Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Um. Every single recording on Ambisonia was available as a DTS-CD RIFF/WAV file of a 4.0 decode (that is, Center and LFE were silent). All one needed to do was burn them to a CD and play in a DVD player connected to a 5.1 home theater set up. See Richard Elen's article Getting Ambisonics Around for the technical details of the process. http://www.ambisonic.net/pdf/ambisonics_around.pdf I know there were several hundred downloads of my recordings in that format -- Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, recorded with my Soundfield MkIV for NPR's Performance Today. -- Aaron Heller hel...@ai.sri.com Menlo Park, CA US On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Neil Waterman neil.water...@asti-usa.com wrote: I agree totally with Robert here. Most of my work mates have 5.1 set-ups at home, but would never be bothered to have anything that required more thought, so bring on the 5.1 mixes of ambisonic source material and at least let the masses get a listen. Cheers, Neil On 4/1/2012 6:44 PM, Robert Greene wrote: I don't think anyone thinks that! What people do think is that Ambisonics needs some sort of commercial accesibility-- which it could get if discs were put out that provided not abstract Ambisonics as it were but Ambisonics as decoded to the 5.1 set up. The message was that no one (statistically speaking) in the real world wants anything that requires thought and effort. Given that Ambisonics can be decoded to any speaker setup (even if the result is not idea), why are there no 5.1 SACDs that show how Ambisonics works on a 5.1 setup? One cannot expect people to be interested in something they cannot hear in demo form Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, Augustine Leudar wrote: again to anyone who says things like ambisonics cant compete with 5.1 please bear in mind this is like saying amplitude panning can't compete with 5.1 - it doesnt make any sense at all. You mix your tracks horizontally ,without elevation, using ambisonics plugins and burn your ac3/dts file like any other surround mix. Ambisonics is an approach to creating a soundfield it does not require any special hardware it can be done with software. The new 22.4 (or something) sound systems that cinemas are launching soon will allow height information as well. You could mix a lot of films using ambisonics when this happens. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Robert Greene wrote: 2 Forces people to use one point miking Actually I don't understand why you list one point miking in the Goods. :-) However, from quite early on, it was possible to use mono and stereo microphones and to encode them into UHJ with the Audio Design Transcoder and into B-Format with the Pan/Rotate unit. Another thing is, why people didn't find the AD gear. It wasn't more expensive than other studio gear. However, the need for one point miking is a confusion that might have made Ambisonics less attractive for the recording studios. They may have thought that you _must_ use a Soundfield. I think people got this picture because Nimbus Records were advertising their recordings as one microphone recordings. Minimalist recordings were attracted by some high end circles and it of course was a marketing factor. (I have tried to write about Ambisonics for the general audio public--no dice, people did not get it even though I thought what I wrote was clear as crystal) I also tried that and also thought that what I wrote was clear as crystal. I sometimes saw a certain smile on the face of some of my colleagues after they had read my articles. :-) - - - I also thought of another thing: The original group published their first articles about Ambisonics in electronics hobbyist magazines, such as Wireless World and Elektor. As far as I know, the first article in a respected science magazine was that by Peter Fellgett in Nature. Many pro audio magazines also published articles about Ambisonics before Gerzon gave out papers for the AES. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Robert, Lots to comment on here. I seem to be compelled to address your negative or not so good observations: Not so Good 2) Because one- point miking ignores transient time of arrival differences as such , one of the basic cues of sonic perception is suppressed explicitly That's not really true. I'm assuming that when you speak of time of arrival differences that you are referring to ITDs. The thing to remember here is that ITDs are a function of our presence in the acoustic field, and as such aren't present in the recording environment and thus shouldn't be recorded. In a recording and reproduction scenario the ITDs happen in the reproduction of the recording, and as it happens ITDs are reproduced very well by Ambisonics, even first order Ambisonics. I showed this quite clearly (I hope) in AES preprint 8242. 3) Impractical number of speakers needed really to work But one of the really cool things about Ambisonics is that it scales extremely well so that it works well with one speaker or two, although not creating surround with so few speakers. And it works quite well with only four speakers. And nowadays there are quite good decoders that work well with ITU 5-channel arrays. If higher order sources are available then they can be decoded in such a way that the directional resolution is high in the forward direction where there are relatively many loudspeakers and not so well to the rear where there are relatively few loudspeakers. 4) Impractical number of channels needed to really work Again, that's not really true. Most common audio carriers have the capability to carry many channels, DVD, BluRay. And many systems are file-based and as such aren't really limited at all. With a system that is inherently hierarchical, as Ambisonics is, a broadcast or distrubution system can transmit as many or as few channels as is wished. 5) In practice, keeping noise low enough is difficult I'm not entirely sure where this comment comes from. In terms of natural recording, which is what you and I would do but not most of the rest of the audio world, the Soundfield microphone as embodied in the Soundfield MkIV and MkV microphones, is really quite quiet. Not as quiet as some modern microphones, some of which have self-noise in single digits, but somewhere in the mid-teens of dB SPL. I can't bring to mind any instance when listening to the recordings of my colleague Aaron Heller that I was ever aware of the presence of noise. And there's no reason why higher order systems can't be made very quiet indeed. Gary Elko mentioned, during the discussion of the MH acoustics Eigenmike, that the self noise of the zero order (omni) output is about 0 dBA. So what does my list look like? Good: 1) Isotropic behavior. Ambisonics is really good at capturing and reproducing ambient sounds. These are the sounds that inform me that the sound scene had some real origin. 2) Reproduction of correct timbre. While it is relatively easy (but not frequently done!) to capture sound with the correct spectrum, 2-channel stereo distorts that spectral accuracy in reproduction. Ambisonics is much better although it still suffers from some of the same problems. 3) Requires lots less speakers than Wave Field Synthesis. Not so good: 1) I frequently find that I have front/back confusion. Let the debate continue. - Original Message From: Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu To: Surround Sound discussion group sursound@music.vt.edu Sent: Sun, April 1, 2012 8:03:44 PM Subject: Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please? OK I thought that was a good idea, for people to say what they thought was good and not good about Ambisonics. So here I go(first I guess but my mother always said Act in haste, repent at leisure. I think she meant it as cautionary but I have always taken it as advisory!). Good 1 Elegant as mathematics 2 Forces people to use one point miking which in itself is already a HUGE thing because it eliminates the absurd manipulativeness of much of commercial recording practice. 3 In principle, has the capability of reconstructing the complete soundfield. 4 Puts height in the picture and gets rid of the sound through a horizontal slit of stereo(which is ironically more like that the better it is done!) 5 In practice, more robust than one might have expected at working over a large listening area (if that matters). 6 In principle, the timbre errors of stereo arising from around the head summation are eliminated. Not so good 1 Emphasis on homogeneity makes it inefficient when not high order. (Everyone knows that perception to the side of a listener is quite different from perception frontally, but this is ignored) 2 (related to 1) Because one- point miking ignores transient time of arrival differences as such , one of the basic cues of sonic perception is suppressed explicitly and is only returned to the picture with higher order. 3
