subject:"\[Sursound\] Minim AD7 for sale"


On 01/05/2011 03:55, Stefan Schreiber wrote:
..

It is fair to say that 1st order AMB is good (or good enough?) for
some things, but it is not perfect surround sound forever. Some people
on this list are actually using 2nd/3rd and higher order Ambisonics, and
I think that any good standard should consider different
applications/requirements.



Sounds reasonable, and I would be much inclined to agree, but the 
problem is that there are so many different applications/requirements, 
that catering for them all (where all seems to be uncountably large) 
leads ineluctably to extreme complexity.  The ultimate 
support-everything HOA file format (along with the tools with which to 
create and use it) has yet to be announced, as far as I am aware.




Frankly, if .AMB format includes B format (1st order), I don't see any
fundamental conflict  at all .



The .amb format (simple fmh recipes) supports up to 3rd order, as the 
channel counts for each combination are unambiguous.


The issue for me is no so much the encoding (though asking content 
providers, a.k.a. composers, to supply even a 9-channel file is IMO 
pushing it), but the decoding, where the number of speakers required 
seems to have its own version of Moore's Law. If encoding in 3rd order 
means you can get a[n even] better decode to 5.1, well and good; easy 
enough to understand why game developers would do that, to get the best 
possible experience over the one truly existing and established surround 
standard.


For outreach purposes (promoting periphonic as well as horizontal 
surround, promoting composers working with space) people need to talk up 
the simple affordable layouts and delivery formats rather more than 
has so far been done. The vast majority of works posted to Ambisonia 
have been plain 1st-order; a few IIRC are second order. So managing with 
the smallest possible channel counts at both encode and decode stages 
remains IMO an important strategic as well as an engineering objective.


The danger with the arguments that, say, third-order is actually not 
good enough is that commercial developers  will just not touch 
Ambisonics at all, since it is a territory that is forever changing and 
remarkably lacking in consensus. It has taken long enough for 5.1 to 
reach lower price-point DAWS. When even 7.1 is exotic, nobody is going 
to make a DAW with a 16 channel bus only to be told a year later that 
we need more.


Have any listening tests actually been carried out to establish what 
typical users consider to be sufficiently good localization? The 
higher orders are sold as offering the most precise localisation; but it 
seems to be more of an assumption than a proven fact that localization 
(as distinct from separation) at that level is actually desirable.


At the end of the day, the problem is that HOA is not one standard but a 
multitude of them - each combination and size of order, and size and 
shape of speaker array, constitutes a separate standard.


So the final question is: if you had to choose just ~one~ HOA standard 
for general production and delivery, to embed in the modern equivalent 
of the AD7 (or in some future generation of Logic Pro), what would it 
be? Or is that question simply unacceptable in principle?



Richard Dobson


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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Paul Hodges

--On 01 May 2011 12:15 +0100 Richard Dobson 
richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:



Have any listening tests actually been carried out to establish what
typical users consider to be sufficiently good localization?


An interesting comparison would be to start with horizontal first-order, 
and then to assess whether the common man finds a switch to full 3D 
first-order or to horizontal third-order the greater improvement in effect. 
(So far, I have heard only anecdotal answers to this question.)


Paul

--
Paul Hodges


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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

Sound like the obvious thing to do


  An interesting comparison would be to start with horizontal first-order, 
  and then to assess whether the common man finds a switch to full 3D 
  first-order or to horizontal third-order the greater improvement in effect. 
  (So far, I have heard only anecdotal answers to this question.)

  Paul

  -- 
  Paul Hodges


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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Svein Berge

2011/5/1 Paul Hodges pwh-surro...@cassland.org

 --On 01 May 2011 12:15 +0100 Richard Dobson 
 richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

  Have any listening tests actually been carried out to establish what
 typical users consider to be sufficiently good localization?


 An interesting comparison would be to start with horizontal first-order,
 and then to assess whether the common man finds a switch to full 3D
 first-order or to horizontal third-order the greater improvement in effect.
 (So far, I have heard only anecdotal answers to this question.)


Another anecdotal answer, which doesn't even quite address the question: The
difference between 1st order horizontal and 3rd order horizontal is easy to
hear for the common man. This was one of the conclusions of the harpex
listening tests, and in line with previous tests by Stéphanie Bertet et al.
More interestingly for us, of course, was that you can get 3rd order
localization from 1st order material with the harpex decoder. But no decoder
can make meaningful 3D material from a horizontal source. So if I had to
choose between 3rd order horizontal and 1st order 3D, I would choose 1st
order 3D any time.

Svein Berge
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread umashankar mantravadi

dear john

just ten minutes ago i finished setting up an eight speaker playback system.
the speakers are small (4inch) in home made boxes. at the moment they hang
flush against the wall near the roof and near the ceiling. it is cube about 10
feet on each side. (slightly less top to bottom)

i am using audio mulch and wigware for playback.

i have a fair amount of A format recordings with me now, mostly traditional
music but some fireworks and a dust storm. Playing around with the best way of
decoding to B.

the best bit so far has been listening to your smut recording.

umashankar

i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar

From: j...@johnleonard.co.uk
Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 13:17:02 +0100
To: richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk; sursound@music.vt.edu
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

Some years ago I asked a question about how many list-members actually had
correctly set up surround systems of any sort at home; not in the studio, or
research facility, but in their own homes as a way of enjoying music. I seem
to remember that very few - three, if I recall correctly - said that they
had. Is it worth asking the question again?

