Television is a visual medium and most of the development surrounding television today is based on (hopefully) improving the visual characteristics of content to reproduce it as closely as possible to what was seen when it was recorded. TV brands laud their video processors and pile on buzz words, such as AI, adaptive, and realistic, but content’s older brother, audio, is rarely mentioned and recent ‘improvements’ in television audio leave us with the feeling that audio, as part of visual media, has been further relegated to a secondary position, despite the current rhetoric.
In the ‘old days’, CRT based TVs had speakers, sometimes mounted below the screen and sometimes on the sides, but given the limited bandwidth available at the time, the best most CRT TVs could offer was stereo sound. Some high-end CRT brands, such as Sony (SNE) Trinitron in the late 1960’s, emphasized sound a bit more than most, but consumers rarely had any control over the quality of a CRT TVs audio, and TV set speakers were rarely anything more than OTS components.
One would have thought TV audio would have improved when flat-panel TVs appeared in the 1980’s but the concept of progressively thinner flat panel TVs made speakers cumbersome given their thickness, and the mass that speakers need to ‘resonate’ became a point of contention between TV designers and TV engineers. The property of resonance, which is the frequency at which objects or materials oscillate when a force is applied, is an important factor in the performance of speakers. While every material resonates differently, the resonant frequency is dependent on mass, meaning those objects with low mass will tend to oscillate at higher frequencies than those with more mass, which is the reason those big woofers found in the trunks of certain vehicles provide high volume bass, while tweeters that provide high frequencies are as small as an inch.
In order for TV set designers to fulfill the need for progressively thinner LCD and OLED TVs, they needed to find a way to eliminate bulky speakers and the sound bar was born. However not everybody wants to shell out additional dollars when they fork over a few hundred or thousand for a new TV, so back in early 2019 LG Electronics (066570.KS) came up with the idea of making an entire 88” OLED TV into a ‘speaker’. By placing five ‘actuators’ at points on the display, they were able to get the display to act as a giant speaker(s), using the position of the actuators to mimic the source of the sounds.
That concept has been adopted by Sony and Samsung (005930.KS) for a number of their high-end large TVs, with Sony calling it ‘Acoustic Surface Audio’ and Samsung calling it ‘Object Tracking Sound’, but in both cases the sound is not generated by speakers but by the ‘actuators’ which translate the sound into vibrations that are passed into the frame of the TV causing it to resonate. By placing the actuators at the center (dialogue) and at the four corners, some of the imbedded directionality of the sound is available however it is all on a two dimensional plane directly in front of the viewer.
True directionality can only be achieved by placing additional speakers behind and above the viewer, but the real problem is what we mentioned earlier, mass. Without substantial mass, the actuators cannot reproduce low frequency audio and as also stated, each material has its own resonant frequency where certain audio ranges will be amplified. Sony was forced to test many materials for the frames of its high-end TVs until it came up with one that had ‘natural’ resonance, keeping it from sounding tinny or shrill. That said, the mass needed for real bass is not available from a resonate frame, and when you buy a $4,000 TV you want to be overwhelmed with the sounds of explosions at Dunkirk or the sound of a Bootsy Collins bass line, which means you have to shell out another few hundred for a sub-woofer that the wife will make you hide behind the couch.
The point here is that taking a shortcut when designing TV sets just to publicize the fact that your screen is a millimeter thinner than your competitor’s does not always produce the desired results when it comes to pleasing consumers. Yes, actuators can produce mid and high frequencies and good audio controllers can help to decode audio positioning, but if you are trying to recreate what was originally recorded, you need the bass that actuator systems cannot provide. If you are going to need a low-end speaker system for your high-end OLED TV, you might as well buy a good 3 dimensional speaker system and forgo vibrating your TV. JOHO.
In the ‘old days’, CRT based TVs had speakers, sometimes mounted below the screen and sometimes on the sides, but given the limited bandwidth available at the time, the best most CRT TVs could offer was stereo sound. Some high-end CRT brands, such as Sony (SNE) Trinitron in the late 1960’s, emphasized sound a bit more than most, but consumers rarely had any control over the quality of a CRT TVs audio, and TV set speakers were rarely anything more than OTS components.
One would have thought TV audio would have improved when flat-panel TVs appeared in the 1980’s but the concept of progressively thinner flat panel TVs made speakers cumbersome given their thickness, and the mass that speakers need to ‘resonate’ became a point of contention between TV designers and TV engineers. The property of resonance, which is the frequency at which objects or materials oscillate when a force is applied, is an important factor in the performance of speakers. While every material resonates differently, the resonant frequency is dependent on mass, meaning those objects with low mass will tend to oscillate at higher frequencies than those with more mass, which is the reason those big woofers found in the trunks of certain vehicles provide high volume bass, while tweeters that provide high frequencies are as small as an inch.
In order for TV set designers to fulfill the need for progressively thinner LCD and OLED TVs, they needed to find a way to eliminate bulky speakers and the sound bar was born. However not everybody wants to shell out additional dollars when they fork over a few hundred or thousand for a new TV, so back in early 2019 LG Electronics (066570.KS) came up with the idea of making an entire 88” OLED TV into a ‘speaker’. By placing five ‘actuators’ at points on the display, they were able to get the display to act as a giant speaker(s), using the position of the actuators to mimic the source of the sounds.
That concept has been adopted by Sony and Samsung (005930.KS) for a number of their high-end large TVs, with Sony calling it ‘Acoustic Surface Audio’ and Samsung calling it ‘Object Tracking Sound’, but in both cases the sound is not generated by speakers but by the ‘actuators’ which translate the sound into vibrations that are passed into the frame of the TV causing it to resonate. By placing the actuators at the center (dialogue) and at the four corners, some of the imbedded directionality of the sound is available however it is all on a two dimensional plane directly in front of the viewer.
True directionality can only be achieved by placing additional speakers behind and above the viewer, but the real problem is what we mentioned earlier, mass. Without substantial mass, the actuators cannot reproduce low frequency audio and as also stated, each material has its own resonant frequency where certain audio ranges will be amplified. Sony was forced to test many materials for the frames of its high-end TVs until it came up with one that had ‘natural’ resonance, keeping it from sounding tinny or shrill. That said, the mass needed for real bass is not available from a resonate frame, and when you buy a $4,000 TV you want to be overwhelmed with the sounds of explosions at Dunkirk or the sound of a Bootsy Collins bass line, which means you have to shell out another few hundred for a sub-woofer that the wife will make you hide behind the couch.
The point here is that taking a shortcut when designing TV sets just to publicize the fact that your screen is a millimeter thinner than your competitor’s does not always produce the desired results when it comes to pleasing consumers. Yes, actuators can produce mid and high frequencies and good audio controllers can help to decode audio positioning, but if you are trying to recreate what was originally recorded, you need the bass that actuator systems cannot provide. If you are going to need a low-end speaker system for your high-end OLED TV, you might as well buy a good 3 dimensional speaker system and forgo vibrating your TV. JOHO.
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