Re: [Sursound] [ot] off-radio
The hum can be heard as a horizontal noise somewhere in the distance. Now this is rather interesting. "The hum?" Tell me more, what is this "hum" all about? I didn't mean "The Hum". I meant the noise that comes from the engines, motors and tyres of the vechicles and from the ventilation and air conditioning fans of the buildings. Let's not go to the Hum. please. Sounds pretty much like what our tyres here in Finland do, in noise. Sampo, I am in Finland, not far from you. But if you try to measure the sound source which is a tyre pressing on snow, Well, the distant traffic noise comes from the tyres pressing against asphalt, partly or totally covered with ice. On snow, that noise is pretty quiet. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] [off-topic] Spirals
Chris Woolf wrote: Anyone any ideas how one could provide an audio horizon that could be a mimic of the gyro artificial horizon? A vague thought, that applies only to a small amount of surround sound recordings. I do mostly nature recordings and record also in urban areas, where the distant traffic hum is always present. The hum can be heard as a horizontal noise somewhere in the distance. Here in the north the distant traffic noise is also different in the winter and in the summer. We use studded tyres in the cars and they cause more high frequencies in the noise than unstudded tyres. Another thing that changes the sound scene in the winter is snow, it makes the general acoustics more dry and then it is easier to detect the direction of single sound sources. The problem is that a constant wide spectrum noise (the traffic hum) is more difficult to localize than signals that have transient content. Having said that, we _do_ localize an above flying jetplane, although it produces a noise type sound. We know from experience, that an aeroplane almost always is flying above us. But are we actively aware of the fact, that distant traffic hum appears as a zone above the horizon? Also, it would be somewhat strange to put artificially some kind of signal "beacons" at the horizon level around the listener, because they aren't part of the actual recording. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Getting permissons to record in different places.
Very good points, Thorsten. First, a confession. My most naive and idiotic recording gig was to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport in the 1980's. I just drove there in my own car, parked it and walked by the fence to record some jetplanes taxiing on the runway. I needed the whine of the jet engines as a sound effect to a radio play I was mixing. I was using two MKH412 shotgun microphones with foam windshields and a Nagra recorder. What a stupid bloke! I had recorded for about two minutes when I saw two guards standing behind me. They were just watching and they seemed to recognize, what I was doing. I kept on recording and when I thought that I had enough of the whine "for the first take", I stopped the tape recorder. The guards came to me and politely, as you also told, they said: You surely have some kind of an ID card?" I had of course been seen on the surveillance cameras and these two guards were nearby and came to check me. They adviced me to first contact the Info desk "the next time" at the airport and to get a permission from the security, when I come to record sound effects. - - - Another time, much later, I was recording with a Soundfield microphone in a large shopping centre. I wanted to capture the noise of the people moving, noise from the coffee shops and the background music. I had the Soundfield covered with a furry windshield, which made it look even bigger than it is. There I understood to contact the security first. I just talked to the first guard I met and he contacted the surveillance centre and they gave me a permission to record in those certain spots that I had suggested. I guess that one place where you _must_ ask for a permission to record, are all schoolyards and kindergartens and similar places. Usually recording isn't thought to be legally different from taking photographs or video, even though we recordists would think differently. Taking pictures or recording sound is violating people's intimacy in such places. The schoolyards are different from streets in this respect. Using binaural ear microphones and a small recorder in the pocket, I have been recording in the underground, trams, buses and museums. For those, I haven't asked for a permission, because so many other people have earphones in their ears and nobody really knows if you are recording or listening. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] DIY Head tracker
I am not sure, if head trackers have been in discussion lately, but thought that I'd share this. I haven't had too much interest in head trackers, because I have thought that they are expensive toys. A while ago I happened to find this: https://github.com/trsonic/nvsonic-head-tracker/ Tomasz Rudzki gives very good instructions how to build and to take in use a DIY head tracker, that works with several audio applications. I had never built or used any Arduinos or Raspberries, this was my first time. I have been a bit suspicious, because I thought one needs to write some code, but with this project, everything is ready-made, just download and install. The two boards needed are dirt cheap, I paid 15,80€ for the Arduino board and less than 10 € for the position sensor board. I already had a small plastic box and a USB Micro - USB A cable. Even in the worst case the costs are less than 30 €/$. There are only four leads to solder between the boards. Then download the Arduino IDE and the OSC HT Bridge softwares and install. I fiddled a little with the files, but it didn't take much time before I got it all working. I am using the head tracker with the Sparta AmbiBIN decoder in Reaper. It works great. I have always known that localization in binaural listening improves when head tracking is used. I urge anyone interested to build this tracker, it is an easy job to do. If needed, I can help in what I can. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Ambisonic UHJ Stereo decoder to speaker feeds
Daniel Courville wrote: > Maybe it's a question of terminology Yes. It's a question of terminology. When using impulse response files from Angelo's site, he has named the UHJ to "B-Format" conversion files , as _decoding_ (dec). _Encoding_ (enc) files are used for conversion from B-format to UHJ. Sampo Syreeni wrote: I'd argue there *is* no conversion from UHJ to B-format I know. The way I understood Mark Anderson's question, that he is looking for a _practical_ way to decode his existing UHJ recordings into surround loudspeaker playback with a software solution, ie. a software replacement for using UHJ decoding in a tuner amplifier, such as the Onkyo SV909. As far as I know, there are no software UHJ decoders into loudspeaker feeds available at all. This is easy to understand, because the demand for such software would be very little. (Both Onkyo 909 and the Meridian 565 use digital processing and do decode UHJ, but they are not what we are talking about.) I have converted some amount of UHJ recordings into loudspeaker feed signals in the way that has been already discussed. I just haven't done it in Reaper, I have been using AudioMulch, because it's simply a program that I am used to. This is what I do: Conversion from UHJ to W'X'Y' "B-format", then conversion from that into loudspeaker signals with a UHJ decoder VST plugin. The subjective listening experience of this is good enough for me, it cannot be worse than using an analog UHJ decoder such as a Minim or Troy. At least the software process doesn't add noise to the signal. It doesn't matter if the decoding isn't theoretically right, using an analog UHJ decoder doesn't provide any better accuracy either anyway. As Sampo says, when the signal has been UHJ encoded, there is no way to retrieve the original B-Format. I have quite a lot of Ambisonic UHJ CD:s and I'd rather listen to them as decoded into a surround setup than listening to them in stereo with two speakers. And by the way, the majority of UHJ encoded music releases _was_ recorded with a Soundfield type microphone, because the largest number of them were made by Nimbus Records. Nimbus didn't use the Soundfield-made microphone, they used their own setup made of two fig of eights and an omni. They did that mainly because the Soundfield was too noisy and they didn't need the Z signal, as it couldn't be encoded into UHJ and carved onto vinyl anyway. So, all Reaper users out there, please tell Mark how to do the routing in Reaper. David already was in the business. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Ambisonic UHJ Stereo decoder to speaker feeds
On Angelo's site, although he says there that this procedure is outdated: http://pcfarina.eng.unipr.it/Aurora/conversion_between_uhj_and_b.htm You first do a UHJ to B-format conversion by using the convolvers, then use a B-format to speakers decoder VST plugin, of which there are several to different kinds of layouts and number of speakers. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Ambisonic UHJ Stereo decoder to speaker feeds
Mark wrote I am currently using Reaper as my DAW. I did a search for Ambsonic VST plug-ins and found The Ambisonic Toolkit for Reaper. I played with that but found that that The UHJ decoding it could do was from UHJ W,X,Y,Z to stereo and what I am looking for is UHJ stereo to a speaker feed. I really do not need the ability to adjust to different 4 channel layouts like the Onkyo provided and could just live with a square. Hi Mark, You can do UHJ to speaker feeds in a DAW, but there is no simple plugin for that. You can start from here: http://pcfarina.eng.unipr.it/ambisonics.htm It's a while since I did it the last time myself, I need to look a bit more. I have been decoding in Audiomulch, but I am certain that the same procedure can be done in Reaper. Basicly you need a convolver plugin and some impulse response files and a little bit standard VST plugins. Unless someone else does it quicker, I'll look up the guide to build the VST process. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] Nimbus promo video
Hi All I uploaded a Nimbus Records Ambisonics promotion video into YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrGJxlrv08M All audio in the video is UHJ encoded Ambisonics. The video includes presentation about Ambisonics and several video/audio clips, for example from a concert, Zoo, steam railway and from the Farnborough Air Show. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] analog planner
