6th December 2011
I was sat watching the TV the other night with the audio piped through my surround-sound system, enjoying the audio experience enhancing the visual experience. It's taken a while to get the audio set-up right, and it's been a delight since I got the speaker levels all matched using a sound pressure level meter. Now it's an immersive experience, without any one speaker grabbing your attention unnecessarily.
I flicked over from one of the main Freeview channels to a minor channel and within two seconds my ears were assaulted with level-compressed audio. The music playing was all the same volume and each time the bass kicked, the vocals faded with a pulsating wavy effect. It was horrible. I reverted to the TV's internal speakers and the sound was bearable again.
Now the TV wasn't cheap - 46" full-HD LCD panel, tube back-lit, with 100Hz motion processing and fast response time for the LCD. Motion is nice and smooth and the colours are very natural (after some adjustment). But still the priority in that set design was the screen, not the speakers. The latest sets with LED backlights are thinner still and have even smaller speakers with even less bass and power capability. So the TV speaker system quality masked the audio source quality. Here at Wolfson we have a passion for audio quality.
Most of our work tends to be with mobile phones, which have very small speakers. We make the chips that drive these speakers. We are now finding new techniques to improve the audio quality using the mixed-signal technology at our disposal. We can use analogue measurement techniques and digital signal processing to make the speaker perform at its best. We can make it louder and we can make it have lower distortion. Hopefully the phones of the future will sound clearer and use less compression.
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