Most people I know (in the UK, at least, where the prevalence of a 'den' set
aside solely for watching sport on huge televisions is rather less than it is
in the USA) still have nasty all-in-one 5.1 systems in their living rooms
where the speakers are arranged so as not to get in the way or look ugly.
They're not listening to properly set-up systems with well-defined levels and
localisation, they're listening to a bunch of speakers in random positions
and occasionally to a bit of LFE going 'boom' when a car explodes. It's
probably far worse now in terms of localisation than it was when stereo first
came out and everyone knew how you were supposed to set the system up and
listen to it.

Regards,

John

On 1 May 2011, at 12:15, Richard Dobson wrote:

Have any listening tests actually been carried out to establish what
typical users consider to be sufficiently good localization?

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Giovanni Abrate

I have had an Ambisonic setup for almost thirty years, which I have 
upgraded several times. My decoder is a much modified Integrex, built 
with Mil-Spec tight tolerance Caps and resistors and upgraded with 
modern, high slew-rate op-amps. It drives dual Hafler 220 power amps. I 
also recently added an Onkyo Integra amp with Ambisonics mode, although 
I find that the decoding is not nearly as accurate as it is with my 
dedicated decoder. I have two sets of 4 speakers: a set by Yamaha 
(3-way) and another by Tannoy (2-way).
I still have not found another music surround system that I would rather 
have.


On 5/1/2011 8:17 AM, John Leonard wrote:

Some years ago I asked a question about how many list-members actually had 
correctly set up surround systems of any sort at home; not in the studio, or 
research facility, but in their own homes as a way of enjoying music. I seem to 
remember that very few - three, if I recall correctly - said that they had. Is 
it worth asking the question again?

Most people I know (in the UK, at least, where the prevalence of a 'den' set 
aside solely for watching sport on huge televisions is rather less than it is 
in the USA) still have nasty all-in-one 5.1 systems in their living rooms where 
the speakers are arranged so as not to get in the way or look ugly. They're not 
listening to properly set-up systems with well-defined levels and localisation, 
they're listening to a bunch of speakers in random positions and occasionally 
to a bit of LFE going 'boom' when a car explodes. It's probably far worse now 
in terms of localisation than it was when stereo first came out and everyone 
knew how you were supposed to set the system up and listen to it.

Regards,

John


On 1 May 2011, at 12:15, Richard Dobson wrote:


Have any listening tests actually been carried out to establish what typical 
users consider to be sufficiently good localization?

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale


On 01/05/2011 12:50, Svein Berge wrote:
..



Another anecdotal answer, which doesn't even quite address the question: The
difference between 1st order horizontal and 3rd order horizontal is easy to
hear for the common man.


Using 5.1, or some other arrangement?

The colloquial assumption or implication behind the use of the word 
difference is that one presentation was better than another, but 
strictly speaking all it says is that people noticed some difference. 
Adding reverb makes a difference (some folk claim that directional cable 
makes a difference), but more is not necessarily better. So it would be 
good to have some elaboration of what form the listening tests took, and 
what difference really means here.




This was one of the conclusions of the harpex

listening tests, and in line with previous tests by Stéphanie Bertet et al.
More interestingly for us, of course, was that you can get 3rd order
localization from 1st order material with the harpex decoder. But no decoder
can make meaningful 3D material from a horizontal source. So if I had to
choose between 3rd order horizontal and 1st order 3D, I would choose 1st
order 3D any time.



Personally, I am more than happy to accept a little dithering in my 
localisation (especially as it is probably fairly well dithered in real 
life already), if it means I have to buy fewer speakers. So I suspect I 
would agree.



Richard Dobson
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

I totally concur with you John, that is exactly what most surround systems 
are like in this country, and probably elsewhere. I visit people and have to 
bite my tongue when I see how they have their, normally cheap  cheerful, 
systems set up, and when I'm really lucky and I get a demonstration on how 
realistic it sounds, I just have to sit there and nod in agreement.

The problem is, most people stopped being interested in any form of quality 
when, in the UK at least, Ferguson released the dreaded Studio 6 all in one 
stereo system, and the likes of Amstrad (AKA Alan Sugar) swamped the market 
with cheap Lo-Fi equipment




  Some years ago I asked a question about how many list-members actually had 
correctly set up surround systems of any sort at home; not in the studio, or 
research facility, but in their own homes as a way of enjoying music. I seem to 
remember that very few - three, if I recall correctly - said that they had. Is 
it worth asking the question again?

  Most people I know (in the UK, at least, where the prevalence of a 'den' set 
aside solely for watching sport on huge televisions is rather less than it is 
in the USA) still have nasty all-in-one 5.1 systems in their living rooms where 
the speakers are arranged so as not to get in the way or look ugly. They're not 
listening to properly set-up systems with well-defined levels and localisation, 
they're listening to a bunch of speakers in random positions and occasionally 
to a bit of LFE going 'boom' when a car explodes. It's probably far worse now 
in terms of localisation than it was when stereo first came out and everyone 
knew how you were supposed to set the system up and listen to it. 

  Regards,

  John


  On 1 May 2011, at 12:15, Richard Dobson wrote:

   Have any listening tests actually been carried out to establish what 
typical users consider to be sufficiently good localization? 

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

Interesting, I use roughly the same set-up for my UHJ decoded releases on my 
Quadraphonic blog, although there is an issue with the final product (and that 
happens with any software/hardware decoded UHJ material) is that awful phase 
shift on the Front Left. Correcting that greatly improves things

(bet I've opened a can of worms now.  LOL)


By the way, after trying a few of the available B-format decoders, I came to 
the conclusion that the Wigware decoder seemed to be the best. Anyone have any 
views on this?


   
  i am using audio mulch and wigware for playback.
   
   
  the best bit so far has been listening to your smut recording.
   
  umashankar

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Svein Berge

2011/5/1 Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk

On 01/05/2011 12:50, Svein Berge wrote:
..

