EQ Part 3 of 3 (hopefully the last one for now)

So we know what physically EQ is...
We know of one way to use an EQ that may or may not be artistic
we understand the implications of objectivity and EQ decisions...

Now I would like to discuss the jelly of EQ...

Incidentally the expression "the jelly" is something I heard Quincy Jones say to describe something from the thriller album.  Apparently he was not too keen on the lengthy drum and bass intro for Billy Jean.  When he suggested to Michael Jackson that it get cut shorter, MJ responded with something like "you have to leave that in...  That's what gets the people dancing...  That's the Jelly of the song".

At any rate, what is the Jelly of EQ?  the artistic application of an EQ.

Like any good effect, the original intended use for an effect gets distorted over time, and new effects emerge.  Similar to how the EQ was used to EQ rooms, it then was taken a step further and used to alter individual tracks in a multi track recording...

With this awesome new found power comes some significantly awesome responsibility as well.
What I mean by this will be explained in a minute, but let's first examine some applications where we might want to EQ individual tracks on a multi track recording.

One major application is to avoid masking.  What is masking?  masking is when one instrument/track in you multi track has similar frequency, time, spacial queues, and timbral detail, they will both not be well defined as a result.  some good examples are listed below, but the bottom line is that when these things occur, it's usually problematic.  *One way to fix this is to EQ them differently.  Incidentally they actually sell systems that are intended to mask things.  Typically they are installed in a cube world and broadcast white or pink noise to purposely mask other people talking and other office noises...  Mostly they are installed to be a background noise generator, which is odd because while you become acutely aware of their effect, you usually aren't all that aware of the masking system itself.

Like the graphic suggests, it cancels unwanted noise, but it also can cancel wanted noise in the case of multi track recording.

Another artistic application is to increase/decrease certain specific frequencies.  For instance, a great application for this might be a voice.  A ton of voices sound just that little bit better with a boost in the 1k range. A similar view is that a ton of drums will sound just that little bit better with a cut in the 200 range.  if you have access to a multi track recorder, and a few tracks, I would suggest that you try this*.  Don't be afraid to overdo it just to hear the effect.  But that's where we run into some interesting side effects..

There are two major things that happen here that are interesting.

The first is that when you increase amplitude of specific frequencies, you aren't just altering that one thing...  You are altering things around it.  By that I don't mean you are affecting frequencies around 1k as well, but more that you are affecting how you perceive the 1k range of a snare drum for instance.  I would bet that tons of us make some sort of EQ decisions in a vacuum (making eq changes when the source material is being solo'd or the only active track playing)...  While there are plenty of folks who could do this without a problem, I would imagine that most of us are not those people.  More likely what we should be doing is evaluating this not just in a vacuum but then also within the framework of the song itself.  At the same time

The second is that when you decrease amplitude of specific frequencies, you aren't just altering that one thing...  You are altering things around it.  But instead of masking things, you are creating holes for stuff to live in.  So let's take that 200 Hz example with the drums.  If you did happen to take that 200 Hz out of the drums (let's assume by 12dB for now, which is extreme), you now have other stuff that could appear to be louder because they are no longer being masked by that particular frequency.  In this case, what else is in the 200 Hz Range?  TONS of stuff...  For instance, in a standard rock ensemble, guitars are in the 200 Hz range...  Vocals are in the 200 Hz range, all sorts of brass, woodwinds, and other "classical type" instruments (god I hate that designation, but you get the idea).  So in reality there is a TON of stuff that exists in the 200 Hz range, so getting rid of some tub of a drum sound to help create a hole where other stuff might be is a good thing...

