Thanks for teaching me about so many new things I didn’t even know I wanted to learn about. You’re a gifted guy, I’m really glad you do this work.
I'm an audio engineer with about 13 years of experience and I'm very impressed with the accuracy of most of the info presented here; the only complaint I have is with the description of what makes different instruments/sound sources sound distinct, because square waves and sawtooth waves are not relevant, they only exist in synthesizers. I think clarinet/violin is a great pairing to compare, because they have similar envelopes (meaning the overall shape/profile of a note, so like how hard the initial attack is compared to the sustain compared to the release; there are a lot more complicated differences between a guitar and a clarinet due to such different envelopes), but the difference isn't the shape of the sound waves but rather the specific combination of different intervals of frequencies. I guess this would've been a difficult explanation to simplify adequately for a ~15 minute video, but the best way I can think of is to explain that when you hear a note, you're hearing multiple frequencies at the same time: the "fundamental" and a series of "harmonics" and "overtones" (which a video of the length and level of detail typically seen these days on this channel would be more likely to delve into than back in 2016). That's why, even if you're just playing back a single note held out on a violin or whatever, if you play with the EQ, it changes the sound; if there were only one frequency sounding, then touching other frequencies would do absolutely nothing and touching the one frequency playing would just turn the whole volume up or down, but that is very much not what happens when you change EQ settings. I do think there's more to talk about with regards to speaker design (though, again, I understand this would be a level of depth that would have been uncharacteristic of an early video), as a major challenge with multi-driver setups is the interaction between different drivers in the ranges where they overlap, because having the same frequency coming from two sources at slightly different locations will cause a type of distortion called "comb filtering", which is a very difficult thing to explain in a text-only format with no visual aids so I'm just gonna say that anyone reading this can look it up and reply to me with specific questions and I'll try to answer them. Because of this, when I'm performing (I'm also a musician), whether I prefer single-driver or multi-driver earpieces depends on the specific context; I'm active in a band where I play guitar and sing a lot of backups, and in that context I don't want very much low end in my ears so I go with single-driver earpieces because they don't have crossover distortion because they don't have a crossover, and that gives me a clearer signal in the frequency range that vocals live in; but I'm also active in a band where I play mostly drums (banjo or accordion on certain songs) and rarely sing, so being able to hear the fullness of the bass guitar and kick drum are really helpful and I'm not worried about the crossover messing with the accuracy of the vocals, so I use two-driver earpieces. In practice, I'm probably being overly paranoid and plenty of vocalists perform with earpieces with up to 5-way crossovers, and the distance between drivers in an earpiece enclosure is obviously extremely small, and the place this is far more likely to come into consideration is in loudspeaker applications (and particularly in live concert sound, where speaker placement may have to be compromised depending on the layout of the venue and/or the crew may not have the time, technology, and/or skills to get things just right). Sorry for the essay lmao, but I hope at least one person gets something out of it, and again, overall great video! I learned a bit about vinyl, as that's a topic I've really never explored, so you've taught something about audio to an audio engineer with 13 years of experience!
Been a fan for some years now, and I'm just now noticing much more of your mid 2010s material, such as this video. To say you've stayed consistent is truly an understatement, and not only that, but your presentation has also drastically improved! I'm also really liking that little theme tune you used to transition to. I sincerely wish you the best :)
yeah if you playback at 0.75 or 0.5 speed...... at normal speed. is imposible to understand him.... ... I wonder ... who is chasing him ... or why he is in such a hurry ......
I understand English @Vidar Eggum...... That's not the problem...... it just bothers me when "hey look at this".. and they show me that for 3 frames.... or when they thrown at me 50 ideas... and give me 0.05 seconds to assimilate each one... slow down dude .. who is chasing you .. ??
His presentation is much better than most, especially in things like correct language and lack of filler words. There are so many channels that have impressive, informative content but the presentation is stupid, in so many ways.
@@davidebacchi9030 That's pretty much how I would do it. I would never just wing it. In fact, for that very reason I might not ever do a live stream. Just not how I roll. I don't know how the teleprompter would fit into that, but I would not rule it out in advance. IAC having a prepared script or notes, yet not sounding as if you do, is an art. And I have seen few who are good at it.
This channel has real value not just a free money cheat for a few people burning electricity and hogging graphics cards to make unspendable deflationary currency
I'm in the middle of going back through your older videos to rewatch them and this was one of the first of your videos I watched a few years back (probably 2017) along with the Casette video (Exploring the good ol' Casette Tape). And I gotta say your presentation style and information was always there, like 90% already there and with a bit more humor, the better more colorful studio, and "through the magic of buying two of them" recurrence, its very close to the quality of your recent videos.
the many years I had spend as a kid reverse-engineering all these audio equipment to have an understanding are re-lived through your video contents man. You're bringing some solid nostalgia and cover the gaps in my findings as a kid back then. Really solid channel
We've come a long way from badly lit face and poorly cropped out greenscreen to a proper lighting set and a real background. The content already had this unique touch, this very nice pacing and of course Alan's face, although much younger. Keep up the good work!
Really enjoy production value and well prepared material, not to be too picky, but stereo encoding on vinyl is a bit more clever than you mentioned - no worries, many people get it wrong - sideways movement is sum of channels (L+R), bottom of the groove is difference (L-R), that way we can keep stereo records compatible with mono players, and we can encode low frequencies (higher energy, placed in the centre of stereo spectrum during mastering and mixing process) and avoid 'skipping' of the tone arm. For the same reason 'bass heavy' records had playing time limited (wider groove).
I was writing a similar comment before I read yours. That's exactly right. The video is great but I hope he puts an annotation in the video correcting this small mistake.
As this is one of my older videos I tend not to monitor comments that often. However, I added a text element at 12:38 to clarify the the entire groove structure is rotated by 45 degrees for better mono compatibility. I do realize that I could have explained this better, but my original idea for the script was to show how it combined Berliner and Edison's recording methods into one.
Right you are about bass heavy recordings needing wider grooves. To deal with this most effciently more modern lathes used "variable pitch" so the operator could change the groove width as the master was being cut to accommodate high energy passages, then he could narrow the groove pitch during quiet passages to get the most playing time. Very quickly a preview head was added to the deck playing the master tape, which was exactly one record revolution ahead of the main playback to drive automatic circuitry for controlling the groove pitch.
Thanks for this one. My grandfather was on the Bell Labs team that developed stereo. When I was a little kid, he would drag out recordings they made in the lab. It was recorded on wire in the 1930s, but he had copied them to tape. In the lab they made the recordings by stuffing microphones in the ears of a manikin head to get the same sound separation of a human head.
This is still done today, it’s called a binaural mic. I built one into a dummy head using two tiny omnidirectional condensers placed at the approx location of the ear drum in an anatomically correct, life size silicone ear. It sounds like a stereo mix in a car or at home but put on headphones and you are literally in that space, at least in respect to what you’re hearing. While testing the binaural mic I built I caught myself turning around because I heard the cat meow behind me when the cat wasn’t there… it was on the recording.