Another anecdotal answer, which doesn't even quite address the question:
The
difference between 1st order horizontal and 3rd order horizontal is easy
to
hear for the common man.

Using 5.1, or some other arrangement?

Bertet et al used 12 speakers on a circle, and also studied the effect of
reducing the speaker count to 8 for the 3rd order material and 4 for the 1st
order material. We used 8 speakers on a circle.

The colloquial assumption or implication behind the use of the word
difference is that one presentation was better than another, but strictly
speaking all it says is that people noticed some difference. Adding reverb
makes a difference (some folk claim that directional cable makes a
difference), but more is not necessarily better. So it would be good to have
some elaboration of what form the listening tests took, and what
difference really means here.

These tests followed a roughly the MUSHRA protocol for blind testing, and
difference means that the systems were statistically distinguishable,
looking only at people's scores, at the 95% confidence level, using common
hypothesis testing techniques. All systems were compared to a reference
system and what people were evaulating was the amount of degradation from
the reference. More details about the tests are available in the papers for
those with a high patience * curiosity product:

http://ambisonics-symposium.org/symposium2009/proceedings/ambisym09-bertetdanielparizetwarusfel-listeningev.pdf/at_download/file

http://harpex.net/harpex.pdf

Svein Berge
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread John Leonard

I should clarify that Umashankar is referring to a recording entitled Here's 
smut in your eye which is all to do with leaning out of the carriage window 
during a steam train ride. Please don't get the idea that I have a bunch of 
surround recordings of a slightly dubious nature that I only make available to 
connoisseurs, although it's not a bad idea... Maybe that's the way to 
popularise Ambisonics?

Thanks,

John

On 1 May 2011, at 13:43, umashankar mantravadi wrote:

 the best bit so far has been listening to your smut recording.

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Ha ha ha, any chance of details of where this is available from?


  I should clarify that Umashankar is referring to a recording entitled Here's 
smut in your eye which is all to do with leaning out of the carriage window 
during a steam train ride. Please don't get the idea that I have a bunch of 
surround recordings of a slightly dubious nature that I only make available to 
connoisseurs, although it's not a bad idea... Maybe that's the way to 
popularise Ambisonics?

  Thanks,

  John

  On 1 May 2011, at 13:43, umashankar mantravadi wrote:

   the best bit so far has been listening to your smut recording.

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Marc Lavallée


I have a naive question for experts: would it be possible to recreate
the acoustics of the Philips Pavillon using room simulation techniques
and ambisonics spatialization?

Sun, 01 May 2011 17:25:40 +0100,
Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk a écrit :

 Funnily enough, we had a performance at Bath Uni a few weeks ago
 (Kees Tazelaar, famous among other things for digitising the original
 tapes of the Poeme Electronique), playing material all of which was
 explicitly eight discrete feeds - a different sound to each speaker.
 This was in a very cuboid space ( high ceiling though), built simply
 as a music store room for pianos, organ, etc, hard flat stone walls
 (one of which was used for video projection) so very live and
 reflective, and relatively small (audience about 20), and all we
 could do was put four speakers in the corners and the other four in
 the middle of each wall (small powered KRK somethings plus
 subwoofer), well out of accidental arm's reach. So, all in all, far
 from ideal acoustic conditions.
 
 Nevertheless, the sounds came over very well and clearly. If anything 
 the live environment smoothed out the localisation a bit, so that 
 (insofar as it was desired) one could quite reasonably talk in terms
 of 'envelopment'; even though the composer had the clear goal, at
 least in a couple of pieces, of using the space to give a clear
 separation to some sometimes dense particle-like sonorities. This was
 certainly successful - we all got it. Sounds from  behind were
 predictably less clear in direction, as they obviously reflected
 quite strongly from the front. This was the first outing for a
 freshly acquired eight-speaker set, and the event was certainly
 convincing for me and my composer colleagues in terms of wanting to
 compose for it.
 
 Short of making the test, we will never know if the Ambisonic
 approach would have been better. The concert would be perfectly
 well described in the above terms of being completely worked out in
 terms of using an ad-hoc [well, octagonal] speaker layout. The point
 is that the effect was more than sufficiently engaging as is; even if
 the Ambisonic approach would be better, the discrete approach was
 not in any meaningful sense bad. Just, I guess, different.
 
 The other point I would make in this regard is that one simply does
 not go to a performance desperately trying to establish ~exactly~
 where a sound is coming from! (well, I don't, anyway). It was clear
 and effective enough as it was. One just wants to relax and receive
 what there is to receive. My concern is that the relentless pursuit
 of ever-sharper localisation has become such a priority (dare I say
 it, an obsession), that the technical priorities have got steadily
 out of hand; and that as often as not a simple, minimal, positionally
 dithered outcome is just fine, and may indeed, in many cases, be
 artistically preferable.
 
 Richard Dobson
 
 
 
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Martin Leese

Gerard Lardner glard...@iol.ie
...
 I read in a review that the AD10 was intended to be sold at a realistic
 price of about $600 and the AD7 sold at a bargain $200. That review also
 mentioned that the AD10 used closer-tolerance components that would
 additionally be hand-selected for closer matching. Since the review
 appears to have been written before production was fully under way, I
 wonder if that was indeed done for production AD10 units.

My recollection from a 1980s telephone
conversation with Minim was that the
production AD 10 decoders did not have
hand-selected components, but the
reference version of the AD 10 did (and cost
more).

