Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland of an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to listen to another tech Stuff classic. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published February third, two thousand fourteen. It is titled tex
Speaker 1: Stuff Listens to Dolby. Yep, we're gonna learn about the
Speaker 1: Dolby sound system and how that works. So let's listen
Speaker 1: to this classic episode. If you've ever owned a stereo
Speaker 1: in the history of ever, you've probably seen the Dolby logo,
Speaker 1: which is that Yeah, certainly in the history of the
Speaker 1: past thirty years, which I think for most of our
Speaker 1: listeners that that qualifies. Uh. I know that we have
Speaker 1: some listeners who maybe have owned stereos that are older
Speaker 1: than thirty years. We appreciate you as well, of course.
Speaker 1: So Dolby, who was this guy? What did he do?
Speaker 1: While he was an electrical engineer famous for his work
Speaker 1: in developing audio technology which was used in everything from
Speaker 1: movies to uh to studio equipment to the stuff that
Speaker 1: you could buy like consumer electronics. And he has absolutely
Speaker 1: no relation to the musician Thomas Dolby known for us.
Speaker 1: She blinded me with science, right. Apparently Thomas Dolby took
Speaker 1: that stage name based on Dolby. Yes, yeah, his his
Speaker 1: actual name is Thomas Robertson, but his stage name is
Speaker 1: Thomas Dolby, presumably taking the name because of Dolby Laboratories
Speaker 1: and Dolby himself, Ray Dolby, Ray, by the way, had
Speaker 1: still has a son named Tom. So also a little
Speaker 1: confused and confusion there um. But apparently and and you
Speaker 1: uncovered this little tidbit that that Thomas or yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Thomas Dolby, the musician stage person, had an agreement laid
Speaker 1: out that he would not name any electronics equipment under
Speaker 1: the Dolby brand, right right, he could not he you know,
Speaker 1: there was some initial um tension between Dolby Labs and
Speaker 1: Thomas Dolby, but that eventually got kind of settled down
Speaker 1: in the agreement essentially was kind of a gentleman's agreement.
Speaker 1: It was that Thomas Dolby could perform and and record
Speaker 1: under the name Thomas Dolby as long as he didn't
Speaker 1: put out like the Dolby stereo because I could be
Speaker 1: confused with the actual Dolby Labs brand. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about Tom, not Thomas Dolby. I mean, that's a totally
Speaker 1: different podcast that we could do, because Thomas Dolby has
Speaker 1: been very active in digital distribution. But Ray Dolby, so
Speaker 1: he was born back in nineteen three in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: His father was a salesman. Yep. Ray Dolby as a
Speaker 1: kid got interested in electronics. He apparently, according to one
Speaker 1: report I read, at age nine, Line, rigged up an
Speaker 1: electronic signaling system that would allow you to alert someone,
Speaker 1: similar to using something with Morse code. I imagine this
Speaker 1: is something similar, like like a simple switch and uh,
Speaker 1: something that either made noise or lit up. There weren't
Speaker 1: details about exactly what it was. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: this was from an interview that he had done with
Speaker 1: a member of the m I E. The I Tripolie
Speaker 1: back in the eighties at some point. So I didn't
Speaker 1: have extreme details, but I found that very charming. He
Speaker 1: was also fascinated as a child by the mechanics of music.
Speaker 1: As a kid, he apparently played clarinet and remembered being
Speaker 1: just engrossed by the vibrations of the reads and in
Speaker 1: fact that fascination with music would go throughout his entire life.
Speaker 1: His sons would talk about how he was not just
Speaker 1: an engineer, nor did he ever wish to be seen
Speaker 1: that way. He was an adventurer at heart and a
Speaker 1: musician at heart, someone who truly appreciated the sound of
Speaker 1: talented artists making music. And that was part of what
Speaker 1: he was so interested in when he got into electronics
Speaker 1: was being able to have a device that could record
Speaker 1: and play back such stuff without any other artifacts getting
Speaker 1: in the way. So in high school he uh joined
Speaker 1: the projectionist clubs. So clearly a big man on campus. Uh,
Speaker 1: obviously these are the the kids who are really interested
Speaker 1: in cinema. They're interested in in all aspects of electronics technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, all of that kind of stuff. And through that,
Speaker 1: in nine he met one um Alex Panto excellent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the founder of a company called Ampex Corps yep.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so here's here's the deal. Here's the scenario.
Speaker 1: Alex Pontia comes to town and he's going to have
Speaker 1: a meeting and in order, part of this meeting involves
Speaker 1: showing a film and he needs to have someone to
Speaker 1: run the projector so he reaches out to the local
Speaker 1: school and says, hey, can you send me a kid
Speaker 1: who can run the projector? And Dolby volunteers. He says,
Speaker 1: this sounds like something I would really like to do.
Speaker 1: So he comes over and runs the projector, and he
Speaker 1: and Poniatof hit it off. I mean they you know,
Speaker 1: it's clear that Dolby is truly interested in technology, and
Speaker 1: Ampex was really getting into building recording devices, both for
Speaker 1: industry like geophysical recorders and also for you know, entertainment
Speaker 1: industry as well. Eventually, so he Dolby shows this incredible
Speaker 1: interest in the subject matter, and Poniatof is obviously impressed
Speaker 1: and tells Dolbie, hey, you know, kid, listen. I know
Speaker 1: you're in school and all, but I tell you what,
Speaker 1: on weekends and on vacations, if you like, you can
Speaker 1: come and work for me. And Dolby says sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: Delbie was only sixteen years old at the time and
Speaker 1: wound up working a little bit more than I think
Speaker 1: that they originally expected. Dolby said that he was far
Speaker 1: enough I had with his credit it's in high school,
Speaker 1: that he wasn't really worried about getting into colleges. He
Speaker 1: figured he had it in the bag. So he wound
Speaker 1: up at a certain point spending like three hours a
Speaker 1: day at school and five hours a day at AMPEX.
