Ravi’s Gadgets

A movie theatre is THE place to watch movies. Nothing can compare that effect of sounds, the seating comfort, the uniform AC, and the very large screen, and the darkness, and the group of people who would be sitting around you to applaud at jokes and cry when there is a tragedy.

Well, If you dont like to watch movies in a theater for some reason, or if you would rather watch them at home, you could do with a home theater. The home theater is not just about a wide screen TV or a huge home theater music system, but you could have more pleasure when you add more things to your home theater, such as a better couch or a chair, Plasma TV stands, pop corn machines, sound transducers, and to make everything look great, you could add a perfect home theater sconces system on the top of everything.

Thus, with a dedicated room in your home with all these equipments, you will have the fully functional home theater set up at your home.

Cars came first, Cassette players came next, and then came the car audio players. There have been histories of people carrying their portable Gramophones in their cars in the 1920s, and people carrying their tape spool players in cars in the 40s and 50s. But the real car players came around in the late 1970s when cassettes came along.

The compact audio cassette is a simple device, that has a magnetic coated tape, and the polarity of that can be adjusted with a magnetic head, that can be read. Audio Cassettes can record upto 180 minutes of audio, and the most conventional cassettes that were in the market were the 60 mins, 90 mins and the 120 mins. Pre Recorded cassettes that contained copyright music usually came in C45, or in 45 minutes cassettes.

The tape of the cassette is divided into 2 halves, 2 sides can be recorded, and a cassette that runs for 45 mins on one side can run for another 45 mins on the other, and so produce 90 minutes of music. Also, music could be reocrded in 2 channels, producing stereo music. No one has ever tired to record a 6 or 7 channel music like they do these days in DVDs. The best that can be done with an audio cassette reproduction is 3 channels, although only 2 channels are recorded on the tape, being the left, right and the center or the surround. The left and the right are recorded on the tape, and the surround channel is producted by extracting the difference of both the channels, in other words, connecting the centre or the surround speakers in between the main lines of the left and right, and never connecting it to the ground.

Electronics students should be able to understand what Im saying, and for others, its advisable not to try it on your conventional stereo, cos you might end up short circuiting your amplifier and that might produce no sound at all there after.

Placing a smaller version fo the cassette player in your car, and connect it to compatible speakers, gives you a good car stereo.

Why does your car stereo sound better thhan your home stereo? Well, the car has a small cabin you see, and you might have noticed that it is heavily padded every where, and that gives you the effect of a padded cell, and no single sound wave or any slight viberation by the speaker is wasted, and you get the complete effect directed to your ears, and the low frequency beats to your body. Thats why the car stereo sound a lot better than what you have got at home.

Contd in Part 2.