 Over the years I have found two different circuit diagrams that seem
 both to be for the AD7, but none for the AD10.
...
 Does anyone have or know of a circuit diagram for the AD10?

Sorry, I don't know of one either.  I have
collected information about the Minim
decoders, and made it available at:
https://sites.google.com/site/minimdecoders/

This includes instructions for the AD 10, and
a circuit diagram for the AD 7.  If you know of
more information then please pass it on to me
so that I can add it to the site.

Regards,
Martin
-- 
Martin J Leese
E-mail: martin.leese  stanfordalumni.org
Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/
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On 01/05/2011 17:25, Marc Lavallée wrote:


I have a naive question for experts: would it be possible to recreate
the acoustics of the Philips Pavillon using room simulation techniques
and ambisonics spatialization?




That is what they/we did for the Virtual Electronic Poem  Project:

http://www.edu.vrmmp.it/vep

Sadly I never got to hear the final result. My contribution was strictly 
compositional (composing the sound routes in the almost complete 
absence of original data - the original 30-channel perforated control 
tape which controlled both the sound movements and the visual elements 
exists physically but is unplayable).


The acoustic reconstruction was handled by the Berlin team. The project 
is described in CMJ 33 Vol 2, andd presetned at ICMC 2005; I don't know 
offhand if the CMJ paper is downloadable externally anywhere.


As is the way of such things, it is rare indeed to get any funding etc 
for follow-up work, so the reconstruction software is probably stowed 
away somewhere obscure, never to see the light of day again. You would 
need to contact members of the team to see if any sort of access is 
possible. We always hoped to be able to create a publicly usable model 
of the space that could be used e.g. in Csound, so composers could 
explore their music as it might sound in that space.


For the acoustic modelling they created a huge amount (GB-worth) of hrtf 
impulse responses for every speaker (350 of them), for a particular 
central listener position. These were cross-faded according to the 
head-tracked motions of the listener.  The modelling was pretty 
comprehensive, even taking into account the properties of the interior 
surfaces. Resolution was 1deg horizontal and 5deg vertical.


The binaural rendering was programmed in SuperCollider,  and the newly 
published SuperCollider Book (MIT Press) includes a chapter on this aspect.


Richard Dobson
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

On 05/01/2011 01:15 PM, Richard Dobson wrote:

 The issue for me is no so much the encoding (though asking content 
 providers, a.k.a. composers, to supply even a 9-channel file is IMO 
 pushing it), but the decoding, where the number of speakers required 
 seems to have its own version of Moore's Law. If encoding in 3rd
 order means you can get a[n even] better decode to 5.1, well and
 good; easy enough to understand why game developers would do that, to
 get the best possible experience over the one truly existing and
 established surround standard.
 
 For outreach purposes (promoting periphonic as well as horizontal 
 surround, promoting composers working with space) people need to talk
 up the simple affordable layouts and delivery formats rather more
 than has so far been done. The vast majority of works posted to
 Ambisonia have been plain 1st-order; a few IIRC are second order. So
 managing with the smallest possible channel counts at both encode and
 decode stages remains IMO an important strategic as well as an
 engineering objective.

if you were actually working with composers and producers rather than
reminiscing about the grand old days of POA, you would find that the
size of listening area and stability of POA simply doesn't cut it, ever,
anywhere.
check out the reality, the actual demands that film scorers, composers
and producers have, and deal with it.

POA is nice as a home listening format, and i agree it has a very good
price/performance ratio. but the only way POA listeners will ever find
actual content out there is from backscatter of HOA productions.

in surround terms, HOA is like these little mono kitchen radios that are
all the rage now: they sound surprisingly good, given their size, but
they are not exactly turning heads out there or nudging the industry in
new directions. POA is a lowest common denominator (and a very nice one
at that), but not something with a future in film scoring and music
production.

 The danger with the arguments that, say, third-order is actually not 
 good enough is that commercial developers  will just not touch 
 Ambisonics at all, since it is a territory that is forever changing
 and remarkably lacking in consensus. It has taken long enough for 5.1
 to reach lower price-point DAWS. When even 7.1 is exotic, nobody is
 going to make a DAW with a 16 channel bus only to be told a year
 later that we need more.

it's really a bit frustrating to have to educate ambisonic elders about
the up-and-downwards compatible nature of SH reconstruction. :(

the point is: if you want to produce in tenth order and have the means
to do it, your customer can still enjoy it on his/her 2nd order rig.
vice versa, if tenth-order reproduction is the cinema gold standard of
2030, older productions in any of the x.1 formats and any lower
ambisonic orders would still play just fine.

the bus width restriction is actually a bogus argument, which is only
true in practice because that's how avid and friends milk their
customers. heck, going from a 16ch bus width limit to 32ch should not
ever include more than a recompile on decently written software.

 Have any listening tests actually been carried out to establish what 
 typical users consider to be sufficiently good localization?

since we have no ambisonic content, the real question is: what do actual
producers consider sufficiently good localisation?
guess what: first order it is not :)

 The 
 higher orders are sold as offering the most precise localisation; but
 it seems to be more of an assumption than a proven fact that
 localization (as distinct from separation) at that level is
 actually desirable.

how can localisation and separation be distinct? if two sources are,
say, 20° apart, it's very hard to separate them when you're sitting in
the precise sweetspot of a FOA system, and totally impossible outside.
unless of course they are of sufficiently different timbre, but that's a
non-argument, because then i could also separate them on a mono rig.

 At the end of the day, the problem is that HOA is not one standard
 but a multitude of them - each combination and size of order, and
 size and shape of speaker array, constitutes a separate standard.

that is utter nonsense. the most important selling point of ambisonics
is precisely that it decouples the transmission format from the speaker
layout.