Speaker 1: It turns out that eventually Delby's not so it was
Speaker 1: so concerned about staying in college either, at least initially. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his he was obviously really eager to get hands on
Speaker 1: experience with this. It was, you know, he didn't want
Speaker 1: to just learn theory. He wanted to actually be working,
Speaker 1: and he found it really exciting. By nine fifty one,
Speaker 1: he was attending San Jose State College in California and
Speaker 1: had picked the major of electrical engineering. Uh, and he
Speaker 1: was still working with Ampex at that time. And within
Speaker 1: the first year of his schooling, actually just after he
Speaker 1: was just about to start a sophomore year, Ampex began
Speaker 1: to develop something that would revolutionize the entertainment industry and
Speaker 1: the home entertainment market. Eventually, the video recorders, So videotape
Speaker 1: recorders were not a thing yet. Right, this is a
Speaker 1: brand new technology, and he had the opportunity to work
Speaker 1: on an early implementation of that. Videotape had the potential
Speaker 1: to be a truly disruptive type of technology, which of course,
Speaker 1: as we all know, that's what happened. I mean, you
Speaker 1: saw it happen again and again. But he had the
Speaker 1: chance to get in on the ground floor, and he
Speaker 1: was so excited by that that he made the decision
Speaker 1: to drop out of college and work full time at AMPEX.
Speaker 1: But that also meant right, this was during during the
Speaker 1: Korean War was about to really ramp up, and he
Speaker 1: was He's spoken about being very aware at the time
Speaker 1: that this decision would make him eligible to be drafted
Speaker 1: and being a little bit concerned about that, which would
Speaker 1: turn out to be a fair concern. Yeah. He um,
Speaker 1: you know, by not being a college student, that made
Speaker 1: him eligible for the draft, and in fact, he was
Speaker 1: drafted and he went into the army on April first,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. He was drafted into the army. And
Speaker 1: during this was during the Korean War. Delby later said that, uh,
Speaker 1: that was worth it because he got to work on
Speaker 1: the heal recorder. Meanwhile, even you know, Dolby was removed
Speaker 1: from the picture. He had to go and serve in
Speaker 1: the army. Uh, AMPEX ended up shelving the video recorder project,
Speaker 1: not because Dolby was removed from it. I mean Dolby
Speaker 1: himself said, it's not because I wasn't there. That's not
Speaker 1: why they did it. They did it because the company
Speaker 1: itself was in financial trouble. There was a recession going
Speaker 1: on at the time, and the company was hit pretty
Speaker 1: hard by it, and so to to save money and
Speaker 1: and to cut back on things that were, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously big projects that could pay off, but it would
Speaker 1: be a long term gain, they decided to pull back
Speaker 1: on those. So this was one of the projects they shelved.
Speaker 1: So he goes off and he joins the army. While
Speaker 1: he's in the army, he teaches classes on electronics because
Speaker 1: why not. Yeah, he still hasn't completed college himself. But
Speaker 1: on January one, nine, he was discharged from the army
Speaker 1: and rejoined Ampex, which had started UH decided to go
Speaker 1: back and and launched the video records project again, so
Speaker 1: he was working on that. He also went back to
Speaker 1: college this time. He did not go to San Jose State.
Speaker 1: He went to a little college called Stanford UM and
Speaker 1: he completed his degree at Stanford. So by nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: the video recorder goes into production. So this is a
Speaker 1: big deal and Dolby, I think his name is even
Speaker 1: on one of the patents, at least one of the patents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Ampex's specific video record. Yes, and it's the
Speaker 1: first to go into production. So Dolby goes to then
Speaker 1: he applies and is accepted to go to Cambridge University
Speaker 1: to work towards a PhD in physics. Um. He would
Speaker 1: finally receive that in nineteen sixty one. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and of course you know, obviously PhD in physics, he's
Speaker 1: looking at acoustics, right, that was his main focus. No,
Speaker 1: that's not his main focus. His main focus actually was
Speaker 1: an X rays, long wavelength X rays. He was, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was convinced that this was what he
Speaker 1: really was going to do for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: He was going to work and experiments and build things
Speaker 1: that worked with X rays. Apparently at the time very
Speaker 1: popular guy in Cambridge, partially because he had access to
Speaker 1: professional recording equipment, and there were a lot of musical
Speaker 1: groups in the area that wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: record stuff, but they didn't have access to professional recording
Speaker 1: equipment and you would get these really poor recordings. So
Speaker 1: he started getting invited to all sorts of events and
Speaker 1: he would have people over at his place to play music.
Speaker 1: Not keep in mind this is you know, this is
Speaker 1: great stuff for Dolbie who loves music. You know, this
Speaker 1: is again him continuing this, uh, this keen interest in music.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure he found it to be a wonderful
Speaker 1: time of his life. Oh sure. He was also making
Speaker 1: a big impact on the community in general. He around
Speaker 1: the same time was consulting for the UK's atomic energy authorities,
Speaker 1: so getting some good stuff on his resume. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know this for someone who was interested in making
Speaker 1: the first video recorder, he's already branching out quite a
Speaker 1: bit by this time. Also in nineteen sixty two, he
Speaker 1: meets Dagmar ballmert Uh in Cambridge and she would become
Speaker 1: the love of his life. I mean, every report I
Speaker 1: ever read about the two of them talking very sweet,
Speaker 1: talked about how parties they were always right there, you know,
Speaker 1: backing each other up, and they they complemented one another
Speaker 1: in various ways. So she was actually from Germany. She
Speaker 1: was in Cambridge for a summer program when they met.
Speaker 1: And the rest is, they say, is history. We'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about them a little bit later on to um.
Speaker 1: But then in nineteen sixty three, really cool. Yeah, don'll
Speaker 1: be read about this opportunity in a newspaper for the
Speaker 1: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization a k a.