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2012 10:05:18 -0400 (EDT) From: newme...@aol.com Subject: Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please? To: sursound@music.vt.edu Message-ID: 1343c.5791214f.3ca9b...@aol.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Robert: But I think that using this sort of thing as a way to persuade people they ought to have 16 channels of playback or something is wrong headed. Of course it is but how about THREE? Remember that the most obvious home-playback application of Michael Gerson's mathematical work is *not* Ambisonics but TRIFIELD. As I recall, it was the addition of a center speaker that Gerzon himself thought would become the most widely adopted of his inventions -- or did I read the biography wrong? Here, the licensing seems to have gotten in the way. Did anyone other then Meridian ever implement Trifield for consumers? yes, but not currently Was it ever (or is it now) available as a *cheap* license, so that it can be put in Japanese or Korean recievers? yes it is, but none have shown any interest. The biggest volume implementation is in expensive cars. (Jag,Range Rover and McLaren) Yes, we know how you feel about sound-stage reproduction, but given that the US hi-fi market has largely pursued this goal, did anyone ever seriously try to tackle the center speaker issue for music? I think that, because the centre speaker has come from the 5.1 home theatre side, historically the centre speaker has been dissimilar, badly located and only thought appropriate for 'dialogue'. After all, even film soundtracks do not use the centre speaker for music. Personally, I would not want to be without Trifield three channel playback for music. Actually four is better. Geoffrey ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
-- Message: 19 Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2012 00:22:21 +0100 From: Peter Lennox p.len...@derby.ac.uk Subject: Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please? To: Surround Sound discussion group sursound@music.vt.edu Message-ID: 28f33490c302424e98cc6dc2531b2048c18acc4...@mkt-mbx01.university.ds.derby.ac.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii well! Cara, you've had loads of responses! I hope that the sheer volume hasn't overwhelmed you With my dissertation supervisor head on, I'd like to offer the following: Your dissertation question clearly touches something important, but lacks focus. By that, I mean (in a caring way, possums) that framing the question this way makes it very difficult to elicit clear answers. Proving why something didn't happen is very often impossible - it's like the evolutionery arguments as to why this species made it, whilst that one didn't. The reasons are usually incredibly complex, and intrinsically involve chaotic elements - the toss of a coin, the arrival of this circumstance instead of that, the confluence of these causal items instead of the lack of coincidence of such. Having said all that... You've clearly struck a nerve - the responses here show that plenty of articulate and knowledgeable people have something to offer on this - and these people won't be around for ever! - clearly, Blumlein has gone, Gerzon has gone, Felgett isn't around.. - BUT: Peter Craven is. I know he is not so active on this list, but look for algol.co.uk. Can I just point out that Peter Craven, although 'in at the birth' as the co-inventer of the soundfield mic, was not directly involved in the development of Ambisonics? MAG used to keep people and projects in separate boxes and the Reading group was quite separate from the OUTRS activities and MAG always kept it that way. MAG worked on Ambisonics with Peter Fellgett and John Wright at Reading University. I joined them in 1975. BTW I agree about the necessity for formulating the question carefully. How do you measure success? If you asked MAG and PBF why they were spending so much time during the 1970s on Ambisonics, there was no ambiguity. It was entirely about making a technology which could reproduce a realistic simulacrum of a musical performance, and that is why I joined them, being like-minded. And under that measure, Ambisonics was and remains a success. Mind you, I had difficulty convincing PBF of this in his declining years. Others had other objectives. Once NRDC/BTG became involved, commercial objectives, in retrospect maybe unrealistic, were added, and we had to service these in order to finance what we really wanted to do. Geoffrey -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/4026030d/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of 16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now. By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not _used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169). Dave On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote: --On 31 March 2012 18:34 -0700 Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote: Of course music exists that is not in front. But the vast bulk of concert music is not like that. Sure; but what proportion of music are we happy to be unable to reproduce properly? My organ music (admittedly as much as 20% of my listening) was a trivial example - and it's only in combination with other things that it becomes spatially interesting, generally. You mentioned Gabrieli and Berlioz in a slightly dismissive manner; I would add to them people like Stockhausen and Earle Brown, a folk group moving among their audience, a hall full of schoolchildren bouncing their sounds off each other from different parts of the hall. Not all within the restricted form of concert music, but music in the real world where we turn our heads and enjoy our whole environment. Paul -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 322448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 322450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/49f083b7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Immsound
Umm - page 3 in the white paper; Algorithms include not only object-based audio processing but also higher-order Ambisonics and perceptual-based spatial sound processing. so it's both mpeg4 and HOA Dave On 02/04/2012 11:13, Rev Tony Newnham wrote: Hi Came across this in the current edition of Resolution magazine - although the technology article seems extremely light as to how the system works psycoacoustically -as does their web-site http://immsound.com/home , although I've yet to read the white paper fully, it also seems rather light - but then I suppose they want to see their gear! Has anyone come across it? heard it in action? My first thoughts are that it's using ambisonic principles - but I notice that Gerzon et al get no mention in the list of references, so maybe not? Just interested - I'm not involved in cinema sound (but am interested in the various surround sound systems). Every Blessing Tony ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 322448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 322450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Immsound
Thanks Dave - like I said, I've not had time to read it properly yet. Every Blessing Tony -Original Message- From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Dave Malham Sent: 02 April 2012 11:53 To: Surround Sound discussion group Subject: Re: [Sursound] Immsound Umm - page 3 in the white paper; Algorithms include not only object-based audio processing but also higher-order Ambisonics and perceptual-based spatial sound processing. so it's both mpeg4 and HOA Dave On 02/04/2012 11:13, Rev Tony Newnham wrote: Hi Came across this in the current edition of Resolution magazine - although the technology article seems extremely light as to how the system works psycoacoustically -as does their web-site http://immsound.com/home , although I've yet to read the white paper fully, it also seems rather light - but then I suppose they want to see their gear! Has anyone come across it? heard it in action? My first thoughts are that it's using ambisonic principles - but I notice that Gerzon et al get no mention in the list of references, so maybe not? Just interested - I'm not involved in cinema sound (but am interested in the various surround sound systems). Every Blessing Tony ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 322448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 322450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