 So the final question is: if you had to choose just ~one~ HOA
 standard for general production and delivery, to embed in the modern
 equivalent of the AD7 (or in some future generation of Logic Pro),
 what would it be? Or is that question simply unacceptable in
 principle?

there doesn't have to be. if i want to take my productions from third to
fifth order, all i'd need to do is chance my panners so that they
produce harmonics up to fifth order, and click export.

all that DAW manufacturers need to learn is that marketing and sales
should have no say in how wide the busses can be - if you leave that to
the techies, the answer

Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

On 05/01/2011 04:32 AM, Stefan Schreiber wrote:

 P.S.: Speaking of B format recordings, there are the well-known issues
 of sound quality. SNR? High frequencies?

b-format != soundfield microphone

the soundfield does have a more pronounced hf roll-off and gerneral
oddity coefficient than, say, a pair of schoeps omnis.

but nothing prevents you from encoding very high frequencies in
b-format. it will be more or less impossible to record that flying bat
with a soundfield, but if you have a very keen boom operator and a
recording chain that goes way up to 50k or so, you could resynthesize
the bat's flight with panning.

SNR is certainly an issue with HOA mics (to the point where i'd consider
them unsuitable for general-purpose music application), and to a lesser
degree with the tetramic, but soundfields deliver very good SNR.

 A typical B format mic is good for ambience recordings, but maybe not
 for orchestral recordings, or in fact any musical recoding with a group
 of people playing.

that depends on the material, and your target system. spaced omnis sound
more WOW on stereo than any coincident technique, so if that's the
target, no point in using a soundfield, unless you want to cater to
those few localisation nutheads who'd also use (gasp!) a blumlein pair
(like yours truly :).

 (I have participated in quite some surround recordings. Not any
 tonemaster I know would do an orchestral recording with just one B
 format microphone. This is not the case because tonemasters supposedly
 don't know Ambisonics. There are probably too many disadvantages and
 limitations?
 Just speaking from a practical point of view...)

sadly, it seems there is very little knowledge about ambisonics among
professional classical recording engineers.
most have, at some point in their career, stuck a soundfield somewhere
they'd also stick a main A/B, rendered it either to stereo or to 5.1,
very possibly using incorrect or at least sub-optimal techniques, been
disappointed and haven't looked back since. not that there aren't many
perfectly valid reasons to reject ambisonics in many situations, but
this level of understanding is reached by few people - it just doesn't
sound like spaced omnis, and that's what the producer wants.

vice versa, there are some really weird spaced omni methods being
proposed for 3D sound, by professionals who like to argue that since A/B
is the bee's knees for left/right, so it has to be for front/rear and
up/down. when you ask them what kind of hearing mechanism they are
aiming at in using time difference between up and down, they'll reply:
but the sense of space and envelopment. well, yeah. if the aim is to get
the sound all over the place, that's certainly the way to go.




-- 
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
Tonmeister (VDT)

http://stackingdwarves.net
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Gerard Lardner

Actually I don't have an iPhone myself - but it seems to be the
smartphone of choice for this kind of control app. ;-)

Also, I'm not fixated on Ubuntu, but merely I have used GlobalScale plug
computers in a couple of places where I wanted the equivalent of a
single board computer but with power supply and interfaces already built
into a neat package; that plug computer (GlobalScale) comes with Ubuntu
in firmware. For my very basic uses it was easy to configure. If the
decoding software was written to be more agnostic about platform, that
could only be better.

Gerard Lardner


On 01/05/2011 01:44, Stefan Schreiber wrote:
 Gerard Lardner wrote:

 Perhaps something on the lines of a PlugComputer running Plug Ubuntu, a
 USB sound card, Linux software packaged for simple use and having a web
 control interface, and an iPhone app to control it all? The hardware
 (PlugComputer and sound card) then could be $200, I think  (excluding
 the iPhone - but some mobile providers are now giving that away free
 with some service contracts).

 Anyone up to doing it?

 Gerard Lardner
  


 So you want to combine the cheap costs of of a Ubuntu media center
 (needs some programming work, though) with the beauty of your beloved
 iPhone?

  g 

 Stefan Schreiber

 P.S.: Small hint

 It would be better if the Linux software might work for other Linux
 distributions, too...

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Gerard Lardner

I believe I got most of the information I have from your site; indeed I
was delighted to find the instructions there as my AD10, bought on eBay,
came without instructions.

Gerard Lardner


On 01/05/2011 19:18, Martin Leese wrote:
 Gerard Lardner glard...@iol.ie
 ...
 I read in a review that the AD10 was intended to be sold at a realistic
 price of about $600 and the AD7 sold at a bargain $200. That review also
 mentioned that the AD10 used closer-tolerance components that would
 additionally be hand-selected for closer matching. Since the review
 appears to have been written before production was fully under way, I
 wonder if that was indeed done for production AD10 units.
 My recollection from a 1980s telephone
 conversation with Minim was that the
 production AD 10 decoders did not have
 hand-selected components, but the
 reference version of the AD 10 did (and cost
 more).

 Over the years I have found two different circuit diagrams that seem
 both to be for the AD7, but none for the AD10.
 ...
 Does anyone have or know of a circuit diagram for the AD10?
 Sorry, I don't know of one either.  I have
 collected information about the Minim
 decoders, and made it available at:
 https://sites.google.com/site/minimdecoders/

 This includes instructions for the AD 10, and
 a circuit diagram for the AD 7.  If you know of
 more information then please pass it on to me
 so that I can add it to the site.

