On 03/05/2011 09:18, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
..
but if you want to bring ambisonics into the industry, it's either HOA
or go into a quiet corner to die. the argument that any talk of HOA will
be detrimental to ambisonics uptake is sentimental BS. HOA is no black
magic, and six speakers aren't that expensive, either. go try the stuff,
then come back to whine about it.
Sounds like you are positioning six speakers to be the new "industry
standard". Industries like quality, of course. But they also like a
defined standard they can all manufacture to, and promote easily and
effectively as a ~physical~ product clearly differentiated from the
competition, by being either way cheaper, or way better, or way simpler,
or with luck, all three. So that is definitely a step in the right
direction.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but: exactly what/which "industry"
are you referring to here? The audiophile market dominated by high-end
high-price hand-made products; the home cinema market not so much
dominated as owned by 5.1 (which is ~five~ speakers plus a sub); the
games market; the public entertainment/installation/large-venue market;
broadcast? Oh, and "content providers" including composers?
The Creative labs system that came with my old PC has one sub in an
8.5inch cube, and five tiny satellites (no stands) with a 2inch drive
unit. Total cost by itself perhaps £50. All things considered, it is
very surprising how good it sounds. For general film listening, it "does
the job". Six full-range speakers (presumably) will cost rather more,
along with whatever amp/receiver is needed. 5.1 works pretty well
domestically; the front three straddle the TV (assuming they are not
already built in), and the other two can be parked, er, wherever the
furniture permits, hopefully safe from predation by the smaller resident
fast-moving carbon-based lifeforms. We know they are used for sfx and
bits of ambience (and the odd spaceship flyover), so their positioning
is not critical at all. A few users may actually get out the tape
measure and protractor, and say how much better Star Wars sounds that
way. Of course for music you fire up the trusty stereo.
You wrote:
"on the other hand, if you have a third or even fourth order signal
available,..."
So which should it be - third or fourth order? The Industry needs to
know. Yes it is cool to have the intellectual choice (the more buttons
to press the better), gives the informed user a tremendous sense of
skill and power, but for an industry standard it would "almost
certainly" be necessary to settle on one or the other, or you get a
format war. The opinion on the street is that both DVD-A and even SACD
are dead. So I don't see the "the industry" relishing going there again.
The hot tickets are iPods and 3D TV. Software is too easily copied, so
there needs to be a defined and protectable (ideally, uncopyable)
hardware product in there somewhere.
.
which is demonstrated most eloquently by the glaring success of
first-order ambisonics, which has been dominating the audio market for
years, as we all know.
A bit disingenuous - that failure (at least partly by the UK government
at the time) was predominantly one of marketing (or the lack of it). Had
certain "cards" been played well, 'Dolby 5.1' could actually have been
"Ambisonics 5.1". The patent on 5.1 decoding I suspect didn't in fact
help. The industry was stung by the abject failure of Quad, and only the
power of Dolby combined with the shock and awe factor of the new
sfx-based film industry was able to get 5.1 established. At least to
begin with, nobody associated it with music listening. And of course for
a while the only place you could actually hear it was in a cinema.
ronald, go out there, talk to people in the industry, demonstrate your
FOA systems, get some real-world feedback. been there, done that. try
it, it's very enlightening.
So again, which industry are we talking about, and what new format
should we promote to them? Something that can be mandated as a standard
by the AES, RIAA, ISO or whatever (these connectors, that digital stream
format, this presumably new read-only piracy-proof delivery medium; or
perhaps encrypted live streaming from the cloud, sold as a premium
service). From your comments, it would seem to be a six-speaker layout,
with "either" a third or fourth-order stream. Pre-decoded to six
channels so it can fit on a DVD (with instructions to the user to
reconfigure their 5.1 setup), or supplied as HOA requiring a decoder?
The industry would very likely want to remove the "either" and "or"
parts. Looks like this new standard will again exclude height. Oh well
- those spaceship flyovers will still be shoulder-high. Or sound like
earthquakes. Perhaps the high-end industry can add value by offering up
to ten audio outputs, if you have the extra speakers. Or maybe 24. That
might work. Or 12, or 25...
And probably it actually needs to be 6.1, so people can keep their five
existing satellites and sub and just add one more to get the full
effect. If the sub provides the speaker outputs, as my C-Labs one does,
that could be a problem - I would have to replace the whole system.
Don't fancy that, really - can adding one speaker really make that much
of a difference? Star Wars already sounds pretty cool with just the
five, and "nobody has complained before".
It remains fascinating to me, (but profoundly un-useful) to see even the
recent debate lead to accounts of half a dozen alternate layouts using
typically a mere ten speakers (but could be eight, could be twelve,
maybe tenth-order...). How on earth do I, short of a luxury live
comparison test (and a fatter wallet than in my entire life so far)
possibly choose between them? More to the point, how does "the industry"?
I am sorry to say it, but I do not see anything that "the industry"
could possibly be interested in. HOA is jelly waiting to be nailed to a
tree. I think it is great, and I will find a way to use it I can afford,
but it all looks suspiciously like yet another way to turn a large
fortune into a small one.
Richard Dobson
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