A third thing can happen when you use EQ...  That is you can abuse it.
With this awesome power of changing frequency responses of tracks/instruments on the track of the muti track session we are working on comes the idea that if you turn stuff up too much you can end up with a frequency bulge...  Frequency bulges occur when you emphasize a set of frequencies across several instruments.  I suppose it's possible for there to be a frequency hole as well, but we as humans aren't normally perceptive of such things unless it is very obvious.  By way of example, almost everything to me sounds better with a 1k little boost on it (maybe a little 4k, as that is my favorite frequency).  But the point is that if you boost 1k even just a little bit on all the tracks, and then you add it up, and listen to it, you end up with a nasty bulge at 1k.  It's not normally a good thing.

For anybody who has used EQ who also has had control of the tracking of the basic sessions, or really any tracking sessions-
stop for a moment and consider what we are actually doing when we EQ tracks.

What are we actually doing?  we are effectively changing the frequency response of the track itself.  The idea is to play it back altered by this EQ effect.  Well this is an interesting thing because what we are doing artistically is altering formants...  What the deuce is a Formant?  A Formant is defined quite nicely as:

A characteristic RESONANCE region. A musical instrument may have several formant regions dictated by the shape and resonance properties of the instrument. The human voice also has formant regions determined by the size and shape of the nasal, oral and pharyngeal cavities (i.e. the vocal tract), which permit the production of differentVOWELs and voiced CONSONANTs.
Formant regions are not directly related to the PITCH of the FUNDAMENTAL frequency and may remain more or less constant as the fundamental changes. If the fundamental is well below or low in the formant range, the quality of the sound is rich, but if the fundamental is above the formant regions the sound is thin and in the case of vowels may make them impossible to produce accurately - the reason singers often seem to have poor diction on the high notes.

http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Formant.html


This might sound an awful like an EQ for an instrument.  if you really distill it, that's exactly what it is (sort of).  What it really is is frequency bulges that make the sounds sound like the sound.  That's why my voice sounds different than another voice.  That's why a trumpet sounds different than a french horn.  That's why an alto sax and a tenor sax sound different.  When we mess with EQ, we are creating, or taking away or altering in some way the formants of the sound.  You are fundamentally shifting (in a small way) what makes things sound like they sound like.  This is an awesome power indeed.

So why do we care about this?

Indeed a good question again.  This time it is meant for somebody in the tracking process.  I have seen this happen time and time again with my students at U Mass Lowell in the sound recording technology program.  The attitude of "fix it in the mix".  I would argue, if you did it right to begin with, you wouldn't have to fix it at all in the mix.  There is no point to recording a track with a specific microphone with it's specific frequency responses just to try to either undo that frequency response or fundamentally alter the sound with EQ.  What I would say (really beg my students, but others I would just say this to) is a good rule of thumb...

If you feel like you have to reach for an EQ while you are tracking to "fix it", you aren't recording it right...  Use a different microphone, move the microphone, do something, but reaching for an EQ and all it's awesomeness should be avoided until truly needed, then rather than fixing things, you can apply artistically to help the artist achieve their goals.

Let me know your thoughts on Artistic EQ use, and *if you would like to hear some examples of sounds like I mentioned above...

Until Next time...
Hopefully this is it for EQ for now.

EQ Part 2 (of 3 maybe?) - EQ a room and the importance of objectivity

So last time I posted here, I laid out the foundations of EQ...  well some of them anyway.
But like all good things that we know of in the audio world, the effect was created for one reason, and then it was utilized in a possibly unexpected way to create a useful tool to anybody mixing audio.

One way it became useful was to EQ physical spaces...
Walk with me down storybook boulevard, and let's examine a possible reason to EQ a physical space.
You are a concert touring musician (or really anybody who is setting up a loud speaker system), and your system was set up in an arena in Las Vegas...  Your next stop is in a much smaller arena in Reno.  Your system is set up the same as it was in Las Vegas, but it just simply sounds different than it did in Las Vegas...  What's the difference between these two cases.  The biggest difference is the room itself.  IF you as the sound guy did your job correctly, and made the frequency response in the Las Vegas room the way it is supposed to be*, then that same setting applied to the smaller arena in Reno will likely yield you different results.

Why is that?