 Regards,
 Martin
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Fons Adriaensen

On Sun, May 01, 2011 at 09:39:55PM +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
 
 paul's first order recordings are lovely, but kind of easy on the
 format, since they have a frontal soundstage for the most part, which
 you tune in to, and simply disbelieve any spuriousness from the rear.
 but take the funky recording of the VoiCE trio where the singers
 surround the microphone - with a horizontal square of speakers, i easily
 lose track of single voices every once in a while. it gets a lot worse
 in a cube.

That is indeed a lovely recording, and I can only confirm your
impression about it when reproduced in 3D.

Simple fact is that periphonic 1st order has an rE of around 0.6,
while simple stereo (60 degrees angle between the speakers) has
0.87 for a center image (worst case). To get up to that value for
3D Ambisonics you need 3rd order. And don't underestimate the rE
metric - it's not at all specific to Ambisonics but just a measure
of how 'concentrated' in the source direction the directional
information is, and consequently how stable imaging will be if
you move away from the sweet spot.

 i guess a better question is: at what order do ambisonic systems stop
 falling flat on their faces with hostile content?

That is indeed the right question. And the answer seems to be 
that starting at 3rd order things seem to work.

 today, you have a director or composer, he demands something, you've got
 to deliver. s/he certainly doesn't want to discuss how what you're
 failing to deliver is still good enough.
 
Exactly.

With all due respect, I can't help but feeling that at least some
of the 'founders' generation of Ambisionics practicioners fail to
understand what higher order is about.

It's *not* about 'more precise' localisation. IMHO there are two
aspects that set HOA apart from POA:

* It extends the listening area, and it's not difficult to see
why it does. Higher order decoding will concentrate the signal
in the speakers close to the source direction, and have much
lower levels in the others compared to 1st order. In the limit
it approaches pair-wise or triple-wise (AKA VBAP) panning, except
that it won't provide preferential treatment for directions
corresponding to a speaker. 
A more abstract view of the same is that HOA considers the radial
dimension as well as the angular one - it extends the range over
which the Fourier-Bessel expansion is valid. This is an aspect
that has been and still is ignored in many texts about Ambisonics,
in particular those dealing with first order only.

* It resolves ambiguities inherent in first order encoding. Take
for example the Gregorian choir I mentioned in a previous post.
The first order encoding of such a source distribution is highly
ambiguous: the same relations between W,X,Y,Z could be produced
by many and very different source distributions. Which is why
I don't believe that systems like Harpex will handle it correctly.
It's actually a tribute to the psycho-acoustic qualities of first
order that it can deal with this quite well - it allows the hard 
work to be done by the listener's brain. Dealing with that in any
algorithmic way will require something more sophisticated than
separating the field into a sum of two plane waves.


Ciao,

-- 
FA

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Fons Adriaensen

On Sun, May 01, 2011 at 05:25:40PM +0100, Richard Dobson wrote:

 ...

 Short of making the test, we will never know if the Ambisonic approach  
 would have been better. The concert would be perfectly well described  
 in the above terms of being completely worked out in terms of using an  
 ad-hoc [well, octagonal] speaker layout. The point is that the effect  
 was more than sufficiently engaging as is; even if the Ambisonic  
 approach would be better, the discrete approach was not in any  
 meaningful sense bad. Just, I guess, different.

 The other point I would make in this regard is that one simply does not  
 go to a performance desperately trying to establish ~exactly~ where a  
 sound is coming from! (well, I don't, anyway). It was clear and  
 effective enough as it was. One just wants to relax and receive what  
 there is to receive. My concern is that the relentless pursuit of  
 ever-sharper localisation has become such a priority (dare I say it, an  
 obsession), that the technical priorities have got steadily out of hand;  
 and that as often as not a simple, minimal, positionally dithered  
 outcome is just fine, and may indeed, in many cases, be artistically  
 preferable.

I can perfectly follow your argumentation here. And in the case
of the work I referred to earlier, probably little would be lost
in the artistic sense or in audience appreciation if some corners
were cut in the spatialisation and things would be less exact than
envisaged by the composer.

But as the sound engineer who's expected to provide a solution I'm
not in a position to argue about this. And from the same perspective
there is another point to consider. What if you have not just a 
single piece requiring some ad-hoc speaker placement, but three or
four in the same concert, each of them having their specific 
requirements ? In that case I (as the sound engineer) would want
to use a technology that allows me to cover all of them without
having to physically move speakers and rewire the whole setup for
each piece. And that is exactly what using HOA provides in such
a situation - it abstracts the hardware. This is a point made
very strongly by Joern Nettingsmeier in various papers and
reports about his work, and I couldn't agree more with what
he writes about this.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale


On 01/05/2011 20:29, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:

..

the point is: if you want to produce in tenth order and have the means
to do it, your customer can still enjoy it on his/her 2nd order rig.


Fine. I agree.  But what exactly is a '2nd order rig'? Some number of 
speakers, or the combination of source, decoding and layout?


All I am asking is, what the smallest acceptable entry-level setup is. 
 It used to be first-order horizontal, and four speakers, or 1st-order 
peri and 8 speakers. Clearly that is no longer acceptable - but what the 
new entry-level is is still less than clear to me. From the above it 
would appear to be 2nd-order source played over whatever the smallest 
acceptable 'second-order rig' is defined to be.



..

the bus width restriction is actually a bogus argument, which is only
true in practice because that's how avid and friends milk their
customers. heck, going from a 16ch bus width limit to 32ch should not
ever include more than a recompile on decently written software.