All you need to do is.., is the end of the line here. Commercially, you might as well try to sell a car where all you need to do to start it is to type in a ten digit code, sing Mary had a little lamb three times, and notify the post office. No one is going to go through this sort of thing in the statistical sense of no one. Most people do not even know what these words mean RIFF/WAV file ,4.0 decode etc Why would they want to find out? Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, Aaron Heller wrote: Um. Every single recording on Ambisonia was available as a DTS-CD RIFF/WAV file of a 4.0 decode (that is, Center and LFE were silent). All one needed to do was burn them to a CD and play in a DVD player connected to a 5.1 home theater set up. See Richard Elen's article Getting Ambisonics Around for the technical details of the process. http://www.ambisonic.net/pdf/ambisonics_around.pdf I know there were several hundred downloads of my recordings in that format -- Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, recorded with my Soundfield MkIV for NPR's Performance Today. -- Aaron Heller hel...@ai.sri.com Menlo Park, CA US On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Neil Waterman neil.water...@asti-usa.com wrote: I agree totally with Robert here. Most of my work mates have 5.1 set-ups at home, but would never be bothered to have anything that required more thought, so bring on the 5.1 mixes of ambisonic source material and at least let the masses get a listen. Cheers, Neil On 4/1/2012 6:44 PM, Robert Greene wrote: I don't think anyone thinks that! What people do think is that Ambisonics needs some sort of commercial accesibility-- which it could get if discs were put out that provided not abstract Ambisonics as it were but Ambisonics as decoded to the 5.1 set up. The message was that no one (statistically speaking) in the real world wants anything that requires thought and effort. Given that Ambisonics can be decoded to any speaker setup (even if the result is not idea), why are there no 5.1 SACDs that show how Ambisonics works on a 5.1 setup? One cannot expect people to be interested in something they cannot hear in demo form Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, Augustine Leudar wrote: again to anyone who says things like ambisonics cant compete with 5.1 please bear in mind this is like saying amplitude panning can't compete with 5.1 - it doesnt make any sense at all. You mix your tracks horizontally ,without elevation, using ambisonics plugins and burn your ac3/dts file like any other surround mix. Ambisonics is an approach to creating a soundfield it does not require any special hardware it can be done with software. The new 22.4 (or something) sound systems that cinemas are launching soon will allow height information as well. You could mix a lot of films using ambisonics when this happens. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
I did say very explicitly transient time differences. Maybe I am missing something but these are not detected in Blumlein and I am not clear on why they would be in first order. I don't think this works. I could be wrong, however. But I think that in Blumlein stereo anyway, everyone agrees it does not. so that et what is called the Glockenspiel effect arises where lower and higher frequencies are separated in perceived position. If this is wrong, I would surely be interested to know why, and if it is what happens in BLumlein I do not see why it would go away with first order Ambisonics Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Eric Benjamin wrote: Robert, Lots to comment on here. I seem to be compelled to address your negative or not so good observations: Not so Good 2) Because one- point miking ignores transient time of arrival differences as such , one of the basic cues of sonic perception is suppressed explicitly That's not really true. I'm assuming that when you speak of time of arrival differences that you are referring to ITDs. The thing to remember here is that ITDs are a function of our presence in the acoustic field, and as such aren't present in the recording environment and thus shouldn't be recorded. In a recording and reproduction scenario the ITDs happen in the reproduction of the recording, and as it happens ITDs are reproduced very well by Ambisonics, even first order Ambisonics. I showed this quite clearly (I hope) in AES preprint 8242. 3) Impractical number of speakers needed really to work But one of the really cool things about Ambisonics is that it scales extremely well so that it works well with one speaker or two, although not creating surround with so few speakers. And it works quite well with only four speakers. And nowadays there are quite good decoders that work well with ITU 5-channel arrays. If higher order sources are available then they can be decoded in such a way that the directional resolution is high in the forward direction where there are relatively many loudspeakers and not so well to the rear where there are relatively few loudspeakers. 4) Impractical number of channels needed to really work Again, that's not really true. Most common audio carriers have the capability to carry many channels, DVD, BluRay. And many systems are file-based and as such aren't really limited at all. With a system that is inherently hierarchical, as Ambisonics is, a broadcast or distrubution system can transmit as many or as few channels as is wished. 5) In practice, keeping noise low enough is difficult I'm not entirely sure where this comment comes from. In terms of natural recording, which is what you and I would do but not most of the rest of the audio world, the Soundfield microphone as embodied in the Soundfield MkIV and MkV microphones, is really quite quiet. Not as quiet as some modern microphones, some of which have self-noise in single digits, but somewhere in the mid-teens of dB SPL. I can't bring to mind any instance when listening to the recordings of my colleague Aaron Heller that I was ever aware of the presence of noise. And there's no reason why higher order systems can't be made very quiet indeed. Gary Elko mentioned, during the discussion of the MH acoustics Eigenmike, that the self noise of the zero order (omni) output is about 0 dBA. So what does my list look like? Good: 1) Isotropic behavior. Ambisonics is really good at capturing and reproducing ambient sounds. These are the sounds that inform me that the sound scene had some real origin. 2) Reproduction of correct timbre. While it is relatively easy (but not frequently done!) to capture sound with the correct spectrum, 2-channel stereo distorts that spectral accuracy in reproduction. Ambisonics is much better although it still suffers from some of the same problems. 3) Requires lots less speakers than Wave Field Synthesis. Not so good: 1) I frequently find that I have front/back confusion. Let the debate continue. - Original Message From: Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu To: Surround Sound discussion group sursound@music.vt.edu Sent: Sun, April 1, 2012 8:03:44 PM Subject: Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please? OK I thought that was a good idea, for people to say what they thought was good and not good about Ambisonics. So here I go(first I guess but my mother always said Act in haste, repent at leisure. I think she meant it as cautionary but I have always taken it as advisory!). Good 1 Elegant as mathematics 2 Forces people to use one point miking which in itself is already a HUGE thing because it eliminates the absurd manipulativeness of much of commercial recording practice. 3 In principle, has the capability of reconstructing the complete soundfield. 4 Puts height in the picture and gets rid of the sound through a horizontal slit of stereo(which is ironically more like that the better it is done!) 5 In practice, more robust than one might have
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
It may be old but it is still all but universal in acoustic concert music. I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not. How many symphony concerts have you been to recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience. The other way around, sure. But I think this is just not true, that music with the musicians around the audience is common. Not in the statistical sense of percentage of concerts where it happens. Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote: Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of 16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now. By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not _used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169). Dave On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote: --On 31 March 2012 18:34 -0700 Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote: Of course music exists that is not in front. But the vast bulk of concert music is not like that. Sure; but what proportion of music are we happy to be unable to reproduce properly? My organ music (admittedly as much as 20% of my listening) was a trivial example - and it's only in combination with other things that it becomes spatially interesting, generally. You mentioned Gabrieli and Berlioz in a slightly dismissive manner; I would add to them people like Stockhausen and Earle Brown, a folk group moving among their audience, a hall full of schoolchildren bouncing their sounds off each other from different parts of the hall. Not all within the restricted form of concert music, but music in the real world where we turn our heads and enjoy our whole environment. Paul -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 322448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 322450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/49f083b7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Robert Greene wrote: Because it is good! Yes, it is good for many occasions. Because Nimbus Records devoted themselves strictly to one point miking, they didn't record any operas, as the singers, choir and the orchestra are scattered in a large area and you cannot get a good balance with one point miking. Some other people who use multi-miking collect the money from opera recordings. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