Speaker 1: UNESCO as most people would know about it. Um to
Speaker 1: to go to India and help consult to to build
Speaker 1: up a little bit more of a kind of infrastructure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: scientific laboratory in structures, specifically in the Punjab region which
Speaker 1: is known as a very culturally rich area. And he
Speaker 1: spent two years there. And while he was doing that,
Speaker 1: he continued to be really interested in creating equipment that
Speaker 1: would be allowed to allow you to make high fidelity
Speaker 1: audio recordings. Well, he had brought one of those professional
Speaker 1: level Ampex I think it was the Ampex six hundred
Speaker 1: tape recorders along with him, and UH would would invite
Speaker 1: musicians to complay at his house so that he could
Speaker 1: experiment with recordings and UH and he started to really
Speaker 1: be bothered by something that is inherent in magnetic tape
Speaker 1: recordings analog recordings, which is that you get this hiss sound,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're playing the tape at lower speeds. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about that as well, because in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, once he had concluded his two year stint
Speaker 1: with Unesco, he decided to go back to London. There
Speaker 1: was a dressmaker factory. I assume it was a factory
Speaker 1: for dresses, not for dressmakers. I think they actually built dressmakers.
Speaker 1: I think the robotics wasn't quite it's advanced at the time,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah, he rented essentially what was
Speaker 1: a corner in an old factory and created Dolby Laboratories.
Speaker 1: He was using twenty dollars in startup money, which was
Speaker 1: what he had saved plus borrowed from other folks, and
Speaker 1: it had a grand total of four employees when it
Speaker 1: first started. And their first product that they were working
Speaker 1: on was something called Signal to Noise stretchers. Now that's
Speaker 1: the technical name for what Dolby created. However that they
Speaker 1: are to this day called Dolby's. Yeah, in the industry
Speaker 1: they're called Dolby's And it didn't take very long for
Speaker 1: that to happen. So the whole point of signal to
Speaker 1: noise stretcher, it kind of comes in the name signal
Speaker 1: to noise. So if you think of something that's been
Speaker 1: recorded to magnetic tape, the signal is whatever it was
Speaker 1: you were trying to record, right, Noise is noise, it's
Speaker 1: stuff you don't want, it's artifacts, it's it's static. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it distracts from what you were trying to capture. So
Speaker 1: if your goal is to create a recreation of the
Speaker 1: moment that a sound was created, then you want to
Speaker 1: reduce that noise as much as possible. And so this
Speaker 1: was a method really of recording and playing back stuff
Speaker 1: so that you would reduce that noise so that it
Speaker 1: was inaudible, it was unnoticeable. And we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: he did that in the second half of this of
Speaker 1: this episode. But anyway, this was, you know, really meant
Speaker 1: to be kind of a side project. It was meant
Speaker 1: to be the thing that allowed him to make, you know,
Speaker 1: to fund the other things he was going to do,
Speaker 1: specifically X ray experimentation. But as it turns out, don't
Speaker 1: be hit on something that a lot of people found
Speaker 1: really fascinating and valuable and it took over his life.
Speaker 1: Well even even at the time, very high quality media
Speaker 1: like a like an LP, like a record. Um, we're
Speaker 1: recorded from a master tape, a master magnetic tape. So
Speaker 1: this impacted a huge segment of a few different industries.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, if your master tape has a hiss on it,
Speaker 1: then that hiss gets transmitted to every other copy that
Speaker 1: you make. Right, So if you're able to create a
Speaker 1: system where you remove that hiss so that you have
Speaker 1: the highest quality master tape, then whenever you are making
Speaker 1: a new copy, then you are there across your copying
Speaker 1: the hiss as well. Yeah. So if you if you
Speaker 1: can get rid of the hiss, that's awesome. And that's
Speaker 1: why it ended up being such a big deal. Um,
Speaker 1: And so early on it was really focusing mostly on
Speaker 1: on studio level quality, right we're talking professional recording studios,
Speaker 1: not something that you would find in your average the
Speaker 1: playback device that a consumer would have right right right there.
Speaker 1: Their first customer was Decca Records. Yeah, yeah, and ended
Speaker 1: up being a pretty import customer. So Decca Records they
Speaker 1: come up and they say they want to use the
Speaker 1: Dolby System on a series of recordings made by Vladimir
Speaker 1: Ashkenazi of Mozart Piano Concertos, which you know already it's
Speaker 1: speaking to Dolby's heart, and so Dolby says that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he realized that the noise reduction, which he
Speaker 1: thought was gonna be that little side project was going
Speaker 1: to become, uh, the main thing he worked on for
Speaker 1: the at least the foreseeable future. So nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: Dolby Mary's Dagmar So uh, they end up eventually having
Speaker 1: two children, Tom and David. Tom is a novelist and
Speaker 1: a journalist and editor, and David sits on the board
Speaker 1: of directors for Dolby Labs. So they're both very successful. Um.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, Dolby is convinced by a man
Speaker 1: named Henry Class, who at that time was president of
Speaker 1: the k l H Research and Development Corporation, to create
Speaker 1: a consumer version of his signal to noise stretcher technology.
Speaker 1: All right, because up until this point it had all
Speaker 1: been these these really high end, pretty expensive versions for
Speaker 1: for that professional studio that for doing like doing those
Speaker 1: master tapes, right, it was it was meant as a
Speaker 1: as an industry thing. So it was you know, originally
Speaker 1: Dolby was thinking that his stuff that he was working on,
Speaker 1: it would trickle down to consumers, but in a way
Speaker 1: that the consumer would never notice, or in a way
Speaker 1: that the consumer would never have any direct participation in. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: because because you know, the consumer would be able to
Speaker 1: enjoy the benefits by playing something and not hearing that
Speaker 1: sounds better than that other thing, right, but they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to create their own stuff. Right well, Claus
Speaker 1: ends up saying to to Dolby that, hey, you should
Speaker 1: really make a consumer version of this. Dolby says, well,
Speaker 1: there's not really a market for it. I can't see
Speaker 1: consumers jumping at this. So then what Clus does is
Speaker 1: something kind of sneaky to convince Dolby otherwise. He goes
Speaker 1: back and he tells some of his engineers, hey, eyes,
Speaker 1: let's kind of reverse engineer this. Take Dolby's Type A
Speaker 1: what would eventually be called the Type A Dolby's um
Speaker 1: and reverse engineer so that we can make a consumer
Speaker 1: level of our own. They do that. He then takes
Speaker 1: that to Dolby and says, look at what I did.
Speaker 1: I took your stuff and I made a cheaper version
Speaker 1: for consumers. Someone else is gonna do that and they're
Speaker 1: gonna beat you to the market, so you should do
Speaker 1: it first. And Dolby says, huh, how about that. You're right,
Speaker 1: I should do that, And so Dolby that goes to
Speaker 1: create a consumer version of his signal to noise stretchers
Speaker 1: called Type B. So Type A is for the professional studios,
Speaker 1: it's it's more sophisticated, it covers a greater range of sounds,
Speaker 1: and we'll go over that in the second half. To
Speaker 1: Type B is less expensive, more limited. But then for
Speaker 1: your average consumer it was perfectly right, unless unless you're
Speaker 1: an expert in the field and have an extremely good
Speaker 1: year and etcetera, etcetera. Was basically fine, and then they're
Speaker 1: on Dolby Labs would end up releasing updates. They had
Speaker 1: a Type C come out that was a more sophisticated version,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they had a spectral recording which was
Speaker 1: an even more sophisticated version of the same basic approach.
Speaker 1: Class would wind up continuing to to interact with Delby
Speaker 1: in this industry. Yeah, he ends up creating a company
Speaker 1: called Advent Corporation, which would produce the first consumer cassette
Speaker 1: deck that had the Dolby technology in it. Now that
Speaker 1: wasn't the first one that was a consumer product. The
Speaker 1: first consumer probuct was real to real deck. So this
Speaker 1: is before cassettes really had had started to become a thing.
Speaker 1: But real to real recorders. If you were, you know,
Speaker 1: an amateur musician or even a professional musician, but you
Speaker 1: want to record your own stuff, then this is the
Speaker 1: kind of technology you were using at the time. So
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one that's when Dolby Labs begins to experiment
Speaker 1: by going outside of just the audio recording industry. There's
Speaker 1: still very much it's still audio centric, but they're looking
Speaker 1: at an other industry that they can impact, and that
Speaker 1: that was movies. And this would be this would be
Speaker 1: a huge, huge player in in a Delby's personal success
Speaker 1: and and be just the film industry. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: looking at making movies sound match the quality of the
Speaker 1: images because uh and Lauren, I saw that you you
Speaker 1: pulled this into the notes as a perfect example. The
Speaker 1: problem was that movies at that time we're relying on
Speaker 1: the same basic sound systems that have been developed decades earlier.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there had been so many innovations in um
Speaker 1: in film quality itself over the past, of the recent past,
Speaker 1: of of the nineteen sixties and fifties, but really like
Speaker 1: gone with the wind was the industry standard of audio production.
Speaker 1: And that had happened thirty five or forty years previously, right,
Speaker 1: So Dolby ends up looking into creating a system that
Speaker 1: would make much more clear, crisp sound for movies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the first home that gets released that has
Speaker 1: the Dolby treatment to it is a little film called
Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange and Oh, my Drew gees if
Speaker 1: you don't vitty, well what I say, things changing s
Speaker 1: scory these days and people quick to forget. Just remember
Speaker 1: that without this, our movies wouldn't sound nearly as good.
Speaker 1: And here here's the reason why Dolby was so influential,
Speaker 1: really early early on, because not only did it work,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't expensive for theaters to incorporate into their systems.
Speaker 1: Like this is this is not surround sound we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. This is just the sound quality. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is just the clarity, removing that hiss, because the same
Speaker 1: hiss was apparent in uh in film as it was
Speaker 1: in yeah, in magnetic tapes. So this was a way
Speaker 1: of being able to create this, this crisp sound that
Speaker 1: theaters didn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: to fit. Yeah, they didn't have to do that. So
Speaker 1: it ended up becoming an industry standard because it worked
Speaker 1: and it was cheap. And when it works and it's
Speaker 1: cheap and becomes a standard, that means you have a
Speaker 1: constant supply of customers. So Dolby had struck gold with this.
Speaker 1: This was going to end up being one of the
Speaker 1: biggest businesses for Dolby moving forward, because you had an
Speaker 1: entire industry dependent upon that that particular methodology to make
Speaker 1: movies sound good. And it became one of those things
Speaker 1: where if you saw that the movie incorporated Dolby Sound,
Speaker 1: you knew you were in for a special treat. We'll
Speaker 1: be back to talk more about Dolby and just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break, all right, getting
Speaker 1: back to ray Dolby. So he was already seeing success
Speaker 1: in audio, uh well, audio hardware, both on the on
Speaker 1: the the professional side and on the consumer side. He
Speaker 1: was starting to see success in the motion picture industry. Um,
Speaker 1: and then it starts to work on some other stuff
Speaker 1: for movies. In nineteen uh a lot of things happened.
Speaker 1: First of all, he relocated the headquarters of Dolby Labs.
Speaker 1: It had been in London, as we had said earlier,
Speaker 1: they moved it over to San Francisco, California. So he
Speaker 1: goes over to to to uh. I was gonna say
Speaker 1: San fran but boy, they hate that. I would also
Speaker 1: say Frescope. If they hate that more, We'll just say
Speaker 1: the city. So he takes it to the city in California. Well,
Speaker 1: they still keep their London office, and they still keep
Speaker 1: the London office open, and they then introduce a multi
Speaker 1: channel technology for films that becomes known as surround sound.
Speaker 1: So multi channel is pretty self explanatory. There are multiple
Speaker 1: channels for the sound, and you have multiple speakers and
Speaker 1: you send different channels to different speakers to create the
Speaker 1: effect of sound surrounding the person in the in the theater.
Speaker 1: So that way, if you have action on the screen
Speaker 1: that's heavily taking place on the left side, you can
Speaker 1: amplify the stuff that's on the left rather than on
Speaker 1: the right and give the impression that you are right
Speaker 1: there in the middle of things. You can even isolate
Speaker 1: sounds so that particular sounds play either more on one
Speaker 1: side than the other or just on one side. And
Speaker 1: if you've been keeping up with surround sound, both in
Speaker 1: the film industry and in just home entertainment center centers,
Speaker 1: you know that the numbers keep going up, like you
Speaker 1: had five point one and then like six point one
Speaker 1: and seven point one. Then mostly that really refers to
Speaker 1: the channels, all right, it's the number of channels that
Speaker 1: are involved, and it's usually uh, I think it's five channels.
Speaker 1: And then the point one is technically the effects channel.
Speaker 1: It's point one is that technically the subwoffer because if
Speaker 1: you have a five point one's set up, it usually
Speaker 1: means that you have a front center speaker, front left, front, right, back, left,
Speaker 1: back right, and then you have the sub wolfer right
Speaker 1: for forgetting those those vibrated soul shaking effects. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the that's what makes the movies like uh like
Speaker 1: like Event Horizon really watchable, you know when you get that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: any any time that you have the elder gods coming
Speaker 1: for you, it's great if you can really feel it
Speaker 1: in your spleen. Yeah, if every time the Taranto source
Speaker 1: Rex takes a step in dress a park, the water
Speaker 1: on your table actually actually shakes, then you know you've
Speaker 1: got a really good sound system exactly. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: surround sound comes out. And there were some there were
Speaker 1: a few movies that that took advantage of it early.
Speaker 1: But there was one in particular close to my heart
Speaker 1: that really leveraged it, little independent film that came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen Star Wars. I was thinking Close Encounters of
Speaker 1: the third kind of Star Wars is good too. No,
Speaker 1: of course it was Star Wars. And both Star Wars
Speaker 1: and Close Encounters did take advantage of surround sound. Both
Speaker 1: did come out in ninety seven. And those movies had
Speaker 1: so much going for them. I mean, they were capturing
Speaker 1: people's imaginations, they had incredible scores. John Williams worked on both. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were they were movies that hit just at the
Speaker 1: right time. They were so big budget, there were such blockbusters.
Speaker 1: That was kind of the beginning of the entire blockbuster era.
Speaker 1: And and it's kind of a chicken and an egg
Speaker 1: issue of whether they caught on so well because they
Speaker 1: had this terrific sound quality, or that the sound quality,
Speaker 1: because it was attached to these incredibly popular movies, thus
Speaker 1: became more popular. It doesn't really matter. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would say that the sound was certainly an integral part
Speaker 1: of what made those movies an amazing experience. And in fact,
Speaker 1: George Lucas gives incredible amounts of credit to Dolby and
Speaker 1: Dolbie Labs for making Star Wars immersive. He said that,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what gave me the ability to create
Speaker 1: the experience I had imagined. Grant he said that way
Speaker 1: back in the in the late seventies, I suppose when
Speaker 1: he went back and decided to ruin the Star Wars
Speaker 1: movies with all the special editions, he was thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe he didn't really achieve what he had planned on achieving.
Speaker 1: That's kind of commentary will skip on the rest of that.
Speaker 1: But but but at any rate, this was you know,
Speaker 1: this was a huge industry game chain and I believe
Speaker 1: that tech stuff that that Jonathan and Chris, you guys
Speaker 1: did a whole episode on surround sound back in Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you want to learn more about how surround
Speaker 1: sound works, definitely go back and listen to that podcast.
Speaker 1: It's from August time. The name is what is surround sound?
Speaker 1: If you're looking for it, yep, yep, So go check
Speaker 1: that out because we're not going to cover surround sounds
Speaker 1: so much as we're gonna cover the signal to noise stretchers.
Speaker 1: At the end of this episode. Um, now, when we're
Speaker 1: getting into an interesting time in Dolby Labs is history.
Speaker 1: At this point. In nineteen seventy nine, William Jasper joins
Speaker 1: Dolby Labs, and Jasper was a little different from the
Speaker 1: average person who worked at Delby. Basically everyone who worked
Speaker 1: there at the time was a technician, yeah, including Dolby himself.
Speaker 1: And so that works great when you're building products, but
Speaker 1: any person who is especially handling a complex business will
Speaker 1: tell you if you don't have the expertise and things
Speaker 1: like managing a budget and people and cetera, yeah, that
Speaker 1: that your company can end up going straight, uh, even
Speaker 1: if you are working your hardest to make sure that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. And they were working their hardest, I mean there,
Speaker 1: but their response to having any kind of monetary problem
Speaker 1: was to innovate wonderful new technology, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a fine thing for a business to do, but also
Speaker 1: so expensive and also yeah, it's also not the best plan.
Speaker 1: So essentially what's saying what we're saying here is that
Speaker 1: anytime Dolby Labs got into some financial uh you know,
Speaker 1: like like they're starting to creep toward the red right,
Speaker 1: like they're gonna lose more money than they bring in
Speaker 1: then they would end up making some sort of new
Speaker 1: product and that would stave off that and make make
Speaker 1: sure that they were doing okay. But that was a
Speaker 1: lot of short term reactions, and bringing Jasper on as
Speaker 1: a manager was sort of a long term solution, saying, well,
Speaker 1: let's get someone in here who knows how to manage people.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what Jasper's background was in. So Jasper
Speaker 1: starts by making some pretty tough choices. For example, he
Speaker 1: ends up laying off about a third of Delby Labs
Speaker 1: employees in both the San Francisco and London offices. He
Speaker 1: said that the purpose for that was because of budgetary problems,
Speaker 1: like you had to do it in order for the
Speaker 1: company itself to remain strong. Um, so they continue to innovate. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: despite all of those, all of those layoffs. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: Jasper kind of got the system working again, and over
Speaker 1: the next decade they would they would introduce surround sound
Speaker 1: systems for television, compact discs, and laser discs. Nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: Dolby Labs would introduce the C type Dolby's that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier in this episode, which you know, the higher
Speaker 1: grade consumer version of the those original type stretchers right. Um.
Speaker 1: In two they would introduce Dolby Surround for home video right,
Speaker 1: which again for people who are big home entertainment theater enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: that was a huge deal. In nineteen eighty three, William
Speaker 1: Jasper would become the president of Dolby Labs. By the way,
Speaker 1: all through this time, Ray Dolby retained ownership of the company.
Speaker 1: He was the chairman of the board until the late
Speaker 1: the late odds, the late two thousand something, so he
Speaker 1: he was, um, you know, he was actually at this
Speaker 1: time the really the sole owner of the company, so
Speaker 1: it's still privately held company. At this time seven, Ray
Speaker 1: Delby becomes an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of
Speaker 1: the British Empire, which means, I guess said O B
Speaker 1: E at the end of his name. It does not
Speaker 1: mean he's a knight. Knighthood would require a higher ranking
Speaker 1: than O. B. E. But still he was not more
Speaker 1: highly regarded in the eyes of Her Majesty the Queen
Speaker 1: than I don't worry, Jonathan, I'm still waiting them. She
Speaker 1: never returns my calls. Yeah, anyway, I'll have her over
Speaker 1: for tea sometime. I swear it So nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Dolby receives an Oscar for his contributions to the motion
Speaker 1: picture sound Uh seven, he received an award from then
Speaker 1: President Bill Clinton. Stn't when we can still call him
Speaker 1: President Clinton. He's not the current president. No, but you
Speaker 1: get that title forever, you know, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: have that title. But one day he doesn't return my
Speaker 1: calls either for the for the record, at any rate,
Speaker 1: he was awarded. Dolby was awarded the National Medal of
Speaker 1: Technology and Innovation. And here is Dolby's speech, which I love.
Speaker 1: The first part of your life is education, the second
Speaker 1: part is hard work, and then you get discovered and
Speaker 1: people start handing you awards. That's exactly how short and sweet,
Speaker 1: very very modest man by, a very humble according to
Speaker 1: all reports that I read, where he loved working on
Speaker 1: the stuff he worked on, and he loved also we'll
Speaker 1: talk about some of his hobbies. He loved those very
Speaker 1: much as well, and of course his family. But was
Speaker 1: not the kind of person to, you know, revel in
Speaker 1: these things or boast in them. He was just very
Speaker 1: determined and enjoyed working on something. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he was just one of these people who had that
Speaker 1: drive to create all of this stuff in the experiment. Um.
Speaker 1: For for that, he was awarded in two thousand three
Speaker 1: by the Emmy's with a Lifetime Achievement Award yep, and
Speaker 1: two thousand four he was inducted into the Royal Academy
Speaker 1: of Engineers. In two thousand five, Dolby Labs then finally
Speaker 1: goes public and this move ends up getting uh, Ray
Speaker 1: Dolby around, like his shares are worth around two hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars at that point. Yeah, he became a pretty
Speaker 1: much instant billionaire. Yeah. Yeah, that that rocketed him to
Speaker 1: billionaire status. And in two thousand nine Dolby retires as
Speaker 1: the chairman of the company board. And uh yeah it was, um,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty pretty remarkable time for Dolby Labs and
Speaker 1: also sadly for Ray Dolby because it was around this
Speaker 1: time also that he discovered that he had contracted Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: So uh and by two thousand eleven he had officially
Speaker 1: retired because even even a stepping down, he was still
Speaker 1: working on things. He was still working on systems and
Speaker 1: um yeah, so that that kind of is the you know,
Speaker 1: and of course he passed away September twelve. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that's a look at his life. But more
Speaker 1: than that, I mean he obviously he won multiple awards.
Speaker 1: He won Oscar Awards, Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award. He
Speaker 1: has a theater named after him, the Theater where the
Speaker 1: Oscars are held every year, theater right as a as
Speaker 1: a tribute to him, his Adobe Labs secured the name
Speaker 1: of that for the next twenty years. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: formerly the Kodak Theater. I've actually visited that theater and um,
Speaker 1: because I I've stayed in Hollywood a couple of times
Speaker 1: and I stayed near that theater. It's a really it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting place. I mean, it's a cool design.
Speaker 1: I like it a lot. Um And then you know,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of his hobbies, some of his interests.
Speaker 1: He was. He sat as the director of the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Opera for a while. Um, he was also on
Speaker 1: the He was a governor of the the Symphony, the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Symphony as well. Obviously, that love of music
Speaker 1: doesn't go away. Sure, And when you're as big a
Speaker 1: person as doll be Er, as as you know, influential, influential,
Speaker 1: then I'm not sure if he was that tall. That's
Speaker 1: not what I was saying. Um. He also was an
Speaker 1: amateur pilot. Yep. He loved sailing and boating. He had
Speaker 1: a yacht. He also liked to drive for pleasure. I
Speaker 1: loved reading about some of his driving adventures. Like he
Speaker 1: he drove a vintage Jeep around for a while just
Speaker 1: to explore the San Francisco area and California in general.
Speaker 1: He also for a while enjoyed driving essentially what was
Speaker 1: the same thing as a tour bus, like a like
Speaker 1: a tour bus that rock musicians would use. He liked
Speaker 1: driving one of those around us. So curious. It's a
Speaker 1: very interesting character and um. Also he and his wife
Speaker 1: both uh were philanthropist. She still is obviously, She's still
Speaker 1: very much involve and philanthropy, all right. She she inherited
Speaker 1: his his his multitudinous fortunes, and he was worth around
Speaker 1: two point four billion dollars at the time of his death.
Speaker 1: And one of the projects they donated money to was
Speaker 1: they donated like thirty five million dollars to the University
Speaker 1: of California, San Francisco for stem cell research projects and
Speaker 1: instead of flowers when when they announced the passing of
Speaker 1: Ray Dolby, the family said, well, and lieu of Flowers,
Speaker 1: why not make a donation too, And they listed a
Speaker 1: couple of different medical facilities that specifically do Alzheimer's research
Speaker 1: and a little bit into leukemia as well, which is
Speaker 1: he actually passed away from right right, So uh, you
Speaker 1: know there they were very much active, and she still
Speaker 1: is in scientific endeavors not you know, it's all sorts
Speaker 1: of philanthropic endeavors, not just the arts, but also the sciences. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's and to really, I think, to be fair
Speaker 1: to Dolby, he would not distinguished between the two. He
Speaker 1: felt art and science really it were interwoven. Oh sure, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's he he was so influential in bringing
Speaker 1: in bringing the two together. You know, it's you can't
Speaker 1: have you can't have art without the applications that allow
Speaker 1: more people to experience it. And you know, this has
Speaker 1: been a fun time to look back on on his
Speaker 1: life and his contributions. We've got more about the Dolby
Speaker 1: Sound System coming up, but first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: Let's take the last part of this podcast to really
Speaker 1: talk about what put Ray Dolby on the map. The
Speaker 1: signal to noise stretchers, Like what exactly was that all
Speaker 1: about and how did they work? Yeah? Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: what actually causes tape hiss? Okay, So magnetic tape you know,
Speaker 1: has a little magnetic particles in it that that's what stores,
Speaker 1: you know, and encoded. So it's that grain structure that
Speaker 1: let's see store it, right, and that grain structure actually
Speaker 1: creates that hissing noise. So it's the it's the medium
Speaker 1: itself that produces the hiss, which means you cannot remove
Speaker 1: You cannot remove it because if you if you had
Speaker 1: a smooth tape, then you wouldn't be able to store
Speaker 1: anything on it. So that's the that's you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of the double edged sword. It allows you to
Speaker 1: store sound, but it also will create this his So
Speaker 1: how do you handle this? Well, you know, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's really noticeable. Uh, if you have something that's playing
Speaker 1: at a low volume, particularly at a higher pitch, or
Speaker 1: something that's that's recorded at a low volume, right right, right,
Speaker 1: So when you play it back any of those low
Speaker 1: volume parts, you're going to be you're going to notice
Speaker 1: the hiss more if it's a louder part in the recording.
Speaker 1: Like let's say that you've recorded a symphony and the
Speaker 1: symphony starts off softly but then builds to this well,
Speaker 1: during the crescendo, you may not notice any hiss at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just the the sound itself is at
Speaker 1: an intensity where there's no noticeable hiss, but maybe at
Speaker 1: the softer, slower parts you can kind of detect it.
Speaker 1: And that was what Delby found to be infuriating and
Speaker 1: needed to be wiped off the face of magnetic tape.
Speaker 1: So what he did was well. And also we should
Speaker 1: mention that this is more noticeable if you're playing the
Speaker 1: magnetic tape back at a slower speed, so real to
Speaker 1: real tape plays tape quickly compared to cassette tape. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you're doing real to real, that speed is
Speaker 1: about seven and a half inches per second, which equals
Speaker 1: out to be about nineteen centimeters per second. But a
Speaker 1: cassette tape plays magnetic tape much more slowly, at about
Speaker 1: one and seven eighth inches per second, or about four
Speaker 1: point eight centimeters per second. So cassette tapes move slowly
Speaker 1: compared to real to real. So at that slow speed
Speaker 1: with that narrow band, if you're playing a low volume,
Speaker 1: high pitch sound, you're gonna hear a lot of hiss
Speaker 1: comparatively speaking. And and as Dolby was noticing that cassettes
Speaker 1: were becoming more of a thing, you know what, more
Speaker 1: of a capable technology. Sure, yeah, yeah exactly, he was like, well,
Speaker 1: we've got to address this because otherwise no one will
Speaker 1: ever want to listen to anything. I certainly I won't,
Speaker 1: so yeah, So what he decided to do is he
Speaker 1: came up with a system for both recording and the
Speaker 1: playback of of stuff that you were recording onto magnetic tape.
Speaker 1: The recording element was a system where you would boost
Speaker 1: low volume signals going onto the tape, so you would
Speaker 1: artificially intensify them, you make them where they would essentially
Speaker 1: overpower the hiss uh. And then when you would play
Speaker 1: it back, a decoder would interpret this and be able
Speaker 1: to play it back at the low volume right, so
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't get the the high volume played back
Speaker 1: at additional volume. Right. So, so here's how they would
Speaker 1: target the low volume parts, so parts of their quieter
Speaker 1: that gets targeted by a system and then it gets
Speaker 1: artificially boosted and then recorded to the magnetic tape. When
Speaker 1: it's played back at the you know it and the
Speaker 1: decoder says, okay, play this at a lower volume the
Speaker 1: original volume that it was intended to be at. It
Speaker 1: reduces the hiss down by the same amount that the
Speaker 1: signal itself had been boosted in the first place. And
Speaker 1: so the his is still there, it's just inaudible because
Speaker 1: it's it's so quiet, so uh. And then since you're
Speaker 1: not treating the high volume parts, you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about blowing out the capacity of the magnet tape
Speaker 1: to record that sound and then distored everything right, and
Speaker 1: the hiss also is not noticeable at the or or
Speaker 1: it's not very noticeable at the high volume things because
Speaker 1: as we said before, the sound is already drowning it
Speaker 1: out exactly. So in other words, it doesn't really remove
Speaker 1: the hiss. It kind of masks it, which is brilliant.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have to remove it if you're
Speaker 1: not able to hear it, right, it just goes this
Speaker 1: is not the hiss you're looking for. It's kind of
Speaker 1: to me, it's like theater. So if you're in a
Speaker 1: theater like a stage theater, and you're watching a play.
Speaker 1: You know, the set you see looks gorgeous, but if
Speaker 1: you were to walk behind that set, it would just
Speaker 1: be plywood and you know, stands and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: because it only has to look good from the side
Speaker 1: that you can perceive it. So if you can't perceive
Speaker 1: the rest of it, don't don't bother building a set
Speaker 1: that's never gonna be seen. Peter Jackson, um. So anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's kind of the low down the
Speaker 1: basics of how this worked. Now Type A Dolby's did
Speaker 1: this with all frequencies of sounds, so whether it was
Speaker 1: a low pitch or a high pitch, it would handle
Speaker 1: that all of it, So that way you would have
Speaker 1: it would make all of the his the least amount
Speaker 1: of noticeable. It's possible, exactly. That's really awesome grammar. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I do it too. But the consumer version focused mainly
Speaker 1: on high pitches because that was where the problem was
Speaker 1: most noticeable, and so it didn't really bother with the
Speaker 1: low pitches so much. Because most consumer quality recording equipment
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about it as much. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to be so good that this is the
Speaker 1: master recording for something. Then uh, the Type C, like
Speaker 1: we said, handled a slightly wider range of frequencies than
Speaker 1: the Type B did, and once you get up to UH,
Speaker 1: I think it was spectral recording where they introduced the
Speaker 1: ability to handle pretty much all volumes below a certain
Speaker 1: threshold and all frequencies. So it the goal was actually
Speaker 1: to do as little production as possible, to remove hiss
Speaker 1: without affecting the final sound, because the other risk you
Speaker 1: run whenever you do this sort of thing is that
Speaker 1: you actually affect the sound of the thing itself, where
Speaker 1: you might remove the hiss, but you also somehow otherwise
Speaker 1: affect the sound and thus it's not a good recreation
Speaker 1: of what the original sound was. So, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a delicate line to walk. But as technology improved overall,
Speaker 1: um with with with computers and algorithms and everything that
Speaker 1: could go into this kind of process, and um, they
Speaker 1: were able to, I mean because because keeping costs down
Speaker 1: was always an important part of this Dolby system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course we're talking here all about analog. Dolby
Speaker 1: himself resisted the digital revolution quite a bit in the
Speaker 1: early eighties, but eventually Delby Labs did come around. Obviously,
Speaker 1: because if you've seen Dolby Digital everywhere now, but at
Speaker 1: the time, the the whole spectral recording idea that was
Speaker 1: mostly to try and extend the life of analog recording
Speaker 1: beyond what most of the industry thought it was going
Speaker 1: to do. You know, they thought it was over. Spectral
Speaker 1: recording comes out like, okay, well you've extended a lifespan
Speaker 1: by like five years. And eventually Dolby Digital would become
Speaker 1: a big player in that space. But it was one
Speaker 1: of those things that Dolby himself resisted for a while.
Speaker 1: He had a real soft spot in his heart for analog. Um.
Speaker 1: He felt felt that digital was a little a little cold,
Speaker 1: and you know, early implementations were not the best, right
Speaker 1: were they were perfect? We'll say yes. Although Dolby Labs
Speaker 1: has certainly gotten into the digital space, yes, as we said,
Speaker 1: and they lead it now so or at least they
Speaker 1: are a leader. Um. Also, I mean they're they're continuing
Speaker 1: to bring out new systems. For example, Dolby Atmos, which
Speaker 1: is a sixty four speaker theatrical sound system. Some two
Speaker 1: theaters installed it when it first came out. But what
Speaker 1: was really cool about this system, the sixty four speaker
Speaker 1: system is that it's so precise that you could even
Speaker 1: program a sound to come from only one of those
Speaker 1: sixty four speakers. So if you wanted to pinpoint a
Speaker 1: specific point of origin for a sound in a theater,
Speaker 1: you could do that, which would be interesting because it
Speaker 1: would mean that your experience of that film would depend
Speaker 1: heavily upon where you sat, because if you sat closer
Speaker 1: to the speaker, it would be louder to you. If
Speaker 1: you sit sat further away, it would be softer. But
Speaker 1: either way, you sure there's I mean, there's always going
Speaker 1: to be a sweet spot in the theater. And I
Speaker 1: think that the general rule is that when when they're
Speaker 1: designing these kind of theater systems, the people designing them
Speaker 1: are sitting kind of two thirds of the way back
Speaker 1: and dead center in the room. And so if you
Speaker 1: really want to get the best sound system, and Holly
Speaker 1: Holly Fry did an excellent brain Stuff episode about this,
Speaker 1: and if any of you guys are watching brain Stuff
Speaker 1: over on YouTube or test tube, but it's generally designed
Speaker 1: so that so that anyone will get a pretty good experience,
Speaker 1: right right, So let's let's close this out with a
Speaker 1: couple of quotes from the man himself from Ray Dolby. Um,
Speaker 1: here's one of mine, and it's it's the longer of
Speaker 1: the two. It's uh. I've often thought that I would
Speaker 1: have made a great nineteenth century engineer, because I love machinery.
Speaker 1: I would have liked to have been in position to
Speaker 1: make a better steam engine, or to invent the first
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine, to work on the first car. All
Speaker 1: my life, I've loved everything that goes. I mean, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, jeeps, boats,
Speaker 1: sail or power airplanes, helicopters. I love all of these things,
Speaker 1: and I just regret that I was born in a
Speaker 1: time when most of those mechanical problems had already been
Speaker 1: solved and what remained were electronic problems. That's kind of funny. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's beautiful though. That's that's so and that
Speaker 1: really uh. I, especially having done a bunch of episodes
Speaker 1: relatively recently about some of the build up to modern technology,
Speaker 1: right and and talking about what was going on and
Speaker 1: in the eight in the early early twentieth century, that
Speaker 1: was just fascinating to me. Another one that that I
Speaker 1: really love, and that wraps up this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech stuff hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future topics we can cover on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. The best way to do that is
Speaker 1: to hop on over to Twitter and use the handle
Speaker 1: tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.