Depends to what extent it requires GUI features. At the moment the 
typical DAW draws all sorts of stuff for each channel of the main bus. 
Without the need to draw flashy graphics, I totally agree. We can do it 
in Csound already. 95% of the cost of any GUI application is the 
graphics.  I am still wondering what a full native HOA DAW (with height 
and full automation) would look like.





how can localisation and separation be distinct?



I think the two words are too useful to be treated as exact synonyms - 
that would mean one of them is simply wasted. So I would say the former 
is absolute - this or that degree azimuth. The latter is relative - A is 
20deg to the right of B (or even, 2M behind B). If that's not a useful 
distinction, OK.


if two sources are,

say, 20° apart, it's very hard to separate them when you're sitting in
the precise sweetspot of a FOA system, and totally impossible outside.



All I can say is, my memories are different - I saw/heard very accurate 
localisation and separation in a live Electric Phoenix gig at the 
Arnolfini, Bristol, maybe 20 years ago as I mentioned before - the 
amplified voice was localised so that you heard each voice  ~exactly~ at 
the position the singer was in. They were some 40 feet away, so very 
much less than 20 degrees, and I was sat a long way left of centre, in 
raked seating. The effect was somewhat jaw-dropping; and as far as I am 
aware, that was all first-order analog panning, engineered by John 
Whiting. Of course, it was an auditorium-sized space. Dave Malham may 
know what order he was actually using as he probably designed the 
decoder - if it was HOA I will fully and gladly acknowledge my 
misunderstanding. I have no memory at all of the number or location of 
the loudspeakers.


Sadly I live at the opposite end of the country from all the UK 
Ambisonic centres of excellence, so my prospects for hearing the state 
of the art and being duly persuaded thereof are presently fairly remote.


..

that is utter nonsense. the most important selling point of ambisonics
is precisely that it decouples the transmission format from the speaker
layout.



I know that. I make that very point myself often enough! But your own 
words appear to conflate decoding order and speaker rig together. There 
is your input HOA order, and the sufficient speaker rig which plays 
whatever you decode into it. Either way, your 2nd-order rig is a 
nominal combination standard that in practice combines  the order of the 
decoding and the speaker layout into some single named entity.  As I 
said, I am just asking for the lowest acceptable rig. Just in case I 
can by some miracle get a grant to buy the kit without the proposal 
being shot down by referees. But in the absence of cheap and willing 
roadies, the fewer speakers the better!  I will reluctantly accept that 
FOA is no longer enough; that must be kind of disappointing though for 
all those who posted FOA tracks to Ambisonia.



..


all that DAW manufacturers need to learn is that marketing and sales
should have no say in how wide the busses can be - if you leave that to
the techies, the answer is arbitrarily wide.


Well, we can but hope!


Richard Dobson
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Marc Lavallée

Sun, 01 May 2011 20:17:32 +0100,
Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote :

 On 01/05/2011 17:25, Marc Lavallée wrote:
 
  I have a naive question for experts: would it be possible to
  recreate the acoustics of the Philips Pavillon using room
  simulation techniques and ambisonics spatialization?
 
 
 
 That is what they/we did for the Virtual Electronic Poem  Project:
 
 http://www.edu.vrmmp.it/vep

Wow! :-)

 Sadly I never got to hear the final result. My contribution was
 strictly compositional (composing the sound routes in the almost
 complete absence of original data - the original 30-channel
 perforated control tape which controlled both the sound movements and
 the visual elements exists physically but is unplayable).

Sadly, electronic art is very ephemeral...
I hope you will hear the final result one day.
I also hope that the VEP will come back to North America;
I can see it was showed in New-York last year at The Drawing Center
during the Xenakis exhibit:
http://www.fonurgia.unito.it/wp/?tag=poeme-electronique
The same exhibit came to Montreal for the whole summer, 
and I went many times, but the VEP was not part of it. :-(

 The acoustic reconstruction was handled by the Berlin team. The
 project is described in CMJ 33 Vol 2, andd presetned at ICMC 2005; I
 don't know offhand if the CMJ paper is downloadable externally
 anywhere.

You mean CMJ Volume 33, Issue 2:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/comj/33/2
The article is downloadable (for a fee).

 As is the way of such things, it is rare indeed to get any funding
 etc for follow-up work, so the reconstruction software is probably
 stowed away somewhere obscure, never to see the light of day again.
 You would need to contact members of the team to see if any sort of
 access is possible. We always hoped to be able to create a publicly
 usable model of the space that could be used e.g. in Csound, so
 composers could explore their music as it might sound in that space.

When it will be forgotten and all the technology supporting it will be
obsolete, then a reconstruction of the reconstruction will be
needed... This is the kind of work that should go public domain now.

 For the acoustic modelling they created a huge amount (GB-worth) of
 hrtf impulse responses for every speaker (350 of them), for a
 particular central listener position. These were cross-faded
 according to the head-tracked motions of the listener.  The modelling
 was pretty comprehensive, even taking into account the properties of
 the interior surfaces. Resolution was 1deg horizontal and 5deg
 vertical.

Using 350 IRs is probably not that crazy compared to the original Poème.

 The binaural rendering was programmed in SuperCollider,  and the
 newly published SuperCollider Book (MIT Press) includes a chapter on
 this aspect.