The orchestra may not be around the audience, but the ambience around the audience counts for quite a bit. If we heard a flat, frontal only image in concert, I would guess that even people without any surround sound exposure would find this acceptable. Just because a body isn't behind you, it doesn't mean there isn't sound coming from behind you. Best, Josh On Apr 2, 2012, at 8:34 AM, Robert Greene wrote: It may be old but it is still all but universal in acoustic concert music. I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not. How many symphony concerts have you been to recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience. The other way around, sure. But I think this is just not true, that music with the musicians around the audience is common. Not in the statistical sense of percentage of concerts where it happens. Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote: Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of 16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now. By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not _used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169). Dave On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote: --On 31 March 2012 18:34 -0700 Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote: Of course music exists that is not in front. But the vast bulk of concert music is not like that. Sure; but what proportion of music are we happy to be unable to reproduce properly? My organ music (admittedly as much as 20% of my listening) was a trivial example - and it's only in combination with other things that it becomes spatially interesting, generally. You mentioned Gabrieli and Berlioz in a slightly dismissive manner; I would add to them people like Stockhausen and Earle Brown, a folk group moving among their audience, a hall full of schoolchildren bouncing their sounds off each other from different parts of the hall. Not all within the restricted form of concert music, but music in the real world where we turn our heads and enjoy our whole environment. Paul -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 322448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 322450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/49f083b7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ** /* Joshua D. Parmenter http://www.realizedsound.net/josh/ “Every composer – at all times and in all cases – gives his own interpretation of how modern society is structured: whether actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously, he makes choices in this regard. He may be conservative or he may subject himself to continual renewal; or he may strive for a revolutionary, historical or social palingenesis. - Luigi Nono */ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Re marketing I am not a marketing expert but it seems to me that if anyone had really wanted Ambisonics to succeed, there would have been 1 presentations at shows for example. I have over the years encountered exactly one, by Meridian. Period. And 2 there would have been low priced or free demo discs mixed to 5 channels. Zero on that one. 3 Ads for said discs in audio and home theater magazines zero on that one 4 attempts to get magazines to write about it, The Absolute Sound, Stereophile, etc. Pretty much zero on that one, too. 5 Demonstrations at shows of Trifield and four speaker frontal stereo. Pretty much zero on that one, too, except for Meridian occasionally. One really gets the strong impression that the Ambisonics community has never seriously tried for public attention, and perhaps did not even want it. It is really not too late at least for Trifield. If it is really better, people would respond. (Actually at a Meridian demo I heard, I thought it sounded worse than stereo. For one thing, the speakers were not far enough apart so that it sounded too mono--this sort of thing does not help the cause). If this is really a better way to play stereo in the sense that people like it better, one could demonstrate. People go to audio shows partly looking for interesting new ideas. But Trifield is one they practically never encounter. This stuff is not hard to set up. It does not even cost very much. But it never seems to happen. Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
THis is of course exactly what I said! That surround is good for ambience. That was my whole point in fact--that if ambience is what you want and of course for concert music it is what you want, then Ambisonics with its emphasis on homogeneity is going to a lot of trouble for something that can be done more simply. I am pretty sure everyone understands that an anechoic orchestra sounds odd indeed! The question is how to get ambience effectively in practical terms. Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Josh Parmenter wrote: The orchestra may not be around the audience, but the ambience around the audience counts for quite a bit. If we heard a flat, frontal only image in concert, I would guess that even people without any surround sound exposure would find this acceptable. Just because a body isn't behind you, it doesn't mean there isn't sound coming from behind you. Best, Josh On Apr 2, 2012, at 8:34 AM, Robert Greene wrote: It may be old but it is still all but universal in acoustic concert music. I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not. How many symphony concerts have you been to recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience. The other way around, sure. But I think this is just not true, that music with the musicians around the audience is common. Not in the statistical sense of percentage of concerts where it happens. Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote: Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of 16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now. By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not _used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169). Dave On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote: --On 31 March 2012 18:34 -0700 Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote: Of course music exists that is not in front. But the vast bulk of concert music is not like that. Sure; but what proportion of music are we happy to be unable to reproduce properly? My organ music (admittedly as much as 20% of my listening) was a trivial example - and it's only in combination with other things that it becomes spatially interesting, generally. You mentioned Gabrieli and Berlioz in a slightly dismissive manner; I would add to them people like Stockhausen and Earle Brown, a folk group moving among their audience, a hall full of schoolchildren bouncing their sounds off each other from different parts of the hall. Not all within the restricted form of concert music, but music in the real world where we turn our heads and enjoy our whole environment. Paul -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 322448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 322450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/49f083b7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ** /* Joshua D. Parmenter http://www.realizedsound.net/josh/ ?Every composer ? at all times and in all cases ? gives his own interpretation of how modern society is structured: whether actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously, he makes choices in this regard. He may be conservative or he may subject himself to continual renewal; or he may strive for a revolutionary, historical or social palingenesis. - Luigi Nono */ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
On 02/04/2012 16:34, Robert Greene wrote: It may be old but it is still all but universal in acoustic concert music. Maybe; but acoustic concert music is not the universe. But I can well see that the prevailing assumption on this list is that Ambisonics is only relevant to the reproduction of traditional music formats and idioms (yawn). Implication - composers trying to compose new sounds which do surround the audience should look elsewhere - or perhaps not bother at all? The spectacle of seeing people on this list for ever trying to promote this new system in terms of existing music, when stereo is actually good enough for that material already, is more than a little disconcerting. If it of any interest whatsoever to this list: last year Trevor Wishart completed a new 8-channel surround work Encounters in the Republic of Heaven. Reviews to date collectively suggest this work is very likely (a) a masterpiece and (b) universally accessible, e.g.: http://www.thebubble.org.uk/music/encounters-during-the-republic-of-heaven Needless to say he wrote a number of new software tools for CDP to manage his audio routing. Now, I ~could~ quietly suggest that he might consider a mix for 5.1 delivery using B-Format (currently all that is available to buy is a stereo mixdown), but if everyone sticks rigidly to the notion that music only exists in front, I see no point in trying. So, what ~is~ the point of this list, exactly? Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Part of the point must surely be to reach the public eventually? Or is that somehow sort of declasse? Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Richard Dobson wrote: On 02/04/2012 16:34, Robert Greene wrote: It may be old but it is still all but universal in acoustic concert music. Maybe; but acoustic concert music is not the universe. But I can well see that the prevailing assumption on this list is that Ambisonics is only relevant to the reproduction of traditional music formats and idioms (yawn). Implication - composers trying to compose new sounds which do surround the audience should look elsewhere - or perhaps not bother at all? The spectacle of seeing people on this list for ever trying to promote this new system in terms of existing music, when stereo is actually good enough for that material already, is more than a little disconcerting. If it of any interest whatsoever to this list: last year Trevor Wishart completed a new 8-channel surround work Encounters in the Republic of Heaven. Reviews to date collectively suggest this work is very likely (a) a masterpiece and (b) universally accessible, e.g.: http://www.thebubble.org.uk/music/encounters-during-the-republic-of-heaven Needless to say he wrote a number of new software tools for CDP to manage his audio routing. Now, I ~could~ quietly suggest that he might consider a mix for 5.1 delivery using B-Format (currently all that is available to buy is a stereo mixdown), but if everyone sticks rigidly to the notion that music only exists in front, I see no point in trying. So, what ~is~ the point of this list, exactly? Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Incidentally, I may come across as interested only in classical music(true) but popular music is the same way. Anyone watch the Country Music awards show(you cannot get more grass roots popular than that). See a lot of country music singers doing antiphonal calling from all over the auditorium? Or did you see a bunch of people on stage in front? I did not watch myself, but if there were a lot of the former I would be amazed. Spatial music has a place in the world, just as does 12 tone row music and aleatoric music and a lot of other things that came and went(12 tone did pretty well for itself for a while, but times change). But most music is still in front. And it is likely to stay there. Whatever one thinks of how things ought to be, if a system is ever going to enter the mainstream , it needs to be offering something that lots of people want. Stereo took off because it sounded enough better that people did not mind the doubling up of everything. Personally I think that some sort of surround is worthwhile, because one likes feeling immersed, if only in ambience. Ambisonics is probably the best way to do this. Or maybe not. But my point is that the general public is not given a chance to find out! And offbeat recordings of peculiar music that not very many people will ever hear is not how one is going to reach the public. Wny don't Ambisonics people do show demos? Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Richard: So, what ~is~ the point of this list, exactly? To discuss the opportunity to PLAY with *sound* with our friends in a DIGITAL world! Mass-markets (i.e. programming large numbers of people who you will never know) come from a different era -- the electric media era *before* computers came to dominate our environment. The LIST only exists because of *computers* and so does current Ambisonics practice. We are *digital* now and no longer *analog/electrical* , , , We are not in KANSAS anymore (for those not familiar with Americanisms, this means that we live in a completely different world now from the 1920s or 1950s)! We are so poorly equipped to understand these sorts of changes in our environment and the impact that they have on us, that some people actually believe that Facebook has an audience of 800 million people. It doesn't. I has many, many thousands of SMALL groups (typically of dozens to around a hundred people each), which overlap and extend in a myriad of ways. There is no MASS audience on Facebook -- which is why it will ultimately fail as an advertising-driven investment for many who make the mistake of not just speculating on its rise-and-fall. Expecting that Ambisonics would participate in a MASS *media* phenomenon when the world is aggressively moving *away* from ANY activities of this sort is to fundamentally misunderstand the times in which we live. The failure isn't in the Ambisonics people or in the technology -- what is happening is entirely appropriate for our times. Small *is* BEAUTIFUL . . . so we might as well admit it and enjoy ourselves! g Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/595f5771/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
This sounds plausible except that it is clearly completely wrong. Hunger Games has grossed about one quarter billion dollars in a few weeks worldwide. Don't talk about small taking over! Small is there, all right. But large is still there, too. Taylor Swift's Speak Now sold over a million in the first week. But it did not sell in Ambisonic format. Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote: Richard: So, what ~is~ the point of this list, exactly? To discuss the opportunity to PLAY with *sound* with our friends in a DIGITAL world! Mass-markets (i.e. programming large numbers of people who you will never know) come from a different era -- the electric media era *before* computers came to dominate our environment. The LIST only exists because of *computers* and so does current Ambisonics practice. We are *digital* now and no longer *analog/electrical* , , , We are not in KANSAS anymore (for those not familiar with Americanisms, this means that we live in a completely different world now from the 1920s or 1950s)! We are so poorly equipped to understand these sorts of changes in our environment and the impact that they have on us, that some people actually believe that Facebook has an audience of 800 million people. It doesn't. I has many, many thousands of SMALL groups (typically of dozens to around a hundred people each), which overlap and extend in a myriad of ways. There is no MASS audience on Facebook -- which is why it will ultimately fail as an advertising-driven investment for many who make the mistake of not just speculating on its rise-and-fall. Expecting that Ambisonics would participate in a MASS *media* phenomenon when the world is aggressively moving *away* from ANY activities of this sort is to fundamentally misunderstand the times in which we live. The failure isn't in the Ambisonics people or in the technology -- what is happening is entirely appropriate for our times. Small *is* BEAUTIFUL . . . so we might as well admit it and enjoy ourselves! g Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/595f5771/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Hi My now rather old and basic Surround Sound RX actually does have a setting called 3-stereo, which presumably synthesises a centre channel from the stereo feed. I've never tried it - but I might give it a go next time I'm listening to music in the lounge. I normally either use Pro-Logic (for general listening) or switch to Stereo if I'm listening to stereo music only. Every Blessing Tony -Original Message- From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Greene Sent: 02 April 2012 17:58 To: richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk; Surround Sound discussion group Subject: Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please? But lots of people already have five channel systems. What they do not have is a Trifield processor built in to their receivers to make stereo into three channel. They have other schemes to do this, but not Trifield. This seems to be an oversight--unless people do not feel that Trifield is really better? Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Richard Dobson wrote: On 02/04/2012 17:21, Robert Greene wrote: .. It is really not too late at least for Trifield. If it is really better how will people know? It is only a minority who bother to go to demos and shows. , people would respond. (Actually at a Meridian demo I heard, I thought it sounded worse than stereo. For one thing, the speakers were not far enough apart so that it sounded too mono--this sort of thing does not help the cause). Well, hmm, three speakers cost approximately 50% more than the price of two. Plus whatever extra special kit is needed. You ~might~ manage to sell the idea if you can establish beyond doubt that the improvement is at least that much. It is very easy to persuade people that two speakers really are more than 100% better than one. Unless the added speaker produces a commensurate hike in quality over the two (and domestic hifi dealers are happy to stock and sell 3.0 speaker sets), I suspect the take-up will (continue to be) low. This is a niche market inside a niche market. Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Sorry I got bogged down in technical details. Thanks for pointing that out to me. What I should have said was that every recording on Ambisonia (~250, iirc) was available as a file that could be downloaded, burnt to CD, and played on a plain old 5.1 home theater system -- presumably just the kind that you, Neil, his work mates have, and many others have. No special playback setup needed. Same set of skills and computer set up that were needed to get files with Napster and make CDs from them. I seem to recall that plenty of people were able to do that. Anyway, I put some files at http://ambisonics.dreamhosters.com/DTS/ There are a few more and some discussion at http://www.ambisonic.net/decodes.html If needed, some instructions for burning and playing are on pages 10-13 of the SurCode manual http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com/info/PDFs/Manuals/SurCode%20DTS%20CD%20Manual.pdf Let me know what you hear... Aaron On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 8:25 AM, Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote: All you need to do is.., is the end of the line here. Commercially, you might as well try to sell a car where all you need to do to start it is to type in a ten digit code, sing Mary had a little lamb three times, and notify the post office. No one is going to go through this sort of thing in the statistical sense of no one. Most people do not even know what these words mean RIFF/WAV file ,4.0 decode etc Why would they want to find out? Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, Aaron Heller wrote: Um. Every single recording on Ambisonia was available as a DTS-CD RIFF/WAV file of a 4.0 decode (that is, Center and LFE were silent). All one needed to do was burn them to a CD and play in a DVD player connected to a 5.1 home theater set up. See Richard Elen's article Getting Ambisonics Around for the technical details of the process. http://www.ambisonic.net/pdf/ambisonics_around.pdf I know there were several hundred downloads of my recordings in that format -- Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, recorded with my Soundfield MkIV for NPR's Performance Today. -- Aaron Heller hel...@ai.sri.com Menlo Park, CA US On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Neil Waterman neil.water...@asti-usa.com wrote: I agree totally with Robert here. Most of my work mates have 5.1 set-ups at home, but would never be bothered to have anything that required more thought, so bring on the 5.1 mixes of ambisonic source material and at least let the masses get a listen. Cheers, Neil On 4/1/2012 6:44 PM, Robert Greene wrote: I don't think anyone thinks that! What people do think is that Ambisonics needs some sort of commercial accesibility-- which it could get if discs were put out that provided not abstract Ambisonics as it were but Ambisonics as decoded to the 5.1 set up. The message was that no one (statistically speaking) in the real world wants anything that requires thought and effort. Given that Ambisonics can be decoded to any speaker setup (even if the result is not idea), why are there no 5.1 SACDs that show how Ambisonics works on a 5.1 setup? One cannot expect people to be interested in something they cannot hear in demo form Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, Augustine Leudar wrote: again to anyone who says things like ambisonics cant compete with 5.1 please bear in mind this is like saying amplitude panning can't compete with 5.1 - it doesnt make any sense at all. You mix your tracks horizontally ,without elevation, using ambisonics plugins and burn your ac3/dts file like any other surround mix. Ambisonics is an approach to creating a soundfield it does not require any special hardware it can be done with software. The new 22.4 (or something) sound systems that cinemas are launching soon will allow height information as well. You could mix a lot of films using ambisonics when this happens. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
On 2 Apr 2012, at 20:53, newme...@aol.com wrote: But, in the context of this list and this thread, these larger forces must also be taken into account -- which, ultimately, lead to the perfectly understandable reasons why Ambisonics could never and should never become a mass-market technology. I tend to disagree, because there is a difference between technology and content. I totally agree that content mass-market is ever less dominant, because the digital age allows for efficient internetworking of sub-cultures, and therefore their ability of carving out niches that collectively eat away at once dominant mass-culture. However, just as much as MP3 and ripping of audio destroyed the mass-market of LP/CD sales, the massmarket of MP3 players and MP3 files still was created. Ambisonics would have the role of MP3, not the role of prerecorded music sales from record stores. The key thing would be to get a major player to include Ambisonics in their line up, and that isn't happening as long as the purists bitch and whine about how at least 2nd, better 3rd order Ambisonics is a must, because the complexities and channel count just don't justify the effort given that there is no proven demand. Something like UHJ, except for being tied to CDs, and G-Format (with an ability to extract B-Format for transcoding into different speaker layouts, but en inherent 5.1 compatibility) are the only meaningful choices when attempting to popularize Ambisonics, but both of these are sneered at by the very experts that would have to be cooperating with industry heavyweights to get things off the ground. For these reasons, snobbery and academic purity, Ambisonics won't go anywhere in the next three decades, unless there's a major shift in attitude. Some people still don't understand that one doesn't feed a baby with a steak. Get things going, and when there's a certain amount of market penetration and people start noticing limitations THEN you can tell them about 2nd and 3rd order, because by then the concept has sunk in and people say: I want the better version of what I already have. Did Apple wait until they can ship a universal LTE Retina-Display iPhone and iPad? No, we're on the fifth generation iPhone, and still not there. But some people here are not interested in any solution unless it's a perfect solution, and that unrealistic thinking is the biggest roadblock to progress. And then, of course, another problem with Ambisonics is, that it's British... ...and the entertainment industry is US-American, and consumer electronics (aside from Apple) is Japanese-Korean, made in China/Vietnam. Ronald ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Transient time differences
Thanks for the information. But here is my question in more precise form: Suppose you do a recording with ORTF(which of course has its own set of problems). Suppose you record a source that is say 15 degrees left of center. and that the source is a pistol shot(an impulse). Now the impulse will arrive at the left mike before it arrives at the right mike. The time difference is the same more or less as it would be for a dummy head recording since the distance between the mikes is the same (more or less) as the distance between the listeners ears(or the dummy head ears). On playback, the impulse will also arrive at the left ear the same amount of time before the right ear-- as far as the high frequencies are concerned. Namely they are heavily shadowed by the head so that the arrival at the left ear first is blocked from the right ear, and the right ear hears only the right speaker. This is in the highs. Below around 700 Hz, Blumlein would have put the phase shifts right and that part of time would be there. But the head shadowed part , the high frequency part, is right for ORTF but wrong for Blumlein-- the direct arrival of the high frequency part of the impulse as recorded in Blumlein is simultaneous in the two speakers(as is everything) but there is no reconstruction via head effect because the head effect is essentially total shadowing. Of course there is some head shadowing in the real world, too. But 15 degrees off to one side is not enough to block the highs so completely as 45 degrees (or 30 degrees). So there is some range of angles where the timing is off because of the greater shadowing(almost complete) from the wide speaker separation is not representing the real situation. Is this wrong? This is not my private theory. I think Blumlein was aware of this, and I known other people have mentioned it. Maybe is does not really matter, but it seems real enough. (I believe it is known that time delays in the high frequencies play a role in location) Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Ronald: I tend to disagree, because there is a difference between technology and content. Ah but we AGREE! Sorry to be (partly) cliched here but consider the *full* statement -- the medium is the message . . . and the USER is the content! That second part is almost always left off -- because it doesn't work as a slogan and can't be so easily mass-marketed (literally). What it means is just that WE are changed by the technologies that we use *regardless* of the content. It is the process of using/participating in-and-with these new technologies that changes our behaviors and attitudes -- as once happened with books, and then with radio/television and now with the Internet (and many other technologies along the way) -- which then changes what is possible in the market. We are all changed by becoming Internet-savvy and computer-literate -- compared to the average person of our interests and aptitudes from the 1950s/60s. It is those changes in US that makes the notion of introducing a *new* living-room type of audio reproduction with mass-market appeal so completely implausible today. No whiz-bang demos will make any difference! Ambisonics is what people are doing on this list and that's just as it should be -- PLAYING with *sound* with our friends! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 4/2/2012 4:22:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, r...@cubiculum.com writes: On 2 Apr 2012, at 20:53, newme...@aol.com wrote: But, in the context of this list and this thread, these larger forces must also be taken into account -- which, ultimately, lead to the perfectly understandable reasons why Ambisonics could never and should never become a mass-market technology. I tend to disagree, because there is a difference between technology and content. I totally agree that content mass-market is ever less dominant, because the digital age allows for efficient internetworking of sub-cultures, and therefore their ability of carving out niches that collectively eat away at once dominant mass-culture. However, just as much as MP3 and ripping of audio destroyed the mass-market of LP/CD sales, the massmarket of MP3 players and MP3 files still was created. Ambisonics would have the role of MP3, not the role of prerecorded music sales from record stores. The key thing would be to get a major player to include Ambisonics in their line up, and that isn't happening as long as the purists bitch and whine about how at least 2nd, better 3rd order Ambisonics is a must, because the complexities and channel count just don't justify the effort given that there is no proven demand. Something like UHJ, except for being tied to CDs, and G-Format (with an ability to extract B-Format for transcoding into different speaker layouts, but en inherent 5.1 compatibility) are the only meaningful choices when attempting to popularize Ambisonics, but both of these are sneered at by the very experts that would have to be cooperating with industry heavyweights to get things off the ground. For these reasons, snobbery and academic purity, Ambisonics won't go anywhere in the next three decades, unless there's a major shift in attitude. Some people still don't understand that one doesn't feed a baby with a steak. Get things going, and when there's a certain amount of market penetration and people start noticing limitations THEN you can tell them about 2nd and 3rd order, because by then the concept has sunk in and people say: I want the better version of what I already have. Did Apple wait until they can ship a universal LTE Retina-Display iPhone and iPad? No, we're on the fifth generation iPhone, and still not there. But some people here are not interested in any solution unless it's a perfect solution, and that unrealistic thinking is the biggest roadblock to progress. And then, of course, another problem with Ambisonics is, that it's British... ...and the entertainment industry is US-American, and consumer electronics (aside from Apple) is Japanese-Korean, made in China/Vietnam. Ronald ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120402/77f37212/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Transient time differences
I can't answer the question precisely without either doing an experiment or by doing many hours of calculations. But one thing to consider is that the Blumlein recording won't fail to produce correct ITDs at frequencies above 700 Hz. At least, not theoretically. I can demonstrate by calculations using a good head model that the ITDs continue to be correct up to some relatively high frequency, say up to 6 kHz. I have the calculations already done to demonstrate that is works for an Ambisonic system. But one of the differences between theory and practice is that the listener won't necessarily be exactly at the sweet spot. That is to say, if the listener shifts 10 cm to the left then he has undone the 'correct' time differentials provided by the ORTF system. Don't take this to mean that I don't like ORTF recordings. I do like them. The best stereo recording that I have ever made was an ORTF recording. But then, I'm not a very good recording engineer. I think that one of the reasons that I like ORTF is that it introduces an artificial spaciousness which may compensate for the spaciousness that is lost in stereo reproduction. I will do some calculations on ORTF stereo so that I can understand it better. - Original Message From: Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu To: Surround Sound discussion group sursound@music.vt.edu Sent: Mon, April 2, 2012 1:44:28 PM Subject: Re: [Sursound] Transient time differences Thanks for the information. But here is my question in more precise form: Suppose you do a recording with ORTF(which of course has its own set of problems). Suppose you record a source that is say 15 degrees left of center. and that the source is a pistol shot(an impulse). Now the impulse will arrive at the left mike before it arrives at the right mike. The time difference is the same more or less as it would be for a dummy head recording since the distance between the mikes is the same (more or less) as the distance between the listeners ears(or the dummy head ears). On playback, the impulse will also arrive at the left ear the same amount of time before the right ear-- as far as the high frequencies are concerned. Namely they are heavily shadowed by the head so that the arrival at the left ear first is blocked from the right ear, and the right ear hears only the right speaker. This is in the highs. Below around 700 Hz, Blumlein would have put the phase shifts right and that part of time would be there. But the head shadowed part , the high frequency part, is right for ORTF but wrong for Blumlein-- the direct arrival of the high frequency part of the impulse as recorded in Blumlein is simultaneous in the two speakers(as is everything) but there is no reconstruction via head effect because the head effect is essentially total shadowing. Of course there is some head shadowing in the real world, too. But 15 degrees off to one side is not enough to block the highs so completely as 45 degrees (or 30 degrees). So there is some range of angles where the timing is off because of the greater shadowing(almost complete) from the wide speaker separation is not representing the real situation. Is this wrong? This is not my private theory. I think Blumlein was aware of this, and I known other people have mentioned it. Maybe is does not really matter, but it seems real enough. (I believe it is known that time delays in the high frequencies play a role in location) Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Transient time differences
Well, don't get the idea that I do not like Blumlein. My once(actually twice as it happened) in a lifetime chance to record major orchestras with Kavi Alexander in charge, we did use Blumlein. And ORTF sounds a little colored as to timbre to me (we have some recordings made with identical mike placements but the two methods, though this is hardly a theoretical test since the mikes themselves are of necessity different). But I have always been told as conventional wisdom that ORTF gets the time of arrival right in a way that Blumlein does not. And I always regarded the choice as a tradeoff--absolutely spot on timbre with Blumlein versus correct space with ORTF. But maybe this is wrong! If things work up to 6k, that would surely alter the viewpoint. I await this with interest. I would also be interested to see the calculations that would explain why ORTF comes out a bit colored, at least to my ears. Robert On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Eric Benjamin wrote: I can't answer the question precisely without either doing an experiment or by doing many hours of calculations. But one thing to consider is that the Blumlein recording won't fail to produce correct ITDs at frequencies above 700 Hz. At least, not theoretically. I can demonstrate by calculations using a good head model that the ITDs continue to be correct up to some relatively high frequency, say up to 6 kHz. I have the calculations already done to demonstrate that is works for an Ambisonic system. But one of the differences between theory and practice is that the listener won't necessarily be exactly at the sweet spot. That is to say, if the listener shifts 10 cm to the left then he has undone the 'correct' time differentials provided by the ORTF system. Don't take this to mean that I don't like ORTF recordings. I do like them. The best stereo recording that I have ever made was an ORTF recording. But then, I'm not a very good recording engineer. I think that one of the reasons that I like ORTF is that it introduces an artificial spaciousness which may compensate for the spaciousness that is lost in stereo reproduction. I will do some calculations on ORTF stereo so that I can understand it better. - Original Message From: Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu To: Surround Sound discussion group sursound@music.vt.edu Sent: Mon, April 2, 2012 1:44:28 PM Subject: Re: [Sursound] Transient time differences Thanks for the information. But here is my question in more precise form: Suppose you do a recording with ORTF(which of course has its own set of problems). Suppose you record a source that is say 15 degrees left of center. and that the source is a pistol shot(an impulse). Now the impulse will arrive at the left mike before it arrives at the right mike. The time difference is the same more or less as it would be for a dummy head recording since the distance between the mikes is the same (more or less) as the distance between the listeners ears(or the dummy head ears). On playback, the impulse will also arrive at the left ear the same amount of time before the right ear-- as far as the high frequencies are concerned. Namely they are heavily shadowed by the head so that the arrival at the left ear first is blocked from the right ear, and the right ear hears only the right speaker. This is in the highs. Below around 700 Hz, Blumlein would have put the phase shifts right and that part of time would be there. But the head shadowed part , the high frequency part, is right for ORTF but wrong for Blumlein-- the direct arrival of the high frequency part of the impulse as recorded in Blumlein is simultaneous in the two speakers(as is everything) but there is no reconstruction via head effect because the head effect is essentially total shadowing. Of course there is some head shadowing in the real world, too. But 15 degrees off to one side is not enough to block the highs so completely as 45 degrees (or 30 degrees). So there is some range of angles where the timing is off because of the greater shadowing(almost complete) from the wide speaker separation is not representing the real situation. Is this wrong? This is not my private theory. I think Blumlein was aware of this, and I known other people have mentioned it. Maybe is does not really matter, but it seems real enough. (I believe it is known that time delays in the high frequencies play a role in location) Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
At 10:34 02/04/2012, Robert Greene wrote: It may be old but it is still all but universal in acoustic concert music. I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not. How many symphony concerts have you been to recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience. The other way around, sure. But I think this is just not true, that music with the musicians around the audience is common. Not in the statistical sense of percentage of concerts where it happens. We are not talking about concerts, but about recordings... Why should one imitate the other? And as far as most symphony concerts in the USA go, they as close to a 19th century artform as one could imagine. David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
At 11:33 02/04/2012, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote: On 2 Apr 2012, at 17:57, Eero Aro eero@dlc.fi wrote: Because Nimbus Records devoted themselves strictly to one point miking, they didn't record any operas, as the singers, choir and the orchestra are scattered in a large area and you cannot get a good balance with one point miking. Sorry, that's bogus. When I go to the Opera, I sit at ONE SPOT. IF there's anything as a good seat in the opera house in question, where people in the audience can listen to a well balanced live performance, then that means there is a spot for single-point recording. I made a recording with a Blumlein fig-8 pair of a performance of Rheingold in an opera house some years ago and it sounded very well balanced. David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Two weeks ago, I saw a performance of Répons by Boulez. It was a canadian première, 30 years after its creation. The audience surrounded the orchestra, and six percussion instruments surrounded the audience, along with 6 speakers. It was happening in a very large room (an old boat factory), so there was an incredible mix of close and distant sounds. I saw many other concerts with instruments and sounds surrounding the audience, with music from John Cage, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and even Schubert. It may not be common, but it does exist, so we should expect some more surround recordings in a not so distant future. One of the most interesting 5.0 recordings I heard is the Virtual Haydn project, that recreates the acoustic experience of small concert halls of the 18th century. David Pickett d...@fugato.com a écrit: At 10:34 02/04/2012, Robert Greene wrote: It may be old but it is still all but universal in acoustic concert music. I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not. How many symphony concerts have you been to recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience. The other way around, sure. But I think this is just not true, that music with the musicians around the audience is common. Not in the statistical sense of percentage of concerts where it happens. We are not talking about concerts, but about recordings... Why should one imitate the other? And as far as most symphony concerts in the USA go, they as close to a 19th century artform as one could imagine. David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- Tous les hommes prennent les limites de leur champ visuel pour les limites du monde. Arthur Schopenhauer ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] Transient time differences
--- On Mon, 4/2/12, Eric Benjamin eb...@pacbell.net wrote: In subsequent thinking about his question it occurs to me that the plausibility, not of the signals in the recording but of acoustic signals that enter the listener's ears, is an important indicator of whether the listener finds the reproduction to be realistic or not. If our ears receive a large number of cues that are wrong, or at least implausible, then the reproduction is unrealistic. I would hasten to add visual cues as well. Seeing a small listening room and observing loudspeakers interferes with the creation of the illusion. Listening in a pitch black room (no light whatsoever!), as silly as it may seem, is imperative to create the suspension of disbelief. Try it! ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] Transient time differences
--- On Mon, 4/2/12, Eric Benjamin eb...@pacbell.net wrote: Don't take this to mean that I don't like ORTF recordings. I do like them. The best stereo recording that I have ever made was an ORTF recording. But then, I'm not a very good recording engineer. I think that one of the reasons that I like ORTF is that it introduces an artificial spaciousness which may compensate for the spaciousness that is lost in stereo reproduction. I think you might find that this lost sense of spaciousness (IACC) is attributable to 60-degree stereophony. Three-speaker stereophony (Trifield decoded) with the left/right loudspeakers subtending a 90 degree arc does not suffer from a lack of spaciousness thus obviating the need to create artificial spaciousness a la spaced-omnis in order to compensate for 60-degree stereophony. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] To all, RE: Dissertation
Wow what an amazing response! Thank you to you all, have been up for hours reading your links and exploring your comments. Absolutely agree Geoffrey that my working title needs clarity and focus. Thank you to all for your help. More information welcome...fascinating stuff! Much appreciated, Cara -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120403/fad2b7a4/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
On 04/02/2012 06:33 PM, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote: On 2 Apr 2012, at 17:57, Eero Aroeero@dlc.fi wrote: Because Nimbus Records devoted themselves strictly to one point miking, they didn't record any operas, as the singers, choir and the orchestra are scattered in a large area and you cannot get a good balance with one point miking. Sorry, that's bogus. When I go to the Opera, I sit at ONE SPOT. IF there's anything as a good seat in the opera house in question, where people in the audience can listen to a well balanced live performance, then that means there is a spot for single-point recording. snip If that's not possible, there's something wrong with the microphone, recording methodology, or both. a) putting a microphone into the audience is pretty much impossible for live situations, unless you are more interested in the respiratory functions of your seat neighbors than in the music. flying a soundfield high above makes for a nice horizontal blend of the music, but gives irritating height information. b) the listening room acoustics need to be factored into the equation. which is why the usual approach is to get the microphones way high, and to record in really large rooms - you are shifting the early reflections into a range where they are not perceived as coloration, but as echoes. a best seat in the audience kind of recording has its own set of coloring early reflections already, and it is very sensitive to listening room influence. (i guess the reason is our brain can sort out one set of ERs as natural and work around the coloration, but not two sets.) -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