I actually have the record that was used in this demo, "Hearing is Believing", RCA Red Seal #SRL 12-1 (E4RP-8238), Copyright 1954. It originally belonged to my father. In later years, my parents advised me that they no longer wanted their LPs and told me that I was welcome to take them. I am glad I did. I cannot find the narrator's name on the record (narration on side 1 only, or on the album jacket. Anyone who knows who the narrator is, please let me know.
I just watched this after getting into your more recent videos recently. You've made some great improvements over the life of the channel! The set, lighting, audio quality - all very noticeable nice changes.
I want to clarify something: every wave shape is built by a sum of sine waves. If you can replicate all the frequencies, you can replicate all the shapes or details.
I picked up on this also, but maybe "retaining the shape" can be seen as shorthand for "frequency-response curve sufficiently envelops the bandwidth of the signal and the curve is regular enough to avoid producing noticeable distortion or other non-linear effects." It's a mouthful and implies a lot of mathematics.
You're talking about Fourier tranformations, am i right? I have very little math knowledge and get proud when i recognize something :) please forgive my ego.
It is 02:06 and I am eating a box of M&Ms and watching this video, I have absolutely no idea why but this is extremely fascinating, I can’t fall asleep and I’ve just started to binge watch this channel
This is the first time I understood how stereo works on vinyl. I read so many times about it, but your explanation combined with the animation made it for me. Thanks!
I’ve always been fascinated by audio recording and enjoyed doing my own but watching through this playlist on the history of artificial sound has truly blown my mind both at the human body, physics, and human creativity and experimentation. Thank you for making such rich information available in a clear and accessible way!
12:00 - 12:45 I thought that stereo on a phonograph was done using the diagonals and wikipedia agrees with me, at least for the format that eventually became dominant. The cool thing about this is that it's fully compatible with a mono record with horizontal grooves. A mono player would ignore the vertical component and the horizontal component would be the average of the two channels. A mono record on a stereo player would play as both channels being the same. If you the horizontal/vertical split instead of the diagonals, you'd either hear only the left or right channel (for a mono player) or only get music from the left or right speaker (for a stereo player). You probably knew this and cut it for brevity, but I thought it interesting.
@@HolyKhaaaaan I wonder how much he had back then. Also it’s interesting to see this older videos and how much more jokes and irony his videos contain today.
There's another reason for dividing the frequency spectrum over several drivers: signals are superimposed on each other. So when the same diaphragm produces both low and high frequencies, the diaphragm moves back and forth a fairly long way, which gives the high frequency signal a doppler modulation.
The 45-degree rotation was also necessary so that the left and right channels would sound the same. EDIT (much later!): Also, the system performed much better for lateral motions than for the vertical motion. Since most of the loudness, on average, was common to both channels, it made sense to use lateral motion for the sum signal, and vertical motion for the difference component.
This popped up in the mix so I watched it, not realizing how old the video was. It was a worthwhile watch, but the biggest thin g I was struck by is how far you have come with your current videos in terms of editing and presentation. Well done!
I haven't read through the comments, but here goes as regards stereo vinyl recordings. In order to retain compatibility with older monaural formats, the left channel was recorded as L+R (both left and right channels together) and the right channel was L-R (left minus right) When played back on a stereo system, these signals would be combined to give you separate left and right channels, while still giving you the complete sound available for monaural output. Although vinyl records have gone out of use for most applications, stereo FM radio still works this way today.
It may turn out to be the same thing, but I have seen textbook articles with illustrations, stating that each side wall of the groove is at 45 degrees, with the left channel recorded on one side, and the right channel on the other. Also, in the early days of stereo, playing a stereo disc on a mono recorder could damage the grooves, so compatibility was not mentioned in the advertising.
Correct about fm but not, I fear about vinyl. See my comment earlier. Left and right are 45degrees to horizontal and 90 degrees to each other. Mono is lateral or left plus right ignoring the vertical component.
Alec, you rock! I'd seen a few of your vids over the last couple years, and recently subscribed, now going through your earliest episodes....really liking how much you've changed while staying the same, if that makes any sense. Stay cool, curious and engaging brother!!
he got a bit less shiny though. (I swear he looks greased or something in these older videos. I don't know what he changed, but he must have changed something. The lighting? The camera? Is he maybe wearing some powder now? I'm mostly watching these in the order the algorithm serves them, so I don't have much of a timeline, but it seems to be when he switches to the set with the cube shelves)
Just discovered your video series, and I love it. It seems that you had some of the same curiosities that I did growing up. Also inspiration from the technological showcases at Walt Disney World and especially the monorail, Peoplemover, and EPCOT.
We had a lengthy debate on this video 7 years ago. I can't believe how far your channel has come. You've gone from some guy I argued on the Internet with, to my favourite RUclips channel. I can't remember what we debated, but after many years watching you, I'm almost certain I was wrong 😂
Ive only seen 3 of your videos so far, and i gotta say man, you do an excellent job of explaining stuff!! You do speak a tad fast as mentioned in another comment prior to mine, but your explanations are spot on!! Keep up the enlightening work!!
3 года назад
Wow, your current studio and the videos you shoot there look so much better. You've come a long way!
I watched your Edison / Burliner groove explanation videos before I saw this video. I was excitedly explaining what I learned about the different formats to my wife, shortly after we bought our first Victor Victrola last week, because she had been looking at some Edison discs for sale. Watching this as a follow up video, and learning about the stereo sound blew my mind. I had actually been wondering about how they did this all week. The moment you brought up Edison and Berliners name in this video, I said out loud- "he's going to tell me they married these technologies, isn't he!" Fascinating. Great work.
Excellent video! Best explanation ever! You're talking fast but the explanations are exhaustive and one of the best ever seen. "Chapeau" like the French say, or hat off!
11:40 Actually, stereo was first released to the public on double-grooved records in the early 1950s. The system was developed by Emory Cook and lasted for a few years before Columbia released the first stereo LP in 1958 using the Westrex 45-degree offset groove developed by AT&T's Western Electric that would become the standard. Vwestlife did a pretty good video on the Cook system: ruclips.net/video/QlagwjphwXA/видео.html
Nice explanation of how a stylus tracks a groove for stereo; the concomitant rotation by 45 degrees to the x-pattern for monophonic compatibility was therefore obvious. Subscribed.
You really ought to do a video talking about how stereo is recorded into the groove of a record in much deeper detail. It's not a vertical/lateral process as you describe here... That was tried early on and found to be not so good. What did end up becoming the standard is the Westrex 45/45 system which is basically two vertical recordings, one on each groove wall, 180 degrees out of phase. Left channel audio is on the left groove wall as you look at the stylus and right channel is on the right wall. Two coils control the motion of the recording stylus... Mono records play fine on a stereo pickup. Stereo records can be played with a mono pickup that only responds to lateral motion and you will get a mix between both channels, as long as the mono pickup is compliment enough. It's a fascinating subject! :)
Awesome video. Want to include that regarding the shape of the wave. All of the waves that you showed have the same fundamental frequency but they differentiate in the amount of harmonic composition only the sine wave was a pure 440Hz frequency
it's cool to see he really kept his depth of understanding and professional manner throughout the years.. I still watch because it's always informational and motivational
Really like your videos! One small thing that's not wrong but kind of misses the point: the shape of a sound IS the frequency spectrum. A 1kHz sine wave is 1kHz, but a square wave is 1kHz plus its higher frequency harmonics. The sharpness of a square wave is its higher frequency components; this extra resolution also makes it possible to capture more fine detail in the same length of groove, which means you could encode an even faster sine wave.
He's just trying to cover the 'basics' for non-techie people, as well as those that may have a better understanding.... imparting the information to those who don't know but who are interested is a very valid and important for them to at least have a clear concept of what 'Hi-Fi' audio reproduction of sound is all about..... I've been in this Hi-Fi business for 40 years now, and know exactly what he's conveying, and think to myself of certain omissions, but then I stop and think that there was once a time when I didn't understand this stuff either... if the internet/RUclips, and this channel had been around in the mid/late 1970's, I'd have been very grateful for these detailed 'basics' of the concepts... but of course, it wasn't, so I had to learn all this stuff the old-fashioned hard way, as I started working for a small family Hi-Fi, TV, and photo store in my local town (which I'm happy to note is still in business!), and learn't so much as On the Job Training, as well as what I gleaned from the monthly Hi-Fi magazines back then.... and have never stopped learning either, as I'm still in electronics retail today, and love all the new tech: 4K, Hi-Res audio, Bluetooth, console/PC gaming, and of course am loving the resurgence of vinyl... and even cassettes becoming 'fashionable' again!!
I've never heard a mid driver referred to as a "squawker" but I love it and I am 1000% here for it and I'm gonna try to remember it and start using it moving forward
The "Russian Easter Festival Overture"... one of my favorites! I even got to play that trombone solo once! Fun fact: Before pressing a record, a master disc has to be made containing all the tracks on each side (done separately) from which the stamping dies are made. This is done using what is called a cutting lathe. The working bits look much like a record player but they cut the groove (in acetate, not vinyl) instead of riding in it. High frequencies require the cutting head to reverse itself VERY quickly and that's hard for that machine to do. It takes a lot of power to halt one motion and move the head in the opposite direction fast enough to reproduce the higher frequencies. In order to improve fidelity, some engineers modified these machines to allow the cutting head to draw more power, thus making it more responsive to high frequency changes. This was risky, though, since if you overdid it, you'd burn out the cutter and even in their hey day they were never cheap!
Some people remember where they were when they heard Kennedy was assassinated. I remember where I was in 1992 when I first noticed all new cds were 50% louder than cassettes. At home of course. I was at home listening to my stereo.
This was an excellent build-up and connection (I get it...technology connections) to the previous videos. I've been trying to understand sound and sound theory for so long now and these videos break it down very well so its much easier to understand. You talked a little fast in this video but I will definitely save this for reference in the future. Keep up the good work!
True Quadraphonic you need a tape deck with four tracks. A reel to reel recorder and an eight track both can produce Quadraphonic sounds. Records have their limitations.
Great stuff! It’s amazing how they found out how to move the needle left and right and up and down without just having two different needles or something. Awesome!
I find strange in stereo that if you listen with headphones you hear only one channel per ear but if you use speakers both ears hear both channels. Yet it in most cases works in both cases. Exceptions are those that are mixed so that some sounds are only on one channel. This cannot be achieved if they use two microphones to record the source.
You're mistaken on the shape of the wave thing. Consider the mathematics Fourier discovered around 1800. Every wave of frequency f can be described as the sum of sine waves, called the Fourier Series. It's the sum of a sine wave of frequency f, a sine wave of frequency 2*f, a sine of 3*f, of 4*f, of 5*f, etc. Sine is the basic wave form. Mathematically, it's also possible to describe a sine as a series of square waves or as a series of sawtooth waves. But our ears hear frequencies according to sine waves. Our inner ears have hairs that resonate to certain frequency each, and when the hair resonates it moves with a sine. Also the capability of speakers to produce sound correlates with sine waves because that's what a harmonic oscillator produces. If you display a medium frequency square wave or a medium frequency sawtooth wave on a 3-driver speaker, then not only the mid-range driver is involved but also the tweeter. If you display a sine wave of the same frequency, the mid-range driver does it alone. The shape of the wave can't directly a thing in high fidelity. Instead, what's a thing, is to get a linear (as opposed to quadratic, or other polynomial or exponential or logarithmic) response. If you record a sound twice as loud, it's reproduced twice as loud and not 1.8 times as loud or 4 times as loud or so. A non-linear response can distort a sine-wave into a non-sine wave, thus creating additional frequencies. A non-linear response distorts the frequency picture, lets frequencies interact with each other. HiFi means one frequency musn't disturb the other frequency. So there's something to it, when you say, a sine-input must lead to a sine-output, a square-input to a square-output, a sawtooth-input to a sawtooth-output.
Wow! Thanks for taking the time to put that on paper (for lack of a better term). In an effort to reach a larger audience, the host of this channel sometimes sacrifices perfectly concise technical details that end up being the very thing that I needed to really grasp the concept. Fortunately, you were here to assist.
9:09 I think those particular examples would be handled sufficiently by a good frequency response. The extra that’s needed is preservation of the relative phase of the different frequencies: this means accurate reproduction of transients (e.g. percussive sounds, and also the initial “attack” on the notes produced by many musical instruments).
In the vinyl recording the low frequency was compressed because the amplitude was too much causing the stylus (needle) to jump off track. The large amplitude of the low frequency required the spacing between tracks to be increased as well. Decreasing the bass amplitude prevents stylus from jumping off track and also enables more playing time. So came the RIAA equalization which restores the low frequency to its natural amplitude during playback. Crystal pick-ups or piezoelectric were handy for this job because the low frequency is naturally loud with this type of pick-up.
I apologize. I'd love him to also include the inverse feedback to reduce harmonic distortion and the DC amplifier which eliminates the 60 cycle hum and the interstage capacitance/inductance couplings. These refinements show how discriminate listeners were the old folks. Today people are happy with their tiny squeaking speakers or boom boom loud woofers which are noises other than music.
Ok, quick question - Why pretend to sit in a regular plain room? If your gonna green screen yourself, give the talk sitting at a table on the moon. Anywhere really. Just a thought. Love your videos. keep it up mate.
I'll bet he's actually in the same room, sitting at the same table, but he's using the green screen because he has set up a bunch of sound dampening blankets around the room.
I mean, he was actually playing with the speaker that's sitting on that shelf, so I'd imagine he actually has a room with all that stuff on the shelves.
Love your work.... most articles on internet today don't explain to this level how things work... just that they work. Your videos could go a little deeper, but really they are wonderful just as they are.
It's so weird to be algorithimically encouraged to go back to these ancient videos with the greenscreen set which was also incredibly shoddy-looking and weirdly out-of-scale. And having the introduction with bleepybloop theme music, instead of smooth jazz at the end.
Greetings, 6 years have elapsed, the world is…. Uhg. But anyway your channel is still a simple joy. May the algorithm bestow a blessing upon you. Also heat-pumps!
Good simple explanation. I use, mainly, vinyl and I'm happy with the sound. I'm also fascinated with the "theatre" of the technology. I abrupt that the finest solid state equipment is quite possibly better than my vinyl, vacuum tube set-up but the way my system produces sound is 300-1000% more cool. Producing sound shouldn't be just about the sound, it's the whole experience. Vinyl and vacuum tubes are sooo delightful.
Unfortunately, the description, starting about 12:00, of how stereo records work is incorrect. It's close though. It is true that such a lateral/vertical modulation scheme was proposed and demonstrated successfully, however the architecture that was finally adopted was that developed (and patented) by Alan Blumlein in the UK in the 1930s, which used not one vertical and one lateral modulation, but two 45° transducers, offset by 90° from one another, as would have been the case for a lateral/vertical scheme. One of the key advantages of the 45/45 system over the lateral/vertical system was better backward compatibility with monaural systems, but also since noise and distorsion characteristics were different for lateral and vertical reproducers, it was felt that sharing them equally, by using a 45°/45° system would produce more suitable stereophonic records, with uniform characteristics between left and right channels.
can you actually put a true square or sawtooth wave on a vinyl record? since the groove is essentially the waveform itself something tells me the needle should get stuck or jump over those 90 degree angles...
No, you couldn't put a perfect sawtooth waveform on a record. That doesn't matter, however, as a perfect sawtooth waveform can't actually exist as audio. For the vertical part of the waveform (the part that the record can't do), the compression of the air molecules would have to go from maximum compression to maximum rarefaction in zero time, which is impossible. In reality, they would move very qickly, but not instantly. This is what would be represented on the record - a quick, but non-instant move. Ultimately, any shape wave that can be created by air molecules can be represented on a record.
In the monaural high fidelity the amplifier circuit is provided with inverse feedback to reduce unwanted harmonic distortion. High fidelity was broadcasted mono in FM stations because frequency modulation was free from static interference. In the vinyl recording the low frequency was compressed because the amplitude was too much causing the stylus (needle) to jump off track. So came the RIAA equalization which restores the low frequency to its natural amplitude during playback. Crystal pick-ups were handy for this job.
Had a fun Crocodile Dundee moment there as you said this big speaker and then picked up an itty bitty mid-woofer. :D "That's not a woofer... This is a woofer" (as he whips out a 15" woofer). Similarly with "These big woofers" (appear to be 10"). A matter of perspective I guess. ;) Great video though. If you want an interesting experience of true high fidelity without stereo get a good quality mono system and drive a high quality open baffle speaker with a well integrated subwoofer. It can be quite an eye opener. I think I am getting addicted to your videos.
With how vinyl did stereo explanation, yeah ... it originally was the vertical motion was the right channel and the horizontal motion was the left, but it's not so in modern records. The pre-mentioned has the problem of distortion, so the compromise was to mount each pickup at 45 degree angles from the center left and right, respectively. The pickup on the left got the right channel from the right wall and the pickup on the right got the left channel from the wall on the left of the groove. Ah, research is a wonderful thing...
From Hi-fi audio to dish washers and toasters, what a journey.
Also how much more personality his newer videos have.
The older ones are plain informative with the occasional sprinkle of irony.
The newer ones are irony with the occasional sprinkle of plain information.
(Not to say they are less educational, they are just as good - if not better - but different)
Right ?
I'm a huge fan of the dishwasher episode 👍👍
RUclips is recommending older videos again.
Also, from contended educator to disgruntled and sarcastic critic
The biggest difference has to be the over-exposure...
I’ve been watching this channel for a long time. I didn’t know, until now, that your name is Alec. Thanks for teaching me about so many new things I didn’t even know I wanted to learn about. You’re a gifted guy, I’m really glad you do this work.
I'm an audio engineer with about 13 years of experience and I'm very impressed with the accuracy of most of the info presented here; the only complaint I have is with the description of what makes different instruments/sound sources sound distinct, because square waves and sawtooth waves are not relevant, they only exist in synthesizers. I think clarinet/violin is a great pairing to compare, because they have similar envelopes (meaning the overall shape/profile of a note, so like how hard the initial attack is compared to the sustain compared to the release; there are a lot more complicated differences between a guitar and a clarinet due to such different envelopes), but the difference isn't the shape of the sound waves but rather the specific combination of different intervals of frequencies. I guess this would've been a difficult explanation to simplify adequately for a ~15 minute video, but the best way I can think of is to explain that when you hear a note, you're hearing multiple frequencies at the same time: the "fundamental" and a series of "harmonics" and "overtones" (which a video of the length and level of detail typically seen these days on this channel would be more likely to delve into than back in 2016). That's why, even if you're just playing back a single note held out on a violin or whatever, if you play with the EQ, it changes the sound; if there were only one frequency sounding, then touching other frequencies would do absolutely nothing and touching the one frequency playing would just turn the whole volume up or down, but that is very much not what happens when you change EQ settings.
I do think there's more to talk about with regards to speaker design (though, again, I understand this would be a level of depth that would have been uncharacteristic of an early video), as a major challenge with multi-driver setups is the interaction between different drivers in the ranges where they overlap, because having the same frequency coming from two sources at slightly different locations will cause a type of distortion called "comb filtering", which is a very difficult thing to explain in a text-only format with no visual aids so I'm just gonna say that anyone reading this can look it up and reply to me with specific questions and I'll try to answer them. Because of this, when I'm performing (I'm also a musician), whether I prefer single-driver or multi-driver earpieces depends on the specific context; I'm active in a band where I play guitar and sing a lot of backups, and in that context I don't want very much low end in my ears so I go with single-driver earpieces because they don't have crossover distortion because they don't have a crossover, and that gives me a clearer signal in the frequency range that vocals live in; but I'm also active in a band where I play mostly drums (banjo or accordion on certain songs) and rarely sing, so being able to hear the fullness of the bass guitar and kick drum are really helpful and I'm not worried about the crossover messing with the accuracy of the vocals, so I use two-driver earpieces. In practice, I'm probably being overly paranoid and plenty of vocalists perform with earpieces with up to 5-way crossovers, and the distance between drivers in an earpiece enclosure is obviously extremely small, and the place this is far more likely to come into consideration is in loudspeaker applications (and particularly in live concert sound, where speaker placement may have to be compromised depending on the layout of the venue and/or the crew may not have the time, technology, and/or skills to get things just right).
Sorry for the essay lmao, but I hope at least one person gets something out of it, and again, overall great video! I learned a bit about vinyl, as that's a topic I've really never explored, so you've taught something about audio to an audio engineer with 13 years of experience!
Been a fan for some years now, and I'm just now noticing much more of your mid 2010s material, such as this video. To say you've stayed consistent is truly an understatement, and not only that, but your presentation has also drastically improved! I'm also really liking that little theme tune you used to transition to. I sincerely wish you the best :)
Watching this in 2021 really shows how much the fidelity of your own videos has improved.
I believed the thumbnail was illustrating low fidelity. What is going on with the image? It doesn’t look real…
This dude is awesome. Nothing more needs to be said.
Agreed.
Still true
yeah if you playback at 0.75 or 0.5 speed...... at normal speed. is imposible to understand him.... ... I wonder ... who is chasing him ... or why he is in such a hurry ......
Ramdileo. sys, to each their own. I have no issues with inderstanding him, and English is my second language.
I understand English @Vidar Eggum...... That's not the problem......
it just bothers me when "hey look at this".. and they show me that for 3 frames.... or when they thrown at me 50 ideas... and give me 0.05 seconds to assimilate each one...
slow down dude .. who is chasing you .. ??
Damn. His studio has come a long way. So has his presentation skills.
His presentation is much better than most, especially in things like correct language and lack of filler words. There are so many channels that have impressive, informative content but the presentation is stupid, in so many ways.
@@ronaldgarrison8478 that’s because he reads well written “script”, check out the episode where Alec explains the teleprompter.
@@davidebacchi9030 That's pretty much how I would do it. I would never just wing it. In fact, for that very reason I might not ever do a live stream. Just not how I roll. I don't know how the teleprompter would fit into that, but I would not rule it out in advance. IAC having a prepared script or notes, yet not sounding as if you do, is an art. And I have seen few who are good at it.
I'm here several years later just to leave an algorithm pleasing comment because this channel is digital gold. Bitcoin, if you will.
Same here !
I shall reply to further augment the pleasure of the algorithm
It worked. It just showed me this.
@@Tonamo012 My contribution
This channel has real value not just a free money cheat for a few people burning electricity and hogging graphics cards to make unspendable deflationary currency
I'm in the middle of going back through your older videos to rewatch them and this was one of the first of your videos I watched a few years back (probably 2017) along with the Casette video (Exploring the good ol' Casette Tape). And I gotta say your presentation style and information was always there, like 90% already there and with a bit more humor, the better more colorful studio, and "through the magic of buying two of them" recurrence, its very close to the quality of your recent videos.
the many years I had spend as a kid reverse-engineering all these audio equipment to have an understanding are re-lived through your video contents man. You're bringing some solid nostalgia and cover the gaps in my findings as a kid back then. Really solid channel
Even these old episodes are great. You can see the improvements since these days but the core quality is there from the start. Great stuff.
We've come a long way from badly lit face and poorly cropped out greenscreen to a proper lighting set and a real background. The content already had this unique touch, this very nice pacing and of course Alan's face, although much younger.
Keep up the good work!
Alec
Really enjoy production value and well prepared material, not to be too picky, but stereo encoding on vinyl is a bit more clever than you mentioned - no worries, many people get it wrong - sideways movement is sum of channels (L+R), bottom of the groove is difference (L-R), that way we can keep stereo records compatible with mono players, and we can encode low frequencies (higher energy, placed in the centre of stereo spectrum during mastering and mixing process) and avoid 'skipping' of the tone arm. For the same reason 'bass heavy' records had playing time limited (wider groove).
I was writing a similar comment before I read yours. That's exactly right. The video is great but I hope he puts an annotation in the video correcting this small mistake.
As this is one of my older videos I tend not to monitor comments that often. However, I added a text element at 12:38 to clarify the the entire groove structure is rotated by 45 degrees for better mono compatibility. I do realize that I could have explained this better, but my original idea for the script was to show how it combined Berliner and Edison's recording methods into one.
Right you are about bass heavy recordings needing wider grooves. To deal with this most effciently more modern lathes used "variable pitch" so the operator could change the groove width as the master was being cut to accommodate high energy passages, then he could narrow the groove pitch during quiet passages to get the most playing time. Very quickly a preview head was added to the deck playing the master tape, which was exactly one record revolution ahead of the main playback to drive automatic circuitry for controlling the groove pitch.
Barabyk I’m sure he knows that. But he’s trying to explain it to people who don’t know it. How in debt does should he be? He does a great job.
I'm stuck on , certified hi fi.
Hats off to you Alec for the wonderful videos. Keep it coming.
+1
i thought his name was david.
no
I need to clean my glasses. I thought you said Altec... Ironic. :D
"You may have noticed that you have two ears. At least, I hope you do". That's where the OG Alec was created.
Thanks for this one. My grandfather was on the Bell Labs team that developed stereo. When I was a little kid, he would drag out recordings they made in the lab. It was recorded on wire in the 1930s, but he had copied them to tape. In the lab they made the recordings by stuffing microphones in the ears of a manikin head to get the same sound separation of a human head.
This is still done today, it’s called a binaural mic. I built one into a dummy head using two tiny omnidirectional condensers placed at the approx location of the ear drum in an anatomically correct, life size silicone ear. It sounds like a stereo mix in a car or at home but put on headphones and you are literally in that space, at least in respect to what you’re hearing. While testing the binaural mic I built I caught myself turning around because I heard the cat meow behind me when the cat wasn’t there… it was on the recording.
Digitize them
I actually have the record that was used in this demo, "Hearing is Believing", RCA Red Seal #SRL 12-1 (E4RP-8238), Copyright 1954. It originally belonged to my father. In later years, my parents advised me that they no longer wanted their LPs and told me that I was welcome to take them. I am glad I did.
I cannot find the narrator's name on the record (narration on side 1 only, or on the album jacket. Anyone who knows who the narrator is, please let me know.
Don't know, but he sounds familiar.
Edit: It might be Paul Frees
Ben Grauer from RCA/NBC
Close your eyes and you hear Mike Wallace!
Huh. When I froze the video, I thought it said Reader's Digest around the top.
Is that the album that rappers always sample with "this is a journey into sound"?
I just watched this after getting into your more recent videos recently. You've made some great improvements over the life of the channel! The set, lighting, audio quality - all very noticeable nice changes.
Each video is like a mini class but with side videos to keep our attention, thanks for making them!
My lord, the change in quality of editing over the ages.
I want to clarify something: every wave shape is built by a sum of sine waves. If you can replicate all the frequencies, you can replicate all the shapes or details.
I picked up on this also, but maybe "retaining the shape" can be seen as shorthand for "frequency-response curve sufficiently envelops the bandwidth of the signal and the curve is regular enough to avoid producing noticeable distortion or other non-linear effects." It's a mouthful and implies a lot of mathematics.
Also known as timbre and the stacked sine waves follow a predictable series of overtones which are integer* multiples of the fundamental.
*mostly true
You're talking about Fourier tranformations, am i right? I have very little math knowledge and get proud when i recognize something :) please forgive my ego.
@@Amateur0Visionary no, that's just the technique for determining what constituent frequencies make up the actual wave
@@humicroav215 Ah yes. Thank you, sir. As i said, my knowledge of higher mathematics is minimal at best.
It is 02:06 and I am eating a box of M&Ms and watching this video, I have absolutely no idea why but this is extremely fascinating, I can’t fall asleep and I’ve just started to binge watch this channel
This is the first time I understood how stereo works on vinyl. I read so many times about it, but your explanation combined with the animation made it for me. Thanks!
I’ve always been fascinated by audio recording and enjoyed doing my own but watching through this playlist on the history of artificial sound has truly blown my mind both at the human body, physics, and human creativity and experimentation. Thank you for making such rich information available in a clear and accessible way!
I like how a video about hi-fi has its audio out of sync
Glad I only read this comment AFTER watching.
Even worse on a bluetooth headset. 😵
extra painful when watching with bluetooth earbuds, i get a little bit more delay
@@Violant3 and here I was tweaking with the bluetooth codecs to figure out the issue.
@@josephnevin same for me, just got new earbuds, wanted to test them with a random video and got here...
12:00 - 12:45 I thought that stereo on a phonograph was done using the diagonals and wikipedia agrees with me, at least for the format that eventually became dominant. The cool thing about this is that it's fully compatible with a mono record with horizontal grooves. A mono player would ignore the vertical component and the horizontal component would be the average of the two channels. A mono record on a stereo player would play as both channels being the same. If you the horizontal/vertical split instead of the diagonals, you'd either hear only the left or right channel (for a mono player) or only get music from the left or right speaker (for a stereo player). You probably knew this and cut it for brevity, but I thought it interesting.
I am so upset this guy doesn't have more views. RUclips is a world of Wonders. Seriously very well-made content extremely informative.
Martin Godinez Spread the word!
He's getting close to a million.
Time and patience.
@@HolyKhaaaaan I wonder how much he had back then.
Also it’s interesting to see this older videos and how much more jokes and irony his videos contain today.
@@rolux4853 The dry humor, sarcasm, and alliteration were turned up to 11, and I love it.
There's another reason for dividing the frequency spectrum over several drivers: signals are superimposed on each other. So when the same diaphragm produces both low and high frequencies, the diaphragm moves back and forth a fairly long way, which gives the high frequency signal a doppler modulation.
The 45-degree rotation was also necessary so that the left and right channels would sound the same.
EDIT (much later!): Also, the system performed much better for lateral motions than for the vertical motion. Since most of the loudness, on average, was common to both channels, it made sense to use lateral motion for the sum signal, and vertical motion for the difference component.
This popped up in the mix so I watched it, not realizing how old the video was. It was a worthwhile watch, but the biggest thin g I was struck by is how far you have come with your current videos in terms of editing and presentation. Well done!
I haven't read through the comments, but here goes as regards stereo vinyl recordings. In order to retain compatibility with older monaural formats, the left channel was recorded as L+R (both left and right channels together) and the right channel was L-R (left minus right) When played back on a stereo system, these signals would be combined to give you separate left and right channels, while still giving you the complete sound available for monaural output. Although vinyl records have gone out of use for most applications, stereo FM radio still works this way today.
It does indeed:
i.imgur.com/3xWjjRG.png
i.imgur.com/vVCfTrF.gifv
It may turn out to be the same thing, but I have seen textbook articles with illustrations, stating that each side wall of the groove is at 45 degrees, with the left channel recorded on one side, and the right channel on the other. Also, in the early days of stereo, playing a stereo disc on a mono recorder could damage the grooves, so compatibility was not mentioned in the advertising.
👌
Compatible Stereo was called the Westrex system
Correct about fm but not, I fear about vinyl. See my comment earlier. Left and right are 45degrees to horizontal and 90 degrees to each other. Mono is lateral or left plus right ignoring the vertical component.
Oh boy, old Technology Connection episodes! Hell yah!
Very good video and impressive how far you've come since.
funny how it's like, "Last week, we talked about..."
well, i know it's the script, but the voice in my head says, "more like 10 seconds ago"
Same, though paradoxially, "last week" was also 4 years ago by the time I got to this.
Some of the videos also have months inbetween the "last weeks"
It's pretty nice to see how much your videos improved over the years.
Alec, you rock! I'd seen a few of your vids over the last couple years, and recently subscribed, now going through your earliest episodes....really liking how much you've changed while staying the same, if that makes any sense.
Stay cool, curious and engaging brother!!
Well, now I know that in 5 years this man hasn't aged a day.
he got a bit less shiny though. (I swear he looks greased or something in these older videos. I don't know what he changed, but he must have changed something. The lighting? The camera? Is he maybe wearing some powder now? I'm mostly watching these in the order the algorithm serves them, so I don't have much of a timeline, but it seems to be when he switches to the set with the cube shelves)
I'm here for old school Alec. You've come a long way buddy!!!
Just discovered your video series, and I love it. It seems that you had some of the same curiosities that I did growing up. Also inspiration from the technological showcases at Walt Disney World and especially the monorail, Peoplemover, and EPCOT.
We had a lengthy debate on this video 7 years ago. I can't believe how far your channel has come. You've gone from some guy I argued on the Internet with, to my favourite RUclips channel. I can't remember what we debated, but after many years watching you, I'm almost certain I was wrong 😂
Ive only seen 3 of your videos so far, and i gotta say man, you do an excellent job of explaining stuff!! You do speak a tad fast as mentioned in another comment prior to mine, but your explanations are spot on!! Keep up the enlightening work!!
Wow, your current studio and the videos you shoot there look so much better. You've come a long way!
Pedantic correction: at 00:54, it's not the air that travels to your ear, just the vibration ;)
It's the air, usually. Unless you are under water or something like that.
@@kkfoto it's *via* the air. Your ear already has air up against it.
I watched your Edison / Burliner groove explanation videos before I saw this video. I was excitedly explaining what I learned about the different formats to my wife, shortly after we bought our first Victor Victrola last week, because she had been looking at some Edison discs for sale. Watching this as a follow up video, and learning about the stereo sound blew my mind. I had actually been wondering about how they did this all week. The moment you brought up Edison and Berliners name in this video, I said out loud- "he's going to tell me they married these technologies, isn't he!" Fascinating. Great work.
whoa! different set, different lighting, multiple camera angles, and an intro? things sure have changed quite a bit in the four years
Excellent video! Best explanation ever! You're talking fast but the explanations are exhaustive and one of the best ever seen. "Chapeau" like the French say, or hat off!
11:40 Actually, stereo was first released to the public on double-grooved records in the early 1950s. The system was developed by Emory Cook and lasted for a few years before Columbia released the first stereo LP in 1958 using the Westrex 45-degree offset groove developed by AT&T's Western Electric that would become the standard. Vwestlife did a pretty good video on the Cook system: ruclips.net/video/QlagwjphwXA/видео.html
Wow, this is an early video of yours! I got it recommended, and it's so interesting to see your old stuff.
Nice explanation of how a stylus tracks a groove for stereo; the concomitant rotation by 45 degrees to the x-pattern for monophonic compatibility was therefore obvious. Subscribed.
wow thanks algorithm for presenting me this blast from the past
I came from the future to say: what an amazing video!
You really ought to do a video talking about how stereo is recorded into the groove of a record in much deeper detail. It's not a vertical/lateral process as you describe here... That was tried early on and found to be not so good. What did end up becoming the standard is the Westrex 45/45 system which is basically two vertical recordings, one on each groove wall, 180 degrees out of phase. Left channel audio is on the left groove wall as you look at the stylus and right channel is on the right wall. Two coils control the motion of the recording stylus... Mono records play fine on a stereo pickup. Stereo records can be played with a mono pickup that only responds to lateral motion and you will get a mix between both channels, as long as the mono pickup is compliment enough. It's a fascinating subject! :)
Awesome video. Want to include that regarding the shape of the wave. All of the waves that you showed have the same fundamental frequency but they differentiate in the amount of harmonic composition only the sine wave was a pure 440Hz frequency
it's cool to see he really kept his depth of understanding and professional manner throughout the years.. I still watch because it's always informational and motivational
Really like your videos! One small thing that's not wrong but kind of misses the point: the shape of a sound IS the frequency spectrum. A 1kHz sine wave is 1kHz, but a square wave is 1kHz plus its higher frequency harmonics. The sharpness of a square wave is its higher frequency components; this extra resolution also makes it possible to capture more fine detail in the same length of groove, which means you could encode an even faster sine wave.
He's just trying to cover the 'basics' for non-techie people, as well as those that may have a better understanding.... imparting the information to those who don't know but who are interested is a very valid and important for them to at least have a clear concept of what 'Hi-Fi' audio reproduction of sound is all about.....
I've been in this Hi-Fi business for 40 years now, and know exactly what he's conveying, and think to myself of certain omissions, but then I stop and think that there was once a time when I didn't understand this stuff either... if the internet/RUclips, and this channel had been around in the mid/late 1970's, I'd have been very grateful for these detailed 'basics' of the concepts... but of course, it wasn't, so I had to learn all this stuff the old-fashioned hard way, as I started working for a small family Hi-Fi, TV, and photo store in my local town (which I'm happy to note is still in business!), and learn't so much as On the Job Training, as well as what I gleaned from the monthly Hi-Fi magazines back then.... and have never stopped learning either, as I'm still in electronics retail today, and love all the new tech: 4K, Hi-Res audio, Bluetooth, console/PC gaming, and of course am loving the resurgence of vinyl... and even cassettes becoming 'fashionable' again!!
As an audiophile, I have to say this is a fantastic basic primer on audio reproduction, and I learned some things I didn't know about records.
Audiophile😂😂😂😂
The sound is not in sync in this video.
He suffers from "Dub's Disease".
given the subject matter, maybe it was an ironic joke.
It's hi-fi non-synchronicity
It’s a problem with RUclips, many clips tender to suffer from this issue.
And the S-sounds are harsh.
I love your videos, not matter how long ago they were uploaded. I have also rewatched many of them for a "just because" reason.
Excellent series of videos. Mid range, also known as a 'squawker' :) . Woofer, Tweeter, Squawker.
I was going to say the same thing. I have a Philips speaker driver catalogue from the early 1970s that uses that terminology.
@@Shaun.Stephens i never heard that before. I love correct terminology, thx !!
I feel like somebody needs to make a joke about a dog, a parrot, and a hummingbird.
I've never heard a mid driver referred to as a "squawker" but I love it and I am 1000% here for it and I'm gonna try to remember it and start using it moving forward
The "Russian Easter Festival Overture"... one of my favorites! I even got to play that trombone solo once!
Fun fact: Before pressing a record, a master disc has to be made containing all the tracks on each side (done separately) from which the stamping dies are made. This is done using what is called a cutting lathe. The working bits look much like a record player but they cut the groove (in acetate, not vinyl) instead of riding in it. High frequencies require the cutting head to reverse itself VERY quickly and that's hard for that machine to do. It takes a lot of power to halt one motion and move the head in the opposite direction fast enough to reproduce the higher frequencies. In order to improve fidelity, some engineers modified these machines to allow the cutting head to draw more power, thus making it more responsive to high frequency changes. This was risky, though, since if you overdid it, you'd burn out the cutter and even in their hey day they were never cheap!
"In fact, music usually has quiet parts and loud parts"
_LoudnessWar has entered the chat._
Brickwall limiter: *Are you challenging me???*
Fuck the loudness war.... ruined my formative years when I was beginning to understand and enjoy music fully.
FEAR THY NAME EXTERMINATION
Some people remember where they were when they heard Kennedy was assassinated. I remember where I was in 1992 when I first noticed all new cds were 50% louder than cassettes.
At home of course. I was at home listening to my stereo.
I'm digging the little intro, bring it back!
The midrange speeker driver is the squarker. Along with the woofer and tweeter.
*squawker
Excellent video, will recommend this to anyone who is like me, supposedly caring about "audio quality" without knowing what it actually means.
THANK YOU!
YOU ARE A REAL EDUCATOR!
Who needs school when you have youtube😏
There is nothing I want more in 2021 then for this intro theme and video to be brought back
That intro is my favorite thing
This was an excellent build-up and connection (I get it...technology connections) to the previous videos. I've been trying to understand sound and sound theory for so long now and these videos break it down very well so its much easier to understand. You talked a little fast in this video but I will definitely save this for reference in the future. Keep up the good work!
Now I feel the need to know how quad recordings worked.
True Quadraphonic you need a tape deck with four tracks. A reel to reel recorder and an eight track both can produce Quadraphonic sounds. Records have their limitations.
Great stuff! It’s amazing how they found out how to move the needle left and right and up and down without just having two different needles or something. Awesome!
8:05 did you really just miss that opportunity to call vinyl records "groovier?"
That was long ago. He wouldn't today.
In the video I think he's cracking up inside from that joke.
Man, your lighting setup has really come a long way
I find strange in stereo that if you listen with headphones you hear only one channel per ear but if you use speakers both ears hear both channels. Yet it in most cases works in both cases. Exceptions are those that are mixed so that some sounds are only on one channel. This cannot be achieved if they use two microphones to record the source.
This takes me back to one of my freshmen college courses, Music Appreciation, where the professor talked about Hi-Fi systems
You're mistaken on the shape of the wave thing. Consider the mathematics Fourier discovered around 1800.
Every wave of frequency f can be described as the sum of sine waves, called the Fourier Series. It's the sum of a sine wave of frequency f, a sine wave of frequency 2*f, a sine of 3*f, of 4*f, of 5*f, etc. Sine is the basic wave form.
Mathematically, it's also possible to describe a sine as a series of square waves or as a series of sawtooth waves. But our ears hear frequencies according to sine waves. Our inner ears have hairs that resonate to certain frequency each, and when the hair resonates it moves with a sine. Also the capability of speakers to produce sound correlates with sine waves because that's what a harmonic oscillator produces. If you display a medium frequency square wave or a medium frequency sawtooth wave on a 3-driver speaker, then not only the mid-range driver is involved but also the tweeter. If you display a sine wave of the same frequency, the mid-range driver does it alone.
The shape of the wave can't directly a thing in high fidelity. Instead, what's a thing, is to get a linear (as opposed to quadratic, or other polynomial or exponential or logarithmic) response. If you record a sound twice as loud, it's reproduced twice as loud and not 1.8 times as loud or 4 times as loud or so. A non-linear response can distort a sine-wave into a non-sine wave, thus creating additional frequencies. A non-linear response distorts the frequency picture, lets frequencies interact with each other. HiFi means one frequency musn't disturb the other frequency.
So there's something to it, when you say, a sine-input must lead to a sine-output, a square-input to a square-output, a sawtooth-input to a sawtooth-output.
Wow!
Thanks for taking the time to put that on paper (for lack of a better term).
In an effort to reach a larger audience, the host of this channel sometimes sacrifices perfectly concise technical details that end up being the very thing that I needed to really grasp the concept.
Fortunately, you were here to assist.
9:09 I think those particular examples would be handled sufficiently by a good frequency response. The extra that’s needed is preservation of the relative phase of the different frequencies: this means accurate reproduction of transients (e.g. percussive sounds, and also the initial “attack” on the notes produced by many musical instruments).
Very clear explanation !
Could you do one on RIAA correction ?
In the vinyl recording the low frequency was compressed because the amplitude was too much causing the stylus (needle) to jump off track. The large amplitude of the low frequency required the spacing between tracks to be increased as well. Decreasing the bass amplitude prevents stylus from jumping off track and also enables more playing time. So came the RIAA equalization which restores the low frequency to its natural amplitude during playback. Crystal pick-ups or piezoelectric were handy for this job because the low frequency is naturally loud with this type of pick-up.
I know what RIAA equalization is (sorry, for the term "correction"), but it would be nice to see a video about the subject on this channel.
I apologize. I'd love him to also include the inverse feedback to reduce harmonic distortion and the DC amplifier which eliminates the 60 cycle hum and the interstage capacitance/inductance couplings. These refinements show how discriminate listeners were the old folks. Today people are happy with their tiny squeaking speakers or boom boom loud woofers which are noises other than music.
This is one of the best channels on any platform. What a chad.
Ok, quick question - Why pretend to sit in a regular plain room?
If your gonna green screen yourself, give the talk sitting at a table on the moon.
Anywhere really.
Just a thought.
Love your videos. keep it up mate.
Thematic consistency? There's a lot of old equipment on the shelves in that greenscreen shot. It makes sense for a channel about vintage tech.
woa!!!!!! until I read your comment I didn't actually realize it was a green screen. hahaha (I'm serious)
I'll bet he's actually in the same room, sitting at the same table, but he's using the green screen because he has set up a bunch of sound dampening blankets around the room.
This green screen is really disconcerting compared with later videos (circa 2018). I'm really glad it's gone!
I mean, he was actually playing with the speaker that's sitting on that shelf, so I'd imagine he actually has a room with all that stuff on the shelves.
Love your work.... most articles on internet today don't explain to this level how things work... just that they work. Your videos could go a little deeper, but really they are wonderful just as they are.
Wow such a cool channel, so much good information
This video shows how far Alec has come in 7 years, good job man! I'm proud to be a subscriber of you
Great video, thanks a lot!
It's so weird to be algorithimically encouraged to go back to these ancient videos with the greenscreen set which was also incredibly shoddy-looking and weirdly out-of-scale. And having the introduction with bleepybloop theme music, instead of smooth jazz at the end.
The mid range is also known as a "squawker" So Woofer, Squawker and Tweeter. Fun fact, lol.
This is LITERALLY the intro to hi fi that I’ve been looking for. Thanks so much for this
a very likeable video.
Sick opening sequence! Bring it back!
The greatest thing I learned from this video is that I have 2 ears... 9:29
Such an -eye- ear opening information
10:05
Greetings, 6 years have elapsed, the world is…. Uhg. But anyway your channel is still a simple joy. May the algorithm bestow a blessing upon you.
Also heat-pumps!
You used to have an intro song? Why not anymore?
Because the outro song is more famous
Because people have add and dont have patience anymore
Good simple explanation.
I use, mainly, vinyl and I'm happy with the sound. I'm also fascinated with the "theatre" of the technology. I abrupt that the finest solid state equipment is quite possibly better than my vinyl, vacuum tube set-up but the way my system produces sound is 300-1000% more cool. Producing sound shouldn't be just about the sound, it's the whole experience.
Vinyl and vacuum tubes are sooo delightful.
A fine sort of chap thou art
Unfortunately, the description, starting about 12:00, of how stereo records work is incorrect. It's close though. It is true that such a lateral/vertical modulation scheme was proposed and demonstrated successfully, however the architecture that was finally adopted was that developed (and patented) by Alan Blumlein in the UK in the 1930s, which used not one vertical and one lateral modulation, but two 45° transducers, offset by 90° from one another, as would have been the case for a lateral/vertical scheme. One of the key advantages of the 45/45 system over the lateral/vertical system was better backward compatibility with monaural systems, but also since noise and distorsion characteristics were different for lateral and vertical reproducers, it was felt that sharing them equally, by using a 45°/45° system would produce more suitable stereophonic records, with uniform characteristics between left and right channels.
can you actually put a true square or sawtooth wave on a vinyl record? since the groove is essentially the waveform itself something tells me the needle should get stuck or jump over those 90 degree angles...
No, you couldn't put a perfect sawtooth waveform on a record. That doesn't matter, however, as a perfect sawtooth waveform can't actually exist as audio. For the vertical part of the waveform (the part that the record can't do), the compression of the air molecules would have to go from maximum compression to maximum rarefaction in zero time, which is impossible. In reality, they would move very qickly, but not instantly. This is what would be represented on the record - a quick, but non-instant move. Ultimately, any shape wave that can be created by air molecules can be represented on a record.
No, but you don't need that anyways. The harmonics responsible for the very sharp edges are to high pitched to be heard.
In the monaural high fidelity the amplifier circuit is provided with inverse feedback to reduce unwanted harmonic distortion. High fidelity was broadcasted mono in FM stations because frequency modulation was free from static interference. In the vinyl recording the low frequency was compressed because the amplitude was too much causing the stylus (needle) to jump off track. So came the RIAA equalization which restores the low frequency to its natural amplitude during playback. Crystal pick-ups were handy for this job.
I just discovered him. Scratching my head why it took so long. Hope he cleans that jacket or he has a ton of them.
Had a fun Crocodile Dundee moment there as you said this big speaker and then picked up an itty bitty mid-woofer. :D "That's not a woofer... This is a woofer" (as he whips out a 15" woofer). Similarly with "These big woofers" (appear to be 10"). A matter of perspective I guess. ;)
Great video though. If you want an interesting experience of true high fidelity without stereo get a good quality mono system and drive a high quality open baffle speaker with a well integrated subwoofer. It can be quite an eye opener.
I think I am getting addicted to your videos.
enjoyable video thanks. what was the record you played? would like to know and have a listen to it
This^ Or possibly even a downloadable sample of the (entire) record would be appreciated. d;
With how vinyl did stereo explanation, yeah ... it originally was the vertical motion was the right channel and the horizontal motion was the left, but it's not so in modern records. The pre-mentioned has the problem of distortion, so the compromise was to mount each pickup at 45 degree angles from the center left and right, respectively. The pickup on the left got the right channel from the right wall and the pickup on the right got the left channel from the wall on the left of the groove. Ah, research is a wonderful thing...