 Richard Dobson

This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing the info.
(I should read the CMJ and visit The Wire web site more often...) 
--
Marc
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Marc Lavallée

Sun, 01 May 2011 21:11:48 +0100,
Gerard Lardner glard...@iol.ie wrote :

 Actually I don't have an iPhone myself - but it seems to be the
 smartphone of choice for this kind of control app. ;-)
 
 Also, I'm not fixated on Ubuntu, but merely I have used GlobalScale
 plug computers in a couple of places where I wanted the equivalent of
 a single board computer but with power supply and interfaces already
 built into a neat package; that plug computer (GlobalScale) comes
 with Ubuntu in firmware. For my very basic uses it was easy to
 configure. If the decoding software was written to be more agnostic
 about platform, that could only be better.
 
 Gerard Lardner

A Squeezebox server is easy to control using an iPhone.
There is a distribution for running a Squeezebox server :
http://squeezeplug.de/
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezePlug
But there's still no ambisonics decoder for the squeezebox, 
as Etienne Deleflie suggested a while ago:
http://etiennedeleflie.net/2008/01/09/squeezebox-and-ambisonics/

Another solution would be to use the Music Player Daemon (or MPD),
which can also be controlled from an iPhone,
but again there no ambisonics support for MPD.

--
Marc


 On 01/05/2011 01:44, Stefan Schreiber wrote:
  Gerard Lardner wrote:
 
  Perhaps something on the lines of a PlugComputer running Plug
  Ubuntu, a USB sound card, Linux software packaged for simple use
  and having a web control interface, and an iPhone app to control
  it all? The hardware (PlugComputer and sound card) then could be
  $200, I think  (excluding the iPhone - but some mobile providers
  are now giving that away free with some service contracts).
 
  Anyone up to doing it?
 
  Gerard Lardner
   
 
 
  So you want to combine the cheap costs of of a Ubuntu media center
  (needs some programming work, though) with the beauty of your
  beloved iPhone?
 
   g 
 
  Stefan Schreiber
 
  P.S.: Small hint
 
  It would be better if the Linux software might work for other Linux
  distributions, too...
 
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Stefan Schreiber

John Leonard wrote:

Some years ago I asked a question about how many list-members actually had
correctly set up surround systems of any sort at home; not in the studio, or
research facility, but in their own homes as a way of enjoying music. I seem to
remember that very few - three, if I recall correctly - said that they had. Is
it worth asking the question again?

Most people I know (in the UK, at least, where the prevalence of a 'den' set aside solely for watching sport on huge televisions is rather less than it is in the USA) still have nasty all-in-one 5.1 systems in their living rooms where the speakers are arranged so as not to get in the way or look ugly. They're not listening to properly set-up systems with well-defined levels and localisation, they're listening to a bunch of speakers in random positions and occasionally to a bit of LFE going 'boom' when a car explodes. It's probably far worse now in terms of localisation than it was when stereo first came out and everyone knew how you were supposed to set the system up and listen to it.

Regards,

John

But this is an advantage of Ambisonics (any oder), because the decoder
should be aware of the speaker positions.

Ideally, such a system should auto-measure.

5.1 is a rigid system, you can't compensate for non-ideal
speaker-positions. (Well, you can, but then you will probably use some
soundfield techniques anyway.)

Regards

Stefan
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Robert Greene



Re John L's remarks
I am not sure this is relevant to the interests of most
people on this list as such, but I do think it is absolutely
true that few people have a functioning proper surround set up.

As a High End audio reviewer, I know lots of consumers who
are interested in sound. Effectively none of them has a
surround system--actually of any kind--as their main music listening
system. If  they have
a home theater system with surround, it is generally separate
from their music listening system, the latter containing the
serious music listening equipment and being stereo.

One sees this in the products ,too. Go to a thrift shop and there
will be many surround receivers and DVD players with surround options
for amounts like $20, the leftovers of the mass market(much of this
stuff actually still works fine).
But go to a High End audio store and you will find next to nothing
with surround options.

One reason for this is no doubt that audiophiles are older and innately
conservative--they are still looking for the ultimate version of
Kind of Blue etc.

But there is another reason. There is almost no material for them to play.
SACD had surround possilibities but it is all but dead and moreover
almost nothing appeared that had good surround on it. I have surround
equipment but I do not set it up often because I have nothing to play on 
it that sounds good to me 
except my own two productions for Waterlily(St Petersburg Mahler 5 and 
Shos. 7) and a few Unicorn UHJ items. This is pretty much it for music 
material in surround  that I actually like in both musical
and sonic terms. Most of the orchestral material otherwise sounds like a 
big orchstra in front and a small orchestra in back. Very bad.


Of course if one is interested in surround as such, one can find things to 
listen to. But if one is interested in music, which tends to me rather

specific types of music, albeait different for different people, then
chances are that what you want to hear is going to be in stereo only.

I worked hard on those Waterlily surround items. But as far as I could
tell, almost everyone who bought the SACD bought it in hopes of hearing 
better stereo sound, not to hear the surround sound.


There really needs to be, if surround is going to take off ever, a
rather systematic attempt to get the material out there--and sounding 
good.


As I say, most of us here seem interested primarily in theory and future
possibilities. That includes me, most of the time. But just for the
commercial perspective, there it is! as I have observed it.

And as I always say, NO ONE in the public is going to get interested 
deeply in  Ambisonics until there

is a lot of 5.1 material produced from it that sounds really good.
People do not buy theory. They buy more of what sounded good to them!

Cheers,
Robert

On Mon, 2 May 2011, Stefan Schreiber wrote:


John Leonard wrote:

Some years ago I asked a question about how many list-members actually had 
correctly set up surround systems of any sort at home; not in the studio, 
or research facility, but in their own homes as a way of enjoying music. I 
seem to remember that very few - three, if I recall correctly - said that 
they had. Is it worth asking the question again?


Most people I know (in the UK, at least, where the prevalence of a 'den' