Yeah I guess I am just arguing semantics.

That was a great exposition heavy episode. Even with the goofy audio thing they did (add multiple layers of identical room tone, and it removes the bad sound? lol), it was still excellent. The end scenes in this series are amazing. That one and the one with the serial rapist were classic.

The audio thing was fine. Ive no idea if its realistic, but the idea of sampling the audio to filter it out makes sense to me.

No, it's terribly unrealistic, and would be the Holy Grail to audio professionals (which I am). The basic premise behind what they did in the show is similar to being able to create an A Capella out of a mixed song. There are two crucial problems, though.

1. In order for the A Capella trick to work, you need the mixed track and the instrumental track. As for Person of Interest, think of it like the dirty phone call track is the mixed track, and the room tones he was getting are the instrumental. In order for the A Capella thing to work, the mixed track and instrumental track have to have identical processing done (meaning mastered at the same time, probably recorded at the same time, in the exact same way). You then throw either of them out of phase, and if it works, you will hear vocals only. The problem is that it rarely works, because you have to be in a great situation to have all the mastering be exact. It may work on higher end records, or whenever people are thinking of this exact purpose. You can't take the mixed song from iTunes, and then a low quality instrumental from youtube, and expect it to work to any great degree. If you had a record or CD that includes both the instrumental and fully mixed song, it would probably work.

2. The audio is mono. You can't play two mono elements against each other, throw one out of phase and the trick works. It would still be mono, and you can't cancel them out. I may test this, just to make sure I'm right about that, but I'm pretty sure I am. There's never been a reason for me to test that, in practice, so I'm just basing it on my theory of what would happen.

So, the idea behind what he did does live in reality somewhere (think about the video effect everyone does where you see a face a mile away, and they enhance it to be a perfectly in focus face. The only way that happens if is the face was in focus, which would never be the case in real life. The larger you make an out of focus object, the more pixelated and unintelligible it becomes, not less). Where the audio "trick" he did becomes laughable is that he took a call from 2 years ago, he then had them (on a different cell phone carrier, he seemed to know the cell carrier) be quiet so he could record the various room tones. He then was able to plop those room tones into the original cell phone recording, and presto, all the noise disappears and there is a completely clean phone call. This doesn't even begin to address the fact that the audio was completely distorted and inaudible. The room tone doesn't cause that, it was supposedly caused by interference.

Do you remember what I said about how the conditions need to be absolutely perfect to create an A Capella? He used 3 different room tones, recorded at 3 different times, and then overlaid mono audio on top of mono audio, and presto it was just like it was recorded on set.

I'm sure the Mixers were rolling their eyes at the scene. Scenes like those are often why Producers have such lofty expectations for what can be fixed.
Most of the room tone in the phone call could have been removed, fairly easily, but the distorted voices are screwed, and all you would be trying to do is make it intelligible via whatever you can do. The goal isn't to make it sound perfect, it's to be able to understand what they're saying.

That's a big explanation for why what he did was farcical. If any of my other colleagues, who happen to read this, would like to prove me wrong, I'd love to know about it. That's because I always want to know how to do what I perceive to be impossible. It would make my life a lot easier.

Yeah but finch created a computer program that can predict when someone is going to die or kill someone.

Yeah, obviously, the whole premise is pretty ridiculous, but it's easy to leave your head at the door for it. However, mine was just a technical nitpick, that really didn't mean much. I was just explaining why, when faced with the thought that it was actually believable.

The biggest question is why does Reese always whisper.

He hates the sound people?

here to subscribe. like that show

It makes him sound more menacing. I know it's cliche, but I really do think that is the reason.

He used to be a librarian imo.

Yeah, I think the stuff with the female cop is really good.

Thought tonight's episode was the best so far. Really like the guest star. Seems like they always get a great guest star.

The Geico guy?

that was awesome. good to see the show is shifting into a larger meta story beyond the SS#OTW.

No the bald guy. Didn't want to spoil.

this show has the potential to be beyond epic. me me me so excited!

He does a good job on Flashpoint as well.

Damn, knew i recognised him from something, would have not guessed that.

I thought Victor did another great performance as the leader of the hit squad. That guy needs his own show so badly.

My sentiments as well. Hopefully it lasts awhile. I don't want to see a resolution in two weeks as it has alot of potential. This larger arc is a good way to keep the police department grounded in a meta story while still having SS#OTW if they go in that direction.

I'll be pretty distraught if this show gets canceled after the first season...

POI is my new Human Target. Hopefully they do not meet the same fate.

I definitely don't see any "epic" potential for POI but it's fun and tends to be relatively mindless and the violence is well done.

POI is so much better than Human Target, and I loved Human Target, as well.

someone explain where I went wrong here

the russians killed a bulgarian, and the witness/elias talks to him
the russians go after him and he hides in the bulgarian projects
they go to the kids room, who is a student and bulgarian
elias says he teaches his enemies kids, who would be russian?

dkgo, this should be all in spoiler, just so you know, since it's only Friday.