Beyond the screen: Samsung’s Sound Device Lab explains how audio shapes the TV viewing experience

Sound has the power to transform how we enjoy visual media, from movies to TV shows. Premium audio brings content to life by invoking emotions, complementing what is on screen, and sometimes even foreshadowing what will come next. Sound adds depth and texture to the narrative, enhancing the viewer’s connection to the story unfolding.

Samsung Newsroom sat down with Sunmin Kim and Seongsu Park from the Sound Device Lab within the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics to discuss the importance of audio in delivering a superior viewing experience as well as Samsung’s latest innovations in sound and picture quality.

Bringing Content to Life Through Sound

“Sound plays a very important role in making the content we consume immersive,” said Sunmin Kim, Head of the Sound Device Lab, Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. Be it romantic films, funny TV shows, or even live sports broadcasts, Kim believes that a majority of the emotional impact of visual content is delivered through sound.

“For example, it’s often the background music and sound effects that make horror films more terrifying. If you were to turn off the sound, many scenes wouldn’t be as scary. In fact, you may even find some scenes to be funny.”

“Film, TV, and music directors are all artists. And what’s important to me is that they work to amplify stories through sound effects and music,” said Kim. “The goal here at the Sound Device Lab is to deliver content to viewers as the artists intended.”

This can be a daunting task because production and viewing environments tend to vary significantly. Seongsu Park, who oversees speaker development and audio evaluation in the Sound Device Lab, shared some of the challenges his team faces.

“Audio for movies and TV shows, in general, is mixed to a reference level of approximately 85 decibels (dB), equivalent to volume levels found in a movie theatre. However, at home, many viewers watch the content at lower volumes. According to our research, many TV viewers reduce the volume to around 60 dB, and some even to 20 dB, to avoid disturbing neighbours,” explained Park. This means that dialogues that would have been audible in the mixing studio may be indiscernible in the living room. Engineers must consider additional differences in consumers’ viewing environments, such as curtains, furniture, and other elements that might absorb or deflect sound waves.

The Sound Device Lab found solutions in the form of hardware and software innovations. On the hardware side, multiple more minor, specialized speakers were introduced to provide surround sound. The software side tuned these speakers to form a balanced audio experience and remixed the sound signals to ensure key sound factors were delivered to viewers.

From Few, Front-facing Speakers to Many, Everywhere-Facing Speakers

TVs are usually limited to their set form factor when producing sound. Recently, this limitation has become increasingly restrictive for sound engineers as TVs have become slimmer from both the front and side. “In the past, huge front-facing stereo speakers were on each side of the TV screen. Current TV designs deny such placement,” said Park. “We were forced to dig deep.”

The Sound Device Lab responded to the challenge by developing multiple smaller speaker units for its TVs and placing them out of plain sight. By arranging these units in different directions and coordinating the audio output, the team was able to simulate surround sound.

This technology is further pushed in models that feature Neural Processing Units (NPUs), such as the Neural Quantum Processor found on select Neo QLED TV models, by unlocking features such as Object Tracking Sound (OTS). OTS identifies picture and audio objects on the screen in real-time before matching, tracking, and coordinating multiple speakers to create a dynamic three-dimensional soundscape.

To support slimmer bezels and flat-to-the-wall TV designs, sound engineers also had to reduce the physical size of the speakers. Speakers operate by physically pushing out air, so in many cases, speaker performance is directly affected by size.

As the Sound Device Lab could not physically enlarge the speakers, it instead focused on the range of movement.

“Let’s say the moving range of a speaker driver is 100. Using 50–70% of that range was considered sufficient. To respond to slimmer TV designs, however, we raised that range to 80–85%,” explained Park. “As we fit smaller but more efficient speakers in our TVs, we were not only able to accommodate the slimmer design, but we also ended up improving the collective sound performance.”

Creating Perfect Balance From Every Angle

While adding speakers resulted in a more immersive and dynamic audio experience, it also posed another challenge. Sound engineers had to fine-tune and balance the multiple speakers to achieve a perfect blend of sound. With many speakers operating at differing frequency ranges and all facing different directions, tuning them to work in unison as a single balanced unit became exponentially difficult—but it had to be done.

The effort started with gathering accurate data. In anechoic and semi-anechoic chambers, the Sound Device Lab members measured TV sounds from 323 different points, covering the entire range of TV viewing, for each of the settings until the frequency and volume balance were optimal. After that, they took each model to listening rooms and simulated various real-life living room settings to ensure the speakers were tuned to perfection.

Future-Proofing Sound

As the global TV market leader for 17 consecutive years, Samsung remains committed to innovating the TV experience. So, what’s next?

“I was shocked when a colleague told me that the volume keys are the most frequently pressed buttons on a TV remote. This signals a clear inconvenience. So, it has become a vision of mine to remove the volume buttons completely from the remote control,” shared Park, expressing his desire to enable Samsung TVs to automatically adjust the volume based on surrounding noise.

“Great technology produces and delivers accurate sound,” said Kim. “We will continue to incorporate our long-running expertise with newer technologies such as AI to create as close a reference sound as possible.”

In the next part of this series, Samsung Newsroom will explore the role of AI in elevating audio performance and sound experiences.

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