And sorry, no parts list for the Pan/Rotate unit. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] analog planner
Oh what the h**k, I cannot find the schematics from Motherlode. Here you are: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u4erj032gxafsd5/AAAEdeRr-FVm9YOK13OwtN2Ra?dl=0 Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] analog planner
Finally, a Transcoder unit generating 2-channel UHJ only could be fed with stereo signals for front and rear stages with a stage width control on each. The Transcoder also has an B-Format input in an 5-pin XLR connector. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] analog planner
The schematics are in the Ambisonic Motherlode: http://decoy.iki.fi/dsound/ambisonic/motherlode/ Somewhere in there.. Eero Richard Elen kirjoitti 17.2.2020 klo 11:57: The Audio & Design Recording boxes that Geoff Barton designed were intended as (analogue) outboard units that could be patched into a conventional mixing console to generate (mainly) first-order (all there was) Ambisonic B-Format. The Pan-Rotate unit included eight 360-degree controls, each with a radius vector (distance from centre) control with a switched position for maximum radius vector. In addition there was a B-Format Converter which allowed console panpots to be used to pan across a quadrant, using four groups and an aux send. Finally, a Transcoder unit generating 2-channel UHJ only could be fed with stereo signals for front and rear stages with a stage width control on each. The units are described in these articles: http://ambisonic.net/branwell_arb.html http://ambisonic.net/ambimix.html I'm afraid I don't have circuit diagrams but Geoff presumably has. --R ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Software Oscillator
https://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/us/products/generator/generator.htm Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Zoom H3-VR: new Facebook users' group
Have new Zoom H3:s stopped clonking when you move the microphone? I tried one and returned it to the shop. If it hasn't, it's still not yet the device for me. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] DCP-o-matic
Hi Sursounders I am not sure if all of you are aware of a donationware software package that allows you to make .dcp files from your own audio and video files. https://dcpomatic.com/ If you happen to know or are good friends with or can pribe :-) the local Cinema staff, you could possibly sometimes sneak in and try how your surround mix works in a big theatre. I was lecturing in a small workshop in January, where all who took part to the workshop, got their 5 minute videos shown on the large screen with surround sound audio. The experiment worked fine with the files that people made with the software. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Waves NX5
Bo-Erik Sandholm wrote: I have bought the waves head tracker and software, I am unable to install the software on my most powerful pc, support was not helpful. Shame on them if you have paid for the purchase but cannot get it working. They should return your money or help you with the installation. Did you get the software working in some other computer? The headtracker protocol is secret so headtracker is useless for other software. Ok. I haven't tried the headtracker, so I didn't know about that. However, the NX5 itself does work with other than Waves hosts, I checked it with Nuendo, Wavelab (both Steinberg) and Reaper. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] Waves NX5
Hi All I haven't noticed if there has been discussion in Sursound about the Waves NX5 virtual room plugin. I happened to bump up with the NX 5 last week when I was teaching a group of artists to use surround sound in their works. They were all using laptops and headphones. We could provide 5.1 loudspeaker monitoring just for a few people at the same time. https://www.waves.com/plugins/nx#introducing-nx-virtual-mix-room I had never tried NX 5 before. I downloaded and installed it and used it for the five days trial period. I have always been pretty sceptical about virtual room listening through headphones, but the NX 5 kinda works for me. It worked so well, that I actually made a three minutes test mix with it in 5.1 surround sound for video. I always have difficulties in localizing any phantom images in the front sector, the same happened with the NX 5. Having said that, the sound image does localize outside the head and on the sides and behind the directional localization is quite good. NX 5 has head tracking, and surprisingly it works quite well even with a built-in laptop camera or a simple USB camera. Waves is also selling a Bluetooth head tracker, which costs as much as the software. You cannot use your personal HRTF curve set, but you can feed in two strategic head measurements. You can also select a headphone EQ from a short list of some studio class headphones. It is possible to tailor the virtual speaker layout. The head tracking is a bit slow, but if you accept that, it works quite well. I noticed that I had more use of the virtual listening for 5.1 than for a two channel stereo. In both of these I think that it is better to have the head tracking on than to have it disabled. I didn't have time to try NX 5 with Ambisonics. There is software for that also. Anyone else have experience about this plugin? Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Zoom H3-VR anyone?
Ralf R Radermacher wrote: Draw your own conclusions... I drew mine. I've sent the Zoom H3 VR back to where I bought it from. I'll wait till Zoom gets the faults fixed. I am not very eager on fixing a new product that has just come from the production line. Nor am I interested to void the guarantee by glueing the mic myself. The joint in the plastic bar supporting the mic capsules holder is a tiny bit loose. It rotates just slightly, but enough to cause a clonking sound when the mic is moved and it is in a certain orientation. Zoom advertises the mic to be used with 3D video cameras. These cameras are mostly used in motion, but the mic will create noises if it is moved. Otherwise, during some short test recordings I noticed that the H3 VR isn't too bad. It's lightweight and handy. Almost too lightweight, it feels like a toy. The buttons and the Menu structure are similar to previous Zooms, so H3 was easy for me to use. The self noise is quite low, I liked it. Strangely, no possibility to drop Markers into the recording without pausing the recording. You can add audible tone markers without pausing. The foam windshield isn't any good for outside recordings, get the furry shield. The body of the recorder would also need some weather protection, there's several small slots where the rainwater can get inside. Eero http://www.tonfiks.fi ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Izotope RX7
Paul Hodges: Or as they say: "including Multi-channel support up to 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos" which looks like ten channels to me. Doh! :-D You are right. There you see, I haven't even opened a multichannel file yet in RX7 and rush to write about this... I'll find time to check about it. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Izotope RX7
Gary Gallagher wrote: I'm not sure if it varies the processing between channels in anyway. Well, the noise reduction two channel stereo version certainly keeps all stereo information intact and seems to treat stereo recordings well. I have never heard complaints or comments about that. Why would the multichannel version work in a different way? Anyway, I need to try the multichannel noise reduction one of these days. We'll see then. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] Izotope RX7
Hi All Not exactly a surround sound topic, but maybe it hasn't been mentioned in Sursound yet, that the latest RX7 version from Izotope has now multichannel support. RX plugins now have a maximum of seven audio channels. I really have use for multichannel noise reduction, and would have had already ages ago. The Soundfield microphone recordings that I made with different SFM models were hissy. I often tried to record quiet ambiences and that's when the mic's self noise didn't sound good at all. I did try to do noise reduction with stereo plugins, but you can never know what happens to the phase differences between the signal pairs and that does bad to the sound image. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Zoom H3-VR
Ralf R Radermacher: Nothing wrong with that. More often than not, I'm one myself. I just wouldn't expect a supplier targeting a mass market to cater for my quirks and oddities. What hasn't been said in this thread, is that the H3-VR is clearly targeted to the people who shoot 3D video with 3D video recorders in the matching price class. If you look at the 3D or 360 videos in the Web, they have mono or two channel stereo sound. Something is missing. You can turn the video image 360 degrees around, but the sound orientation doesn't change at all with mono sound and you don't get any kind of auditory cues about the directions. With stereo or binaural sound it isn't much better, as the auditory cues don't match with the picture dimensions, there is no front-to- back separation. People who shoot the 360 video with three GoPro cameras are not the ones who invest into a Sennheiser Ambeo for sound. They are the H3 buyers. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Zoom H3-VR
Ralf R Radermacher wrote: Methinks their marketing department know quite well what they're doing. I could come up with a dozen things they could have done better or differently with their other portable recorders. Still, they're selling like hot cakes. There's something like a sweet spot for pricing if you're targeting the non-pro consumer market. I for one can't wait to spend 350 USD on the H3 but I'd think twice at 450. Seriously, how many people care about numerical specs, apart from a handful of freaks on this list? Ralf Exactly my thoughts as well. Thank you Ralf for saving me for the need to write it. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] tetrahedral mic record
umashankar wrote: I read this many years ago so cannot remember a source, but I think on-axis is not the best direction for a tetrahedral array. Funny that you remember that discussion, it must have been more than a decade ago in Sursound. I can't remember whoever started the thread, but I asked the same question as Steven. I had played with the rotating plugins and came to think that I could point one of the SFM capsules directly towards the center of the performers. I was very soon told that it's not a good idea. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] ***UNCHECKED*** Zoom H2N - thoughts?
Augustine Leudar wrote> My guess would be the AD converters are not great I had my H2 measured by my then employer's Microphone Maintenance. They also said that H2 is very good in many respects, but they said that there is no use of using the 20 bit sampling rate, especially with microphones connected to the external mic input, as the SN ratio is so poor. You don't benefit anything from the four extra bits. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] VB Audio software
Hi All I happened to find a couple of interesting donationware programs. VBAN can send up to 8 channel audio between devices in a network, or at least that's what they say. I haven't tried this one yet. Could work for a multiroom surround sound system. https://www.vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/vban.htm However, I did install the Virtual Audio Cable. It allows connecting two computer applications together. https://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm I used Reaper as a transmitting program and AudioMulch as the receiving part. Ta - dah! Now I can do waveform editing and mixing in Reaper and play the audio in real time to AudioMulch for multichannel panning, processing and decoding. The first Virtual Audio Cable can be downloaded and used without making necessarily a donation. The next pairs of channels need to be paid for. (Of course it it decent to pay also for the first one.) The latency between the channels should be checked, I haven't done that yet. The "better" version supports 24bit / 384 kHz audio streams. https://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm#DownloadASIOBridge VB-Audio has also other applications. I am not sure of I should consider VB applications as serious audio tools or not. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Simple Software to Play a 6-channel WAV File
http://www.memsolution.com/ https://www.brightsign.biz/index.php https://alcorn.com/product-category/audio/ Egreat used to have simple players, dunno if they still have: http://en.egreatworld.com/index.html Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Simple Software to Play a 6-channel WAV File (Windows)?
Hi All Wavosaur plays multichannel files and all channels can be routed through a multichannel interface. http://tinyurl.com/ydemrofs But I understood that Len didn't want to use too complicated software? Do you need/want to use a computer at all? How about a standalone SD card or HD player? Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Re. Re: Re Re: Ambisonic Mic Comparison
Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2017-06-26, David Pickett wrote: This whole business of low noise microphones and preamps is in my experience a non-issue in the vast majority of cases. Very few environments are quiet enough to be softer than the noise level of most microphones. Agreed, and thanks for pointing that aspect out aloud. Quite a number of people -- myself in particular because I have very little on-field experience -- tend to be swayed by minute theoretical disagreements which have absolutely nothing to do with our two shared goals: the best all-round practical signal chain possible, and the best sounding records (in their many forms) achievable within its bounds. I agree that in most cases the noise isn't a critical factor in recording. However, here is an example of minority: I recorded radio plays (monirty) in the Finnish language (minority) in Finland (minority). The Finnish population is just five million and about 10% of the population don't speak Finnish as their mother language. Some radio plays get just 20.000 listeners. (Though some plays I produced, got half a million. :-) ) Still, I tried to use Ambisonics in radio production for a period of time in the 1990's. At the best time I knew nine listeners, who had a decoder and a speaker setup. Minority! I could have phoned them all and informed about the next UHJ transmission, no need to put the information in the newspaper. Anyway, the microphone wasn't the biggest problem in the production, there were many other other things, but very soon I noticed that I couldn't use the Soundfield microphones at all. Their self noise was too high. I was using the MK IV, ST250 and the MK V. It was much better to use single low noise mono microphones, such as the Sennheiser MKH 30 and to place the signal into the soundfield by panning. I often used stereo pairs to capture also the actors movements. The Finnish Radio Drama is similar to other Scandinavian countries in that actors use a large variation in their speech. Sometimes they go very soft, less than whispering. This is not very common in Radio Drama in many parts of the world. Very often the actors just "read" loud. However, using a Soundfield in a radio drama studio isn't very clever, as there isn't any special acoustics that would need to be recorded. It is much easier to add the room acoustics with a signal processor. I used a four channel output Lexicon and the Quantec Room Simulator. Using the Soundfield in on-location recordings would have captured nice acoustics, but the Soundfields of that time were very clumsy to use in the field. You couldn't move with a Soundfield and follow the actors, as the suspension was lousy and caused noises and the windshields grew very large. As a compromise, I recorded atmospheres on location without the actors and mixed those into the play and that lead into good results. But took much more time, which always wasn't available in radio production. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] multichannel VST recorder os x
Acousmodules has 8, 16 and 24-track VST recorders, but unfortunately they are not Mac VST type. At least I think they aren't. http://acousmodules.free.fr/reservoir.htm MultiRec 16 almost at the bottom of the page. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Matrix H lives ??
Andrew wrote: Programme material* is the Last Night of the Proms (excerpt) and some BBC drama. The Last Night of the Proms from 1977 is a rarity. These two CD:s have been released of the Proms, and it is not certified, if these are H-Matrix at all. They do decode well with an Ambisonic decoder. - Jessye Norman, BBC Chorus, BBC Symphony orchestra, - The last night of the proms, cond. Sir Colin Davis. Live recordings from the Royal Albert Hall, Philips 420 085-2 (Germany) H-matrix. Tracks 1-3 & 8-13 were recorded in 1969, tracks 4-7 were recorded in 1972 - The Last Night of the Proms. Philips 6502-001 (LP), Matrix H (England), This was the original release of the 1969 Proms concert. - - - Do you think the BBC Drama could be The Seventh Church from BBC Glasgow? It was recorded in 1977. I have a good quality Compact Cassette UHJ version of it and also copies of parts of the B-Format master. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was recorded in 1978. See: http://www.surrounddiscography.com/uhjdisc/uhjhtm.htm Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Soundfield mic article
Also in Sampo's Motherlode: http://decoy.iki.fi/dsound/ambisonic/motherlode/source/The%20Sound%20Field%20microphone_J%20Howard%20Smith_dB_1978.pdf shorter: http://tinyurl.com/jq734cx - - - Here's Howard Smith's article in Studio Sound 1979 http://decoy.iki.fi/dsound/ambisonic/motherlode/source/Ambisonics_The%20Calrec%20Soundfield%20microphone_J%20Howard%20Smith_Studio%20Sound_1979.pdf or shorter: http://tinyurl.com/h36r7wb Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] The BBC & Quadrophony in 1973
Bo-Erik Sandholm wrote: I have head from guys at swedish radio that the Finland radio corporation have done a lot of Ambisonic recordings Yes. I did. Some of my colleagues were a little interested, but as the chicken and egg situation only continued, the interest slowly dropped. No decoders, no listeners, no sensible and straightforward production tools for broadcasting studios. and still continued to do so. As far as I know, they don't. I'm outta there. However, B-Format and the Soundfield technology are largely used in TV Sports sound at the Finnish Broadcasting Company. The output is discrete 5.1 in HD TV channels. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Professor I Lirpa Quad Matrix
Oh, zero group-delay wickers are rare as hen's teeth these days... But I am certain that professor Lirpa's VDRS, Vehicular Disc Reproduction System, that solved almost all vinyl disc player problems, would have improved matrixed surround sound on vinyl discs as well, if it would not have been forgotten when digital audio started to take over: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/70s/Audio-1978-04.pdf Page 71 -> Eero 6.1.2017, 14:22, Dave Malham wrote: :-) :-) :-) Looks good. I'm off to the forest now to find some phase coherent twigs and zero group-delay wicker.Wish me luck ;-) :-) Andrew ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Re-Routing VST Plugin
Hi Have you checked in Acousmodules? http://acousmodules.free.fr/infos.htm I have Miniroute 66 installed and at least it seems to work in reaper. Try to check if Accumatrix 16, or Matrix 24 P would do the job. These two are under: http://acousmodules.free.fr/reservoir.htm Eero 11.4.2016, 18:57, Sönke Pelzer wrote: Hi, Does anybody know a 're-routing' plugin (Windows VST) for the channel order inside a single multi-channel track (Reaper). I want to prepare a mapping from 40 Ambisonic channels to the range 1-64 with some gaps in between and criss-crossing. This can be done with the hardware output routing of reaper, but a) you cannot prepare it without a 64-ch sound interface, and b) it is very inconvenient to click through that whole thing on site (and possibly multiple times). Thanks, Sönke ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] OT Stereo stage width - Was: Static stereo source in rotating soundfield, possible?
Thank you Eric. That sums it great up, and you give the sources of the researches. Finally some facts to the table. Some of those papers are in the Motherlode, but by which names? Eero 30.3.2016, 21:44, Eric Benjamin kirjoitti: There are several classic papers on 2-channel stereo reproduction. I'll give them here: [1] Blumlein, A. D., British Patent 394 325 (application 1931 Dec. 14; granted 1933 June 14). [2] Clark, H., Dutton, G., and Vanderlyn, P., "The 'Stereosonic' Recording and Reproducing System", IRE Trans. Audio, vol. AU-5, pp. 96- p. 380 (1957 July-Aug). [3] Leakey, D., "Some Measurements on the Effects of Interchannel Intensity and Time Differences in Two Channel Sound Systems", J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., vol. 31, pp. 977-986 (1959 July). [4] Bauer, B., “Phasor analysis of some stereophonic phenomena”, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 33, pp. 1536–1539, Nov. 1961. [5] Dutton, G. "The Assessment of Two-Channel Stereophonic Reproduction Performance in Studio Monitor Rooms, Living Rooms and Small Theatres", J. Audio Eng. Soc. , vol. 10, pp. 98-105 (1962 Apr). [6] Makita, Y. "On the Directional Localisation of Sound in the Stereophonic Sound Field", E.B.U. Review, Part A, No. 73, pp. 102-108 (1962 June). [7] Mertens, H., “Directional hearing in stereophony -Theory and experimental verification” Europ. Broadcasting Union Rev. Part A, 92, 1-14 (1965) [8] Bennett, J. Barker, K. and Edeko, F. “A New Approach to the Assessment of Stereophonic Sound System Performance”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., vol. 33, pp. 314-321 (1985 May). If I were to summarize all of these, on the subject of speaker angle, the consensus would be that they recommend a small angle because it works better. Dutton, in particular, used an angle of 53 degrees, that being what he observed being used in practice. 53 degrees is the angle subtended by speakers where the distance between the speakers is the same as the distance to the center of the line connecting the two speakers. I have two observations from my own research. The first is that the ear signals resulting from equal signals at the loudspeakers is not the same as for a real source located between the loudspeakers. The second is that, if I measure the ear signals for a real listener for the equal loudspeaker signal case, the two ears are different. Why? Because the summation of the signals at the ears is so sensitive that a condition of balance is never achieved. The loudspeakers don't have the same sensitivity, they are not precisely the same distance from the ears, and the listener's head itself isn't precisely symmetrical, isn't located precisely on the centerline, and isn't pointed precisely directly ahead. All of these factors contribute to the perception that the phantom image isn't like a real sound source. Eric ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] OT Stereo stage width
Peter Lennox wrote: At the back of my mind, the4re's something nagging me - I'm sure I've read of someone advocating 3 speaker stereo (is that similar to trifield?) and finding that a wider spacing of LR speakers was desirable? - makes sense. Well, Harvey Fletcher and the Bell Labs team started from the idea of a "wall of microphones" and a corresponding "wall of loudspeakers". They did a lot of experiments during many years and reduced the amount of channels to three, finally to two. Three speakers would have been better, but it wasn't easy to develop a three channel medium in the 30's. Alan Blumlein at the EMI started with 30...35 degrees stereo stage with two loudspeakers. Remember, he was thinking about "binaural" not stereo sound. And in the very beginning of the binaural project, he wanted to create a better sound reproduction system for the cinema. He didn't like the mismatch when the character in the picture was moving, but his voice didn't move with the person. Blumlein also thought about the depth of the sound image. He planned using four or more speakers stacked on both sides of the screen for this. Most likely he never tried this. I don't know did anyone recommend a particular speaker setup in the 1950's when stereo commercially caught up. Anyway, all marketing hyped the two separate channels, not a natural sound image. That's why they used the table tennis recordings and passing trains on demo records. With those, even the worst localizer could hear that the sound "is moving". And: the "high frequencies are on the left (violins) and the low frequencies on the right (double basses). I still meet people who think this is what stereo means. Living Stereo released three channel stereo recordings in the 50's. Maybe someone knows if they were released on reel-to-reel tapes as three-channel? These recordings have been re-released on SACD. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] OT Stereo stage width - Was: Static stereo source in rotating soundfield, possible?
David Pickett wrote: Somebody else said that he has encountered people who have difficulties with stereo. I said that I have met during the three decades or so, students who perceive a stereo image reproduced by two loudpeakers in different ways. Most people seem to integrate a stereo sound image with a 60 degrees speaker angle. They localize a center phantom image, phantom images along the line between the speakers, and they hear the surrounding ambience beyond the speakers in recordings that have large phase differences. They can localize instruments in different distances in the image. There are also people, who say that they just hear sound from "two cabinets". They cannot even localize a center phantom image. They cannot hear a center phantom image moving sideways if they move from the center line. It was difficult to demo decoded UHJ into four speakers to these people, as they just heard FOUR speakers! Then there is a group of people between these. They kinda are able to localize phantom images between the speakers. The thing continues in binaural audio. People localize in very different ways. I never localize anything in front of me with binaural. All other directions work well. Further on; I have met people, who don't think that there is anything wrong with a 180 degrees phase difference between the channels, even with headphones. They are happy to listen to that. For me it is intolerable, I need to put hands on my ears or cut the music right away. 180 degrees phase difference could be used for torturing me. :-) I haven't studied this anything deeper. I just have a feeling that different people perceive phase and time differences in their hearing system in different ways. Why would directional hearing be a different thing in perception than seeing colours or detecting different smells? If 90 degrees between the speakers works for you, fine. Most likely the commercial recordings you are listening to, have been monitored with an 60 degrees angle, as that has been the "standard" setup in studios for more than 60 years. It didn't happen when 5.1 came up. On the contrary, the working group that defined the 5.1 setup, started from a center channel and a good stereo image in front that works for most people. As Dave Malham says, there must be AES papers where this 60 degrees has been taken from. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Static stereo source in rotating soundfield, possible?
It's early days in VR. I agree with Stefan. A couple of months ago I attended a seminar, where we were shown some 360 video examples of holiday travel advertising clips. VR is a nice tool for the travel agencies, as you can get a hint of what you could see if you travel there. It just looked like they don't know yet, how to use the medium. If I was watching such a 360 video, I'd like to localize the guide's voice-over in front of me all the time, no matter where I turn my sight. As the person is not seen in the picture, the voice-over is not in conflict with what you see. Also, I'd rather _not_ localize the voice-over inside my head. (Using W.) I would feel uncomfortable with a guide's voice inside my head. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] OT Stereo stage width - Was: Static stereo source in rotating soundfield, possible?
Hi Dave I have a feeling that this subject has been discussed in Sursound many times before. The point in my reply was that when you use two channel stereo in the surround sound field, a wide angle between the virtual loudspeakers doesn't work too well. I don't know where the 60 degrees angle between the stereo speakers originally came from. Blumlein used a 30...35 degrees angle between the speakers. When I started to work in broadcasting in 1977, all control rooms were equipped with a stereo listening setup. The speakers were arranged so that they were in a 60 degrees angle from the mixer's seat. I have noticed with students, that there is a wide spectrum of people, most do can integrate a stereo sound image between the loudpeakers with 60 degrees. I have met people, who tell that they cannot hear any kind of a stereo image between the loudspeakers, whatever the angle. They hear sound from two speakers. At the other end are people, who can hear an integrated stereo image with 90 degrees. I don't know. Anyway, in music industry and boradcasting, you need to have some standard. The broadcasting house I worked in, had then 250 radio studios. The listening conditions needed to be at least somewhat similar between control rooms, so that you could continue the work in another studio another day. Why 60 degrees was chosen, I don't know. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Static stereo source in rotating soundfield, possible?
Let's say I have a stereo music bed in a spherical video Oops, I didn't read carefully _that_ part. Anyway, all answers tell you that it is possible. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Different usages, different spaces, different decoders?
Ok, here. I put it in my DB: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22100835/Comparative%20study%20of%20effective%20soundfield%20reconstruction%20Furlong%20AES%20198909012014_.pdf I won't keep it there for a long time. Please download. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Different usages, different spaces, different decoders?
Here's one paper Dermot that was involved with: http://tinyurl.com/jnsla88 Can't find the other one... Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Never do electronic in public.
David Pickett wrote: But... I seem to be the only person I know who complains about ALL the dialogue coming from the centre speaker on 5.1 movies! Having sterero dialogue seems to me to be a basic necessity for realism (AKA consistent and natural cues)! That was the fault of the film sound that Alan Blumlein didn't like. That's why he started his project to "make the voice follow the person". There was a period in 1950's when the voice did follow the person, especially in widescreen movies. Oklahoma! is a good example. But soon the dialogue was put into the center channel only. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Ambisonic recordings and noise reduction - best practise?
Right after hitting "send", I remembered: I did the noise reduction in a DAW. First sampled the noise from the WX pair. Did adjustments to the noise reduction module. Processed that and bounced WX. Then removed the WX clip from the DAW track, opened the YZ file onto the same track (starting from 0:00, as the WX had been). Didn't change the noise reduction module settings at all. Processed and bounced the YZ. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Ambisonic recordings and noise reduction - best practise?
Trond Been there, but that was many years ago. Have you tried using the noise reduction modules as plugins? - Split the channels into 2-channel pairs. - For example in ProTools or Reaper or similar, insert two instances of the noise reduction VST into two separate stereo tracks. - Route and bounce/render into separate files. In plugin mode I think you need to use realtime analysis for the noise, which _just might_ cause differences between the channels. You could also use modular synth software such as Blogue Bidule or AudioMulch. I quickly tried the routing in Reaper and Mulch and they seem to work. I didn't check latencies or changes in phase. - - - When I actually did noise reduction to B-format recordings, I think I processed the files as two "stereo" files and had two go's. Must have used RX, Sonnox or Voxengo noise reduction. I took the noise analyze from one of the channels, most likely X. First processed W and X. When processing YZ, I copied the X analysis to YZ and used it. I don't remember getting any serious problems with the phase. At least the noise got lower. I didn't use the Z in HOA. The original problem was the high self noise of the AMS ST 250, which really bugged me. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] Audio cable - relic
Sorry, forgot to comment. I use another subject to avoid off-topicing. Augustine wrote: I look forward to the day when I hear the question "Grandad - what's an audio cable ?" I have been looking forward for decades to the day when I hear the question: "Grandad, what is that clumsy obejct that the last century singers hold in front of their mouth?" I really cannot understand why it is so difficult to construct a solution to capture a singer's voice without a bulky microphone. Yes, there are lavaliers on the cheek and forehead, and headset mics, but they don't have the same sound as a good vocalist mic, and don't look too attractive either. It is possible to shoot a picture from a distance without puttting anything in the way between a nice looking singer and the camera, but it isn't possible to capture the sound in the same way. (Yes, I know about the differences between acoustics and light travel.) Of course in some music, such as rap or hip-hop a microphone is used as part of the performance. But I'm not sure if I'd miss that either. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Wireless speakers
A bit googling: http://www.coolatoola.com/ 8 channels, Mac, Linux. Some limitations though. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] OT: Opportunities for Study and Funding at the University of Birmingham / BEAST
Sorry, still continuing the off-topic with this subject. Dave Malham wrote: ...they sure as hell notice if voices don't "come from the actor's mouth". Hehe. A propos Blumlein: Reminds me of the story told in the Blumlein biography, which explains how Blumlein became interested about "binaural" (as he called it) audio in cinema in the first place. Alan Blumlein had been watching a film with his wife. He asked her after the performance: "Can you hear that the voice is not coming from where the actor is?" His wife hadn't noticed that. Blumlein said that "I know how to fix that". That's when he started to develop spatial sound for the film. His original idea wasn't to create auditory space for the film sound, but to make the audio image follow the actors moving in the picture. He did this. See "Walking and talking": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqaMiDqE6QQ Blumlein's original idea wasn't used for a very long time. The voices following the image was used only during a relatively short period in widescreen movies (many of them Cinerama and similar formats) in the USA in the 50's. Just watch Oklahoma in stereo and enjoy. :-) Ever since, 99% of all dialogue has been placed in the center channel for the reasons Dave is describing. There are even more reasons. The timbre of the voice is different, if it moves away from the center channel. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] Acousmatic
Dave Malham wrote: Not quite sure how we got from defining acousmatic music to film sound I mentioned that the word is used with cinema sound. It's not just music that can be acousmatic, it's sound as such. Michel Chion has developed a number of conceptions that were needed to be able to discuss cinema sound. Such words didn't exist. Acousmatic is one of them. There's others: acousmêtre, audio-vision, synchresis, etc. These have nothing to do with technical things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chion Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] OT: Opportunities for Study and Funding at the University of Birmingham / BEAST
H...well. Yes, basicly. As used today, in film/cinema sound, an acousmatic sound is something you can hear, but you cannot see the actual source of the sound in the picture. Eero 20.11.2015, 23:29, Dave Malham wrote: Hmm - well, it is a very "European" thing. Actually, the Wikipedia article on it is pretty good on the subject, but in a very simplistic way, it could be said that it is music that is designed to be heard *only* through loudspeakers. Dave ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] SQ QUAD
Aah, well... I don't feel that I have fallen into any trap, as I have never even tried to understand the quad matrix systems. I used surround sound in production in my work in the 1990's and none of the matrix systems did what I wanted. I look forward to read from your blog, when you really reveal what the "advanced and mysterious decoding systems" really keep inside. Right now, I couldn't find any practical solutions that anyone could use from your site. That is why people keep using the programmes that I linked to. Until then, cheers Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] SQ QUAD
Richard wrote: The basis for their work appears to be the many inacurate sites filling the web with 'oh-so' wrong, ill informed inacurate information. Well, this subject isn't much of my interests, but at least Stephan Hotto's decoder claims to use exactly the equations you are citing: Implemented Decoding Matrixes: SQ (CBS): LF = L RF = R LB = 0.707 * jL - 0.707 * R RB = 0.707 * L - 0.707 * jR http://www.hotto.de/software/quadrophonicmatrixdecoder.html Apart from that, I don't think see anything very "complicated" about that. (And I am very bad with mathematics.) Multipliers mean different gains, the needed phase shifts are simply +/- 90 and +/- 180 degrees. There's plenty of phase-shifter plugins available that do the job. Been there, done that in AudioMulch. Worked fine for me. Now, if you'd like to go the gain riding (logic, as they were called) path of the analog decoders, that's where I raise my hands. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] SQ QUAD
Richard wrote: the two software programs you've been provided links for don't decode it, they are so wrong it's hard to know where to start. snip I don't normally like advertising it like this Well, sometimes it is good idea to to advertise. I have never heard of your blog and would have never known. I only know about those two programs and the cumbersome procedures people developed to decode SQ with Audition. I have a small pile of quad vinyls as well. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] SQ QUAD
There's another: http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~junglas/SQdecode/SQdecode.html Eero 20.10.2015, 20:35, David Pickett kirjoitti: I dont expect them to ever sound as good as an Ambisonic recording, but I bought some SQ-encoded LPs today. I get pleasant results playing them out of phase with the same on two rear channels at -6 dB. My reason for writing is to ask whether anyone here knows what an SQ decoder actually did. Despite all the BS Ben Bauer spouted when he presented it to the AES in London (or was it the BKSTS?), I seem to recall that it wasnt too sophisticated and perhaps, knowing this, one can synthesize something better than the above in a DAW. Thanks in advant for any pointers. David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] SQ QUAD
There's one: http://www.hotto.de/software/quadrophonicmatrixdecoder.html Eero 20.10.2015, 20:35, David Pickett kirjoitti: I dont expect them to ever sound as good as an Ambisonic recording, but I bought some SQ-encoded LPs today. I get pleasant results playing them out of phase with the same on two rear channels at -6 dB. My reason for writing is to ask whether anyone here knows what an SQ decoder actually did. Despite all the BS Ben Bauer spouted when he presented it to the AES in London (or was it the BKSTS?), I seem to recall that it wasnt too sophisticated and perhaps, knowing this, one can synthesize something better than the above in a DAW. Thanks in advant for any pointers. David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Advice on new loudspeaker array... Genelec 8010 speakers?
Hi My current speakers are Genelec 8040's. The sub is 7050B, although it isn't intended to be used with the 8040:s. I use a designated cross-over for the sub. The 8040 goes down to 48 Hz, so the sub actually only takes care of the first two octaves. The stereo imaging is very good. I have also built during the years a lot of surround setups with Genelec speakers, mainly used S30 Triamps and 1030:s. I now use the speakers for audio restoration, so I need very accurate reproduction of very tiny details. That's one reason why I chose Genelecs. Ok - I am Finnish and Genelec is Finnish, so you have the right to think that I am biased. I have been using Genelec loudspeakers from the beginning of 1980's, but I don't have any connection with the company or their business. I have no experience of Behringer speakers, so I cannot compare. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] [OT] Recording uni lectures ...
Hi I've simply used (an old) Zoom H2 SD-card recorder. I have usually set it for mp3 for lecture recordings (good enough audio quality and lots of duration) and selected a fig of eight mono recording, so that possible questions from the audience also get recorded (at least somehow). I have asked a permission from the lecturer to make a recording for my own use. So far that hasn't been rejected. The recorder should be placed close to the speaker, exactly as you would with a separate microphone. I have also sometimes placed the recorder close to the PA speaker in the room, but the quality through the PA may have thumps or you may miss some of the speech for some other reason. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
[Sursound] 3D Sound Labs Neoh headphones
Hmm... Interesting: http://3dsoundlabs.com/en/ http://3dsoundlabs.com/en/how-does-it-work/#psychoacoustique Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] UHJ anyone?
Hi All I don't have an UHJ decoder hooked up at the moment, but by listening to Flower of Life in stereo and looking at the goniometer I must say that this recording is not UHJ encoded. There is a lot of content with large phase differences. Those will decode to the rear part of the soundfield with a UHJ decoder. To my taste, the phase difference is at places almost unpleasant with stereo playback. The phase difference may feel less painful as UHJ decoded. However, during the length of the piece I don't see any content that would have gone through an UHJ encoder in the soundfield front sector. The tones that start at 5'21 have been panned hard left in stereo. There is a slight phase difference between the L and R components, which would not happen in UHJ encoding, the phase difference would be 0 degrees at both - 45 and +45 directions (or NW and NE, if you like). The tone that starts at 10'41 is possibly the best center front panned sound. If it were UHJ encoded, there would be a 33 degrees phase difference between the channels for it. Now there isn't, the phase difference is much less than that. In overall, the goniometer display doesn't look at all like that in an UHJ encoded music. I've looked a lot at those. Eero http://www.tonfiks.fi/english ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] UHJ anyone?
Hi Marc Software, VST plugins. My favourite and possibly the one with the best graphic resolution and display is The Flux Stereo Tool: http://www.fluxhome.com/products/freewares/stereotool-v3 There was a thread about recognizing UHJ encoding some time ago, can't remember when. Must have been years... Eero Is your goniometer part of a UHJ decoding hardware, or software? It would be nice to have a common method to detect UHJ, in the form of a simple software. Or is it something that only experts can do? -- Marc ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] ST250 positional test request
John Leonard wrote: I've come across an anomaly in some archive work Unfortunately I don't have a ST250 in my use anymore, so I can't help with your actual problem. However, my colleague Teemu did notice a strange low frequency boost in the 250, when it was at end fire position. The boost wasn't there when the microphone was upright or suspended from above. If I don't remember wrong, the boost was only in the Y-signal. We never found out why this happened. We first thought that the suspension cradle would have a resonance, but that wasn't the case. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Oculus Rift Visual Demo + Ambisonic Audio Available?
Hi As usual, we seem to be going around in circles. I found a trace of a Sursound posting I made two and a half years ago. :-) Richard Dobson wrote: Out of interest - what research has been done on this where the listeners were lying down? The subject is not my area, but I know of an old paper: James Lackner: Influence of Posture on the Spatial Localization of Sound http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=4554 James Lackner has researched things related to this thread. Googled these: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/5/3/579.full.pdf http://www.cns.bu.edu/~shinn/resources/pdfs/2001/2001JNeurophys_Dizio.pdf Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Oculus Rift Visual Demo + Ambisonic Audio Available?
Hi Exactly what Dave wrote. The human auditory system has also learned and got used to which particular sounds normally come from above and from below. Leaves rustling in the wind, birds, aeroplanes - from above. Footsteps etc. from below. I have tried playing such sounds from the wrong, opposite direction The listeners have been very confused about the direction. In some cases they didn't even recognize the sound. Rotating the soundfield onto it's side (= rotating laterally -90 degrees) makes the listener totally whacked up, as an aeroplane just simply doesn't pass you by from your _left_ side. :-) Eero Dave Malham wrote: Have I really heard sounds from below me?? Yes, all the time - every time I walk around (other than a really, really, soft carpet), in stair wells let alon leaning out of windows, in cable cars, in microlights, hot air balloons, mesh floored lighting bridges - I could go on and on (and I frequently do :-). Mind you, it's not as robust as horizontal imaging - witness what happens if you play recordings of birds flying below you (top of Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire), it's impossible - or very nearly so - to hear them as anything but above. Dave On 26 November 2014 at 03:22, Sampo Syreeni de...@iki.fi wrote: On 2014-11-21, dw wrote: The state-of-the-art finds it very difficult to render sounds below the listener. True. But then, at the same time, have you ever truly heard sounds from right below yourself? Does even the human auditory system *really* know what it means to hear something from below? ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] another 100k for 3D
Hi All About re-inventing... JVC made a headphones/binaural mics combination in the seventies, HM 200 E. Photos example in here: http://tinyurl.com/mpa96ms http://tinyurl.com/nzpdld9 I must admit that the modern re-invention looks much more lightweight and elegant. :-) Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Ambisonic Toolkit (ATK) for Reaper - Public beta v.1.0.b3
David Pickett wrote: I meant: Can someone please explain to me how one would install and use ATK with ReaPlugs in a DAW other than Reaper that also uses VST plugins? It's an .exe file. Run it. It will guide you through. As far as I remember, you tick the modules you want to use. Show the installer where your VST plugins folder is. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Splitting a 10.2 file
Hi Augustine I am not sure if the Sound Devices Wave Agent will handle that much tracks. Most likely it will. I have used it for 4, 6 and 8 track multichannel files. http://www.sounddevices.com/notes/recorders/wave-agent/wave-agent-1-16-available-for-mac-os-and-windows/ or http://tinyurl.com/3fho3sr Eero 3.9.2014 6:54, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hi, Does anyone know any software that will allow me to split an interleaved 10.2 file into its separate channels for mixing. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Noise reduction on Ambisonic files
Hi All Sampo, I guess that in this case we are talking about the hiss that originates from the amplifier stages of the microphone. Of course the acoustic noise into the capsules from Brownian movement adds to this, but that part is much smaller. The microphone self noise (or hiss, if you like) was the first reason, why I decided to stop using the Soundfields (ST250 and MK IV and V at that time) for radio drama. The hiss from the mic was simply too audible for the scenes. Possibly the way that the Finnish actors use their voice and dynamics is different to the declamating yelling that I hear in radio drama from many other countries. :-) I ended up using the Soundfield only for background atmospheres that I recorded separately. Many Sursounders may not be aware that there are practically at all multichannel noise reduction systems available. They are all stereo, and can process mono. The same thing was true with multichannel equalizers and dynamic processors at the time, when I would have use of them in the nineties. Because 5.1 systems became popular, there now are EQ:s and dynamic processors. But no noise reduction systems. Just one more note Garth; When you have denoised the files, check that their length bitwise is the same as it used to be. At least in the large scale you are on the safe side then. Of course the phase may deviate during the file run, but I don't think that won't happen. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Noise reduction on Ambisonic files
Joseph Anderson wrote In B-format, if you gate out one of the channels, you get a substantial change in imaging. E.g., if you gate out Y, you loose 'width'. This makes me think, that with Izotope RX or similar noise reduction software, it might be good to take the noise profile sample for example from W and X channels, run the noise reduction and then use the same profile for the Y and Z channels. Don't take a new noise profile from Y and Z. Or - if you prefer for some reason running the noise reduction for all B-format signals separately, use the noise profile from just one (for example W) for all of the channels. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] Fireworkss...
Marc Lavallée wrote: A microphone attached to a weather balloon Also, there isn't much what to record up there. It's rather quiet. The noises from the ground tend to sound like very diffuse noise, and there's very little low frequencies. The hum of traffic is much lluder on the ground surface. Thus your microphone should be very sensitive. I was surprised how quiet it is at the top of the Helsinki TV tower when the wind is very calm. Going higher with a balloon must be even quieter. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
Re: [Sursound] 16-Channel Surround Concert - 7th June, Derby, UK
David Pickett wrote: What does one need to decode this? To decode binaural? Cans, two ears. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] 16-Channel Surround Concert - 7th June, Derby, UK
Bruce Wiggins wrote: Sorry, but I did think this show would be interesting and relevant to this list as an example of where Surround Sound is being used in a live context in a commercial theatre But Bruce, of course it is. It is interesting to know that surround sound of any description is used in events, concerts, installations etc. On the opposite, I have too often been into a concert, in which surround sound was used, but it wasn't advertised in any way in advance. It would have been fun to know in beforehand, but possibly it's not the most important thing to tell to the majority of the audience. One of that kind of concerts was years ago in Helsinki, when Pierre Boulez conducted some of his works. It was only in the concert hall, where I saw the army of loudspeakers surrounding the hall. The sad thing is, that even though I read posts about forthcoming concerts or installations somewhere, they are so far away that I cannot travel there to enjoy the event. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] BBC binaural
Hi All This just in: http://www.psneurope.com/old-school-surround-return-binaural/ As a curiosity and co-incidence, our Finnish Broadcasting sent about a month ago a binaural radio drama. It was a recording from 1980. The play was Happy End by Dorothy Lane, songs by Bertolt Brecht. Unfortunately the programme details didn't mention a word about binaural. I am even not totally sure, if it was binaural. In 1980, two versions were made, a normal stereo and a binaural version. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] I despair, sometimes.
John Leonard wrote: Makes me want to weep. Me too. On the other hand, to some extent I can relate with the opinions. Having worked for more than 30 years in broadcasting, I learned something about the studio process. I do understand, that mono and stereo are the easiest track formats in multichannel mixing for single spot effects and sounds that belong together with something in the picture, that is only in one place or direction. Say - a dog barking. See a dog, hear a dog. Play a mono sound, pan it into direction and that's it. If you need to give it a reverb, it's easy to add. It is not very clever to use four channel B-Format for similar tiny area spot effects. However, I think that ambiences and sounds of various surroundings would be much easier to mix from a multichannel recording. That is where B-Format comes to it's rights. It's sooo easy to rotate the ambience right way around, zoom and balance it so that it fits in with the picture. When the picture cuts to a different prespective, it is ridiculously easy to change the auditory perspective with B-Format to match the picture. If you do the same operations with discrete 5.1 recordings, or even four-channel recordings, you need to do much more operations to get it done. The 5.1-rotation modules don't work too well. Been there, done that. I have understood that the audio people are doing exactly this in sports. They use multichannel microphone setups or Soundfield for the overall ambience, crowds, audience, and single mono mics for effect sounds from particular places in the field. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Question about UHJ
Stefan Schreiber wrote: I would call this a serious case of incompetence. In the sense that it was possible to archive 3/4 channels, also in the 80s. Strong words. I visited Nimbus in the early 90's. I must say that they used the best possible equipment that was available at the time. The people at Nimbus Records were a little bit idealistic. They wanted to gain as high quality as possible. To defend them, I need to tell that they were among the first record companies to use digital audio troughout the production. At the time multichannel digital audio recorders weren't available as commercial products for a record company. Nimbus used separate A/D converters and Beta video tape. That was two channel. The editing was made with a JVC video editing system, as digital audio workstations didn't exist. In practical terms, if Nimbus would have wanted to record B-Format, they would have needed to use analog multitrack with noise reduction (which wouldn't have been too bad quality either). Why they didn't do that, I don't know. They also did recordings elsewhere than in Wyastone Leys, in other countries. As far as I remember, those used DAT, which also was two channel. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Question about UHJ
Hi The DASH format was published by Sony and Studer in 1982: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Stationary_Head Mitsubishi had their own format. I would assume that it was possible at this time to combine several stereo tapes into some virtual multitrack tape I find this today as an amusing suggestion. A little less than 20 years ago I suggested on this forum using two timecode DAT:s for recording B-Format. The response was fierce; normal chase timecode isn't phase accurate enough for B-Format. Little did we know, Donald MacLennan and I, when we just recorded B-Format with timecode locked DAT:s and were happy with the results. I even recorded B-Format onto two separate wild DAT Walkmans and syncked the recordings afterwards in a workstation. For nature recordings it was totally fine. I still have the DAT tapes somewhere. DAT was a consumer format, certainly not developped for archiving purposes. You are talking to a person, who has been working in broadcasting for 30 years and gone trough the development from analog to digital. DAT was such a small and handy format to use, that it was right away taken into use in professional use. Journalists were happy to leave the 8 kg Nagra back in the office and pack a small DAT recorder into their shoulderbag. Me too. You are right in that it's a lousy format for archiving. But guess why? The main reason is that it is difficult to find a DAT player, in which the tracking matches exactly with that of the recording. Been there, done that. Didn't get any T-shirts, though. Ah, the digital audio editor that Nimbus used, was not JVC. It was Sony DAE 1100, and it was made for audio, not video. But it used video tapes. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Question about UHJ
Hi All I wouldn't call the UHJ encoding phase differences nasty. The designers of the encoding tried to choose such phase shifts, that shouldn't sound bad to most listeners. A mono sound panned directly behind has a 110 degrees phase difference in the encoded UHJ stereo signal. To me it sounds ok. And - it is not an artefact, it's how UHJ encoding works. It uses both level and phase. However, different people seem to perceive phase differences in a stereo signal in different ways. I have met several persons from the both extremes of the scale. I have had students and colleagues, who really cannot detect a 180 degrees phase difference at all. They don't experience anything unpleasant in it. For me, 180 degrees is totally unbearable, it hurts almost physically. Then again, some people are very sensitive for even very small phase differences and they feel uncomfortable with even 90 degrees phase differences. I have also noticed that the same people, who don't perceive phase differences, don't experience a stereo playback from two loudspeakers as one integrated stereo image. They say that they hear sound just from two loudspeakers, from the left and from the right. Some of them detect a phantom center image, but not other phantom images across the stereo. As Jörn pointed out, you can balance the recording or a mix in such a way, that the phasiness doesn't get irritating. You learn to do this, either by knowing the system thoroughly or by trial and error. Or both. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] 4 D sound (!)
Nah With my Serious Bloke hat on: Mono is 0,5 D sound. Distance and depth in front of the listener. Stereo is 1,5 D sound. Left-Right / distance and depth in front of the listener. Pantophonics is 2D. Front-Back, Left-Right. Periphonics is 3D. Front-Back, Left-Right, Up-Down. (Binaural also, if it would work.) Eero 5.3.2014 13:42, Dave Malham kirjoitti: Ah, but if that's the case, mono is 2-D sound, stereo is 3-D sound :-) On 5 March 2014 11:08, Ronald C.F. Antony r...@cubiculum.com wrote: On 5 Mar 2014, at 11:58, Dave Malham dave.mal...@york.ac.uk wrote: And now, 4-D sound http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/03/full-immersion-audio-artists-explore-4dsound-spatial-grid-omni-speakers-ableton-max-lemur/ X, Y, Z and... Time, it's 3-D sound in Space-Time ;) Ronald ___ 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] 4 D sound (!)
Yeah, and stretch and compress. And warp, and whatever. :-) Eero 5.3.2014 22:04, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote: Actually, with recorded media one can scrub back and forth through time, so it would still be +1D Ronald ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] 'Quasi-flat' binaural
Isn't Roger Waters' Amused to Death Q-Sound? Q-Sound was designed to work with both speakers and headphones. It is not binaural as such. With speakers the stereo stage is very wide. However, the album has some very effecive spatial moments. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Surprise, Surprise
Jon Honeyball wrote: You set up a 4 (or maybe more?) speaker horizontal surround array, and then played some music I attended an APRS Studio Engineers Course in the same place in Guildford in 1986. Richard had a similar demo at that course, too. That was the first time when I heard Ambisonics. I was both impressed and confused. Confused, because the demo must have lasted only for an hour or so. Impressed, because the room was large, the audience was about 25 persons, four small loudspeakers at the corners or the room on mic stands. I think Richard used a VCR and a PCM F1 for playback, so it was digital, but it was UHJ, not B-Format. And still the surround playback was impressive. After that course I had no other option than to start looking for more information about this strange system that I had never heard about before. Happy New Year to all! Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [Bulk] Re: Fwd: Alan Parson's Stereotomy and UHJ
Richard G Elen wrote: McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio is done like that for example, and it would be worth someone going through the Collins Classics list, finding which were mixed by John, and see if they decode. Wot? Done that decades ago. See: http://www.surrounddiscography.com/uhjdisc/uhjhtm.htm#ambicoll However, the ones listed there are the ones that I have in my shelf. All of these have indication of UHJ encoding, either the logo or written text. There may be more. Anyone with Collins Classics recordings could check theirs. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] Wave Agent
Hi All I'd like to share a finding. http://www.sounddevices.com/products/waveagent/ Sound Devices has a free software called Wave Agent. It is a file librarian, versions for Win and Mac. It reads Wav and Bwf files. Obviously the main use is to browse recordings made with the Sound Devices recorders. You need to register to get a download. I found the Wave Agent very useful for browsing audio files with different sampling rates and bit depths. With my previous programmes the audio interface doesn't always change the sample rate automatically and the files play in the wrong way. Wave Agent plays the file regardless of the number of audio tracks in the file. There is a multichannel mixer with bargarphs that shows which tracks have audio content. Mute and solo buttons, faders and a stereo pan. I am afraid that the software cannot use multitrack audio interfaces to play different channels from different outputs. The software shows data and metadata about the file. Here comes the good part: Wave Agent can interleave and de-interleave mono files into multichannel and vice versa. The user interface is simple to use. I haven't tested this feature too much, but with a quick try it worked ok. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] DeWolfe Library Music - Ambisonics confusion
Martin Leese wrote: the five rings logo The small rings actually represent the polar patterns of X, Y and Z figures of eight. The large ring represents W. But yes, you can see it as five rings. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] New native B-Format microphone!
Eero did not hold a prototype. I did hold a prototype several years ago. I'm a little bit surprised that the type of a connector is the most important thing that raises discussion about a new B-format microphone in Sursound. The easiest way to get information is to contact Martin directly: http://www.nordicaudiolabs.com/ Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] New native B-Format microphone!
Good. I'm saving money, as I don't need the new glasses after all. :-) Eero Martin Kantola wrote: Eero Aro skrev 15.11.2013 19:46: Now that I look at the not-so-good-resolution photo on Martin's page, I can see that it is 6 pins. The proto was indeed 6-pin, but the production model is 5-pin XLR, so Eero was correct. Martin ___ 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] New native B-Format microphone!
Bo-Erik Sandholm wrote: I think I rememeber it is horizontal only I can confirm that. Just by the accident, I visited an Audio-Visual Fair in the Helsinki Fair Centre this afternoon and had a chat with Martin, who has designed the microphone. I actually held the microphone in my hand. There was no possibility to listen to the mic or any recordings at the stand. The mic is very sturdy, it it built inside a stainless steel tube. All electronics is integrated inside the microphone body, there are no separate control boxes. The output is standard 5 pin XLR. I have heard an early prototype of the mic, and already at that time it sounded very good. The self noise is lower than on some other surround microphone brands. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] B-Format test signals 5.1
I don't have a proper ambisonic set up, but can listen with hrtfs using ATK + Supercollider. To me this one sounds on the right rather than the left. I hope someone else would also give it a try and tell us, where they hear it coming from. It isn't a bad idea to use an Ambisonic setup for an Ambisonics file. As said it is a four channel .wav file, channel order WXYZ. Is your player possibly just playing the WX channels or making a downmix of it's own? Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] B-Format test signals 5.1
Dave Malham: Oh - I see, the naming of the files implies LF and simultaneously that it is 330 degrees...which is it, Eero? LF. Funnily though, Dave. I made it with your B-Pan plugin. The Azimuth control of the plugin at 330 degrees points to Left Front. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] B-Format test signals 5.1
David Wareing wrote: Can't any of you guys actually play it! Actually I find that a little bit amusing. :-) Sorry. But there really is something wrong with my files. I think I need to delete all of the files from Dropbox. First: A file player in Audiomulch doesn't open or play my files, before I change the extension to .wav_ex Second, as you say, the LF file appears to localize at RF. I don't know why that is so. I made the files in a very simple way: I connected a mono file player to the B-Pan plugin, which is recorded by a File Recorder inside AudioMulch. That's all. All phases and levels seem to be right. There is a simple solution; just rename the files. :-) Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] B-Format test signals 5.1
ITU made a recommendation (in around 1992-94) for surround speaker layouts. It is called ITU-R BS.775-3 http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.775-3-201208-I I am not aware of any specific _standard_ for the placement of surround sound speakers. Many have followed the ITU recommendation, for example the EBU. Their recommendation is EBU Tech. 3276-E. The BS775 describes different tolerances for different uses. In the basic form it just says that the center front speaker should be directly in front of the wiewer/listener, at 0 degrees. L and R speakers should be placed at +/- 30 degrees from the Center speaker. Ls and Rs speakers should be at +/- 100...120 degrees The speakers should be at the height of 1,2 meters. - - - The mathematicians indicate the directions counter clockwise from Center Front, 0 degrees. Directions have also been indicated in various different ways. The mess in this thread happened to start, because I used the degree figures that I read from a panning plug-in. They happen to turn clockwise. Sorry about the confusion. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] B-Format test signals 5.1
I am afraid I binned the discussion thread about the test signals. However, if anybody's interested, I made quickly a couple of files. I panned a pink noise pulse train into the speaker directions of ITU775, the 5.1 layout. The files are 44.1 kHz/16 bit four channel wav:s. The Z channel has no content, as it is horizontal only. No such thing as LFE in B-Format. As others already said, the correct placing of 5.1 speakers is better to do by measuring. But here's some noise from those directions: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22100835/CF_0_dgr.wav https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22100835/LF_315_dgr.wav https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22100835/LB_250_dgr.wav https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22100835/RB_110_dgr.wav https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22100835/RF_45_dgr.wav Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] B-Format test signals 5.1
ITU775 has FL/R at 30 degrees not 45. Oops. Where's that RED smiley??? I should have known and remembered that. I don't know what I was thinking. I'll make new files at +/- 30. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] UHJ disc discovery?
HI All The previous posters already said it all. I can only add that it is almost impossible to find out from an acoustic Soundfield or other microphone setup recording, whether it is UHJ or not. I don't know about higher developed ways of finding this out, but from a sound engineer's point of wiew here's my 5 cents worth: It is sometimes possible to see from a goniometer if a multitrack recording from mono microphones has been encoded into UHJ. Or actually - you can see the difference between a normal panned stereo and UHJ, as the directions of individual panned sources can be detected from normal stereo. They look like sharp(ish) direct lines, but UHJ doesn't have such components anywhere else than on the edges of the two speaker stereo, ie. at -45 and +45 degrees. In all directions there are phase differences between the two channels. The easiest direction is possibly at North, 0 degrees, as a mono sound in center front appears with a phase difference in UHJ. Unless there is an effect or reverb in the vocalist's voice, which again produces phase differences. - - - There is one recording, in which I tried to find out which is binaural and which UHJ: World Record, WWCD002, that is listed in the Discography. Some of the tracks are Holophonics and some are UHJ. The CD cover doesn't say which is which. I really couldn't tell the difference by looking at the goniometer. The only way I could guess was listening. The Holophonic tracks appear to localize outside the head, UHJ of course doesn't. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] UHJ disc discovery?
Going back to Richard's original question, I have a theory why some recordings appeared into our Rumours list. I found several record titles for example from British automobile magazines. They had articles about the Troy decoder. I wonder if the people giving the demo to the journalist had played both UHJ recordings as properly decoded, and some stereo recordings, that created a nice spread of sound in the Stereo Enhance (or Super Stereo, if you like the expression (I don't, there's nothing Super in it)) mode of the decoder. At that time there was only a handful of UHJ recordings available, in addition to classical Nimbus. It is my guess that for example the soundtrack of Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome was mentioned in an article because of this. After long and tedious listening sessions (somebody's got to do it) I never found anything UHJ in the mix. If a journalist heard those recordings in the demo, he may have assumed that they were surround. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] UHJ disc discovery?
Hm. Interesting. Many recordings that are known to be UHJ encoded, son't have any printed indication or an Ambisonic logo at all. Then again, it has been a common practise that the same release of some recording has had a different cover print in different countries. Maybe the Enya really would need some further investigation. Eero Bearcat M. Şándor wrote: To get back to the Enya question, i remember this too. In fact it was that disc that got me interested in Ambisonics in the first place. In around 2000, i traveled to washington from montana to listen to a pair of Meridian DSP6000s. I'd wanted to hear some for years (knowing i couldn't afford them). After listening to my music for a while, the sales person put an Enya disc on. It was either Enya (The Celts) or Watermark i wish i remembered which. I noticed that a symbol on the cd was the same as a symbol on the meridian preamp we were listening to. I asked about it and he turned on the ambisonics processing in the pre-amp. I was blown away. The surround was so gentle and the antithesis of what had turned me off from surround sound before, even though he only had a 5.1 set up. So, it's out there, i just don't know which one it is. When it comes to Ambisonics, might some editions of the disc (original, remastered etc) have it and some not? Put another way could the Ambisonics be mixed or mastered out of a particular edition? Also, could an indicator be added to Fons processor to indicate whether a stream had UHJ in it or not? Bearcat ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] UHJ disc discovery?
Did some googling for Enya vinyl and CD covers. There's plenty of photos of the covers, but not necessarily of the inner sleeves or disc faces. No observations of Ambisonic logos. The only round logo that I found was the Geffen Records logo on a Orinoco Flow CD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=40889 Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] UHJ disc discovery?
I also once heard a suggestion that Enya would have been UHJ encoded. However, I never found out, which album it would have been. I then read through all released Enya album covers and leaflets without finding any printed evidence. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] A-format panner.
Aaron Heller wrote: Sorry to quibble, but if I feed a signal into the W and X inputs (with appropriate scaling) and ground Y and Z, then the soundfield controls on a Mk4 behave like a B-format panner. Right? You are right. The soundfield controller uses two switches to select the quadrant and then a conventional pot. It does elevation too. Yep. Audio Design also had a 1U box called B Format Converter (if I remember the name right). It was used for panning in four quadrants. You could feed the box from for example four AUX sends in a console and by selecting two Auxes you could place a mono sound somewhere in the soundfield. This box was horizontal only. Also, I notice that the transcoder has LF, RF, LB, RB inputs. I assume those are used to transcode quad to UHJ. Yes. If you look at the manual, you'll see that the so called Front stage was 180 degrees wide in front of the listener and the Rear stage was limited to 150 degrees in order to avoid too large phase differences in teh UHJ signal. I used the transcoder for all of the radio dramas I made in the nineties. The basic tool was the Quantec Room Simulator (a reverb), the rear outputs were routed to the Rear Stage of the Transcoder. Of course I panned also direct sounds to the rear, especially the sound effects. I usually kept the dialogue in the front. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] , ambi playback configution and calibration
Given how difficult it seems to be for billions of people to set up a 5.1 system, surely there must be a market? Possibly not exactly what you are looking for, but Genelec has software for their DSP-speakers: http://www.genelec.com/learning-center/key-technologies/dsp-monitoring-systems/autocal/ http://www.genelec.com/products/glm/ I think they also have an IPhone (or similar) app for simple adjustment of a stereo pair, toeing-in etc. I just cannot find it now. Or it may be a third party application. - - - And a very old thing that relates to the subject comes to mind. AGM Digital had an A-format microphone. The processing unit had support for additional mono microphones. It automatically adjusted the delay for the spot mikes. Or - was this just a plan, cannot remember. The hard- and software might have been made by Chris Richards. But as said, this was for recording, not playback. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