It could be due to many many factors including but not limited to height of the deck above the floor, slope of the deck (assuming the floor is level), building material differentials such as painted concrete vs wood.  If there is ice under the floor of the arena, what materials are used to cover the ice?  The physical VOLUME of the building will affect the sonic characteristics of the sound system being set up in the building (axial, tangental, and oblique modes all get affected)...   The end result is that there are TONS of reasons that certain frequencies will be reinforced, while other frequencies experience destructive interference.

I just mentioned a big word there...  Frequency.  If we know frequencies are being affected, just like the olde skoole example of the phones (see EQ part 1), we can EQ it back to perfection..

In many cases this can be done automatically with the right equipment, but let's assume we're new at this and need to figure it out the old fashioned way.  You could go train your ears for a long time (or purchase David Moulton's Golden Ears system, which is highly recommended by me, and can be read about here:  http://www.moultonlabs.com/full/product01/ ) - then try to do it by ear alone, or you can use an RTA (real time analyzer) in conjunction with a calibrated test measurement microphone, and a pink noise generator.

Pink noise, which is white noise with a particular EQ filter on it already, is played through your system. This pink noise has a known frequency response.  When this pink noise is heard via a calibrated test measurement microphone, and then connected to an RTA, you can see exactly what frequencies are reinforced, and what frequencies are destructively interfered with.  You can then connect up a Graphic EQ to the system, and simply turn up and down the appropriate frequencies to get your room to sound like it is supposed to*.

Because you are all sharp as tacks, and have noticed a couple of nifty little "*" marks...  I put those in because what the room is "supposed to sound like" is a very subjective thing...

Many of you who might read this would also suggest like me that of course the room is supposed to have a flat frequency response, which is to say that no frequency ranges are louder or softer than others within a realistically wide band... for instance, you would be flat from 32 Hz to 15kHz...

I realize that 20Hz to 20kHz is the model hearing range, but in reality, try to find 15k in an MP3 or on the radio, or YouTube, or any other popular streaming audio and I would be shocked if you had speakers that could accurately reproduce it (Beats won't do it), or if it even existed to begin with.  I will launch into the tirade of dumbing down of our society's ears in a later post.

BUT....
Consider the source material...
I would bet that in most dance or hip hop or rap or anything other than classical styled music, flat is NOT the way to go...  That realistically if you aren't knocking peoples stomachs into their throats with too much bass, you aren't doing it right (at least at the arena scale).  If you are in a church you will likely want flat, but consider Jay Z...  Do you really think Jay Z wants flat at one of his shows?   How about Usher?  How about Beyonce?  How about Matt Azevedo?  Wait, who's that guy?  Check him out here...
http://music.retributionbody.com/  

the point is simply that whenever we talk audio in the real world, things are VERY SUBJECTIVE...  so when I say things are the way they are supposed to be, it is intended not as a specific how it is supposed to be universally, but more how it fits best for the moment for the application.

All EQ is subjective in nature, because each of our ears hears things differently.
There is a good book out there that delves into the physical versus artistic applications of how we hear sound.  It is written by a gentleman named Dr. William Moylan.  It is called The art of recording: understanding and crafting the mix.  If you are interested you can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Crafting-Mix-The-Recording/dp/0240807553?tag=donations09-20
In this book it delves into the idea that it is not enough to say something sounds tinny or something sounds bright, but we need to move beyond this type of vocabulary into something realistic...  So we could say that there is too much of 9kHz-11kHz, as opposed to "this is tinny", or "this needs to be fattened up".  The statement this is tinny is subjective.  What I think of as tinny and what you think of as tinny might be completely different.  You think tinny as too much higher frequency information... I think of it as not enough low frequency information...  so you can see how these subjective terms can be destructive to the creative process.  If you say "turn down 14kHz by 3dB", I can take that and actually do something about it.

The is a LOT to be said about the importance of moving away from subjective audio terms, and into objective audio terms, or physical audio terms.

EQ is one of the places where this will play the most...  An RTA doesn't tell us that the room is tinny, no it says what the real frequency response actually is so we can actually do something about it.  This is something everybody who likes audio should consider as you journey through the audio world.

I have to apologize, because I thought I could get this into 2 parts, but then this part would have been exceptionally long (not that it isn't anyway).  So join me again for Part 3 of EQ, where I deep dive into the Studio parts of what we can do with EQ's...  Not only what we can do with EQ's but also what we are ACTUALLY DOING when we do stuff with EQ's...

Let me know your horror stories of Frequency stuff in the concert environment, and how you overcame them with EQ....

Thanks for reading

How about some EQ Part 1 of 2?

Today I am going to shift some things up...

Rather than keep on the video path, I wanted to get something out there that comes from my studio background.

I want to talk about EQ.

So the biggest question I would bet is "What is EQ?"

EQ is an abbreviation of equalizer, or equalization.
It is a frequency based effect where you can amplify, or attenuate specific frequencies based on a series of controls.  Some might call it frequency specific amplification.

Where did it come from?

EQ, like much of what we now deal with in the audio world, came from the telephone world.  Way back in the olde skoole days, phone audio was driven across many many miles of copper wires.  Copper has some nifty intrinsic values to it inclusive of the fact that it has some signal loss, so in order to counter the signal loss, an amplifier would have to be added periodically into a signal chain in order to drive the signal further at the same level.  However, this loss was not equal across all frequencies, so the amplifier had to also have different gain levels based on frequency information.  So what did they do?  They turned up one set of frequencies more than the next, and more than the next, giving what could be called frequency specific amplification.  The net result is that the signal was equalized across the frequency ranges by this frequency specific amplifier.  Thus was born the Equalizer (EQ).

There are a few key terms to note in your quest to understand EQ.
Those terms are
Frequency, Bandwidth, Q, and Gain...

What do those terms mean?
Frequency is defined as the rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time, or in a given sample...   Thanks google...  What does frequency mean as it pertains to EQ?  In this case, the easiest translation of frequency is pitch...  But in reality frequency is the cycles per second (measured in Hertz, abbreviated as Hz) of the signal you are trying to affect.

Gain - This is defined as "a measure of the ability of a circuit to increase the power or amplitude of signal from the input to the output by adding energy converted from some power supply to the signal."  That's from Wikipedia...  But as it pertains to what it means to you, is how much louder or how much quieter you will/can make it...  This is usually measured in Decibels... or abbreviated as dB.  If you would like an in depth discussion on dB's, I will probably do that later.

Bandwidth and Q are the sticky wicket.
Several people will tell you they are the same as each other, but they are NOT.  They are inverses of each other.  So a high bandwidth means a low Q, and a Low Bandwidth means a High Q.  So what does it actually mean?  In an EQ this refers to the range of frequencies affected by your gain.

Tying them all together...
you would select a center frequency, if it's available, you would select the bandwidth, and then you would turn it up or down with the gain knob/slider...

What kind of EQ's are out there?

There are all sorts of different styles of EQ's, some used more than others, but the three biggest that I would suggest are used would be a Graphic EQ, a Parametric EQ, and a Semi Parametric EQ.
A graphic eq is one that typically has fixed frequencies, typically fixed bandwidth/Q, and variable Gain...  Often times you will find them in 31 bands, but they could be in all different sizes...  The picture here shows a dual channel 31 band Graphic EQ.

You simply select which frequency you want to affect, and turn it up (because in music production we never turn things down right?).  Alright you also will want to turn some of it down.


How does this differ from the parametric families...
Well the parametric families typically have fewer bands to affect, but you then add the ability to control what frequency you would like to affect.  In addition to that they also have the ability to alter bandwidth...  a typical parametric equalizer would have 4 bands, and







You can see here the top knob is for gain, the middle knob is for bandwidth, and the bottom knob is for frequency.  This is a Manley Massive Passive EQ...
You may also notice that there are a few switches on top.  These aren't completely common, but they aren't uncommon either...
The first one says Boost/Out/Cut...  This is unique to this EQ relatively speaking, where you have to decide whether the gain knob is boosting or cutting, but the OUT part is not.  This is what I refer to as the sanity check.   What this does is allows us to hear the changes we are making...  So we can make a change, then switch that to out, and remove the change to make sure we are affecting what we think we are affecting.
The second one says shelf/bell...  This is an interesting thing.
A bell is what would result in a graph of the frequency response of a parametric EQ... It would look like a bell curve on a graph of frequency response...  The bell setting will affect the center frequency the most, and then less and less towards the edge of your frequency range based on your bandwidth selection...  So if you selected 1000Hz as your frequency range, and a 200 Hz Range, you would affect 1000Hz the most, and 1100Hz and 900Hz the least (as an example of easy math).
The Shelf is that whatever frequency you selected, and all frequencies above that (or below that) will be affected the same...  So a shelf is applied to 100 Hz, and you turn it up by 10dB...  All frequencies 100 Hz and Below will be turned up by 10dB...   If you look you can see the wishbone looking things next to the middle knobs...  Those are the shelves...  You can see the first two on the left affect the low frequencies, and the two on the right affect high frequencies...


So what's the difference between a Parametric, and a semi-Parametric EQ?
A parametric EQ is described above, a semi-Parametric typically will remove one or more controls.  So a common semi-parametric will allow for frequency selection, but you cannot control bandwidth.  Or you may have 2 fully parametric bands, and 2 semi parametric bands on the low and highs, and the resultant EQ BOX would be called a semi parametric EQ.  See the picture below.




You can see on this example that this is a 2 channel semi-parametric EQ.  The mid frequencies on each channel have the Q adjustment, but the low and high frequencies on each channel do not...


So this is all well and good, but what do I do with this stuff?

Well that's the discussion for part 2.

Let me know about the types of EQ and brands are your favorite...  Maybe you love the mackie EQ's, maybe you have an OLDE SKOOLE stand by favorite...  My first EQ that I purchased was a dual channel Alesis MEQ230 - total piece of junk but it was mine, and I loved it.

Send me your comments on your EQ experience too!

Chroma Subsampling

Last week I started off with the 4K image of my backside...

I am going to go a bit further into the rabbit hole...

One of my biggest objections to the whole 4K thing comes from this topic of chroma sub sampling...

The whole idea of it is that we as humans stink at seeing colors, but can determine brightness quite well.  That is to say in more technical speak, we can determine luminance information much better than we can determine chrominance information.  Because of this fact, we have figured out that if we create an image with a certain resolution for the luminance side of the world, we can decrease resolution in the chrominance side of the world, and still have a relatively good experience.

I know several of you right now are saying that color is just as importance as brightness, but I would tell you that for the most part you may be inaccurate.  There are several standards out there right now that use chroma sub sampling and have taken off like wildfire.  One standard that has used chroma subsampling is DVD Video, but that's small potatoes to the largest... which is Blu Ray.

That's right the Blu Ray video spec calls for chroma subsampling.
You have not watched a movie on DVD or Blu Ray that is full bandwidth ever.
So the amazing visuals you thought you were seeing are NOT all that great.  They could be made better.

Blu Ray (and DVD incidentally) uses what is called 4:2:0 chroma sub sampling...
What is this 4:2:0?

The first number represents the horizontal Sampling reference
The second number represents the number of chrominance samples in the first row of J pixels
The Third number  is the number of chrominance samples in the second row.

For your convenience, A nifty Chart:

	4:1:1						4:2:0						4:2:2						4:4:4						4:4:0
Y'CrCb
	=						=						=						=						=
Y'
	+						+						+						+						+
	1	2	3	4	J = 4		1	2	3	4	J = 4		1	2	3	4	J = 4		1	2	3	4	J = 4		1	2	3	4	J = 4
(Cr, Cb)	1				a = 1		1		2		a = 2		1		2		a = 2		1	2	3	4	a = 4		1	2	3	4	a = 4
	1				b = 1						b = 0		1		2		b = 2		1	2	3	4	b = 4						b = 0
	¼ horizontal resolution, full vertical resolution						½ horizontal resolution, ½ vertical resolution						½ horizontal resolution, full vertical resolution						full horizontal resolution, full vertical resolution						full horizontal resolution, ½ vertical resolution

So as you noticed, the full resolution is noticed as 4:4:4...  You will also notice that our amazingly awesome 1080p video from blu rays, is actually 1/2 resolution vertical, and 1/2 resolution horizontal.
Via the Magic of Math, you get 1/4 the resolution as the 4:4:4 chroma subsampling.

You are literally using a full resolution black and white image in combination with a 1/4 resolution color differential image to get the resultant image...

So you have never seen a full resolution image from a blu ray (or a DVD player for that matter).

Now how does this relate to may backside, and 4k?  well hopefully you still don't want to see a 4K resolution image of my backside, but as it pertains to 4K, it comes down to bandwidth...

The Math of figuring out bandwidth required for signal rates isn't quite as easy as it might seem as there are plenty of factors out there that would seem like nonsense, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, it makes perfect sense.   If you would like to see the math, let me know and I will do it out for you.

The end results are:

4:4:4 1080p 60 Frames per Second data rate, with 8 bit color depth, and our bandwidth is 4.46 Gbit/s
4k Video (which is essentially 4x 1080p) at all the same stipulated factors requires bandwidth of

17.84 Gbit/s!!!!!!

Our current HDMI 1.4 spec limits us to a max data rate of 10.2 Gbit/s...

Hopefully most if not all of you could agree that 17.84 is greater than 10.2...

So how do them TV folks tell us that 4k is actually happening...  They do it by chroma subsampling...  If they only include 1/4 of the color information, you can get a passable 4K signal...

The result is that the 4K video at 60 Frames per Second with 8 bit color depth and 4:2:0 chroma subsampling weighs in at about 9 Gbit/s...  Less than the 10.2 limit.

So again, it all comes back down to this...
4K in full resolution simply does not exist for the masses yet...

Let me know what you think about the proliferation of less than full resolution color sampling...



Oh, yeah, and apparently our eyes are terrible at determining color resolution.

original                             Luminance                      Chrominance

4K my Backside

As the title of the post suggests...   4k resolution of my backside... There's a lovely image...

If you aren't sure about what 4k is - 4k is the name given to the resolution (really set of resolutions, but who's counting) that is double 1080p resolution.  So 1080p resolution is 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels...  With a little Math Skills, 4K resolution doubles that, so it is 3840 pixels by 2160 pixels...

That's impressive...  To think that we went from commercially viable 480i standard definition to this 4K resolution in 15 years or so...  What happened in the previous 15 years of broadcast...  Well not too much of note about resolution, that's for sure...

But really I don't get it.

I just got back from a large conference called Infocomm where all the buzz was about 4k resolution, and how everything had to be 4k resolution.
Truth be told, NOTHING was full 4k resolution...
The simple fact is that there is no real transport available yet to allow you to connect one thing to another and view things in 4K resolution.  So it begs the question, what's the deal?

If we look at Apple's version of what they call "Retina Display", we can notice some stuff...  For those of you not familiar with what a "retina display" is, it is defined as

"a brand name used by Apple for screens that have a pixel density high enough that the human eye is unable to discern individual pixels at a typical viewing distance." - Wikipedia

So I start to wonder.  My assumption is that since we as a society are buying this "retina display" technology based on how many ipads etc are being sold, that we must accept at some level the research behind the "retina display".  But what are the resolutions and distances associated with these displays...

Here's a convenient chart courtesy of Wikipedia...

Model[7][8][9][10]	PPI (pixels perinch)	PPCM (pixels percm)	PPD (pixels per degree)	Resolution	Total Pixels	Typical viewing distance (in/cm)
iPhone 4/4S and iPod Touch (4th generation)	326	128	57	960×640	614,400	10 inches (25 cm)
iPhone 5/5C/5S and iPod Touch (5th generation)				1136×640	727,040
iPad (3rd/4th generation/iPad Air)	264	105	69	2048×1536	3,145,728	15 inches (38 cm)
iPad Mini (2nd generation)	326	128	85	2048×1536	3,145,728	15 inches (38 cm)
MacBook Pro (3rd generation) 15"	220	87	77	2880×1800	5,184,000	20 inches (51 cm)
MacBook Pro (3rd generation) 13"	227	89	79	2560×1600	4,096,000	20 inches (51 cm)

well that's great...  So what gives...  most of these resolutions are greater than 1080p...  But if you will notice most of these distances are pretty small.   I sit here on my mac book pro and I realize I am about 20" away.  I cannot discern pixels...

But what the heck does it matter once you get further away?

If I cannot discern it at 20" how am I even going to begin to try to discern it at 60" or 10' for that matter...

I bring this up to point out how pointless this whole resolution thing is...  at a 4k resolution how big does the display have to be, and how far away do you have to sit in order to start to discern pixels...

Well quick math would show us again that we have to be greater than 220 or so pixels per square inch at approximately 2.5x the height of the display will be the distance.

take a 50" display...  This is 24.5" tall, so at about 61.25" we need there to be more than 220 pixels per square inch to exceed the retina display standard...  What I can tell you is that if you have a 50" display, and you are viewing it at 5 feet away, you have a very small apartment, or you are sitting too close to your display...

There are about 1070 square inches in the 50" display...  There are 8,294,400 pixels in a 4K display... the pixel density FAR exceeds apples retina display...

The math almost doesn't matter because reality sets in..  You would put your nifty 4k display on teh wall, and sit 10 feet away, so there's no WAY you could discern pixels at that distance...  if you want me to do the math out to see that end of the spectrum, let me know, and I will show it...  But the end result is that this 4k thing is being hyped for the sake of being hyped right now...

So based on Apple's Math, we have gone far past the limit of our eye's ability to notice pixels...

Moreover, what sources are out there?
Really the only truly viable sources could be a streaming service, such as Netflix with ethernet connected directly to the display(which is a compressed format), a Red ray player (who actually has one of those yet), and MAYBE a Macbook pro (that's not actually 4k yet), or other such advanced computer where the resolution would exceed 1080p by a good amount but not be at 4k yet...  In short there really isn't any sources yet either...

So let me get this straight.
We Hype 4k for our living room, to hang it on the wall 10 feet away where the pixel pitch far exceeds our ability to see pixels, to have no sources, that even if we did have sources, we couldn't actually see them because we have no way of plugging these things in yet...

So I just simply don't get it...

What I will say is that the 4K revolution is in the wrong place...
There is a place for proper 4K, and when the HDMI 2.0 spec comes out and there is a viable transport (current HDMI cables cannot handle 4K bandwidth, but HDMI 2.0 will be able to (in theory)).  There will be a great home for 4k technology...

For instance in the field of medicine, such as surgical field displays...  Having those in 4K could save a life...  Or in oncology, having a 4K resolution Xray or other diagnostic scan might pick out something a 1080p might not, again, potentially saving people's lives

LARGE FORMAT DISPLAYS...  Those will be able to benefit from 4K resolution... For instance take all those numbers I just blabbed at you, and make it a 100" display.   THEN it makes sense to have 4K resolution...

The net result is that I can see 4K coming
But for now...  I'm pretty sure it's just a bunch of hoo-ha that's supposed to make you buy a new TV
To quote Public enemy for a moment...

Don't Believe the Hype...

Let me know what you think about 4k, and the viability of the 4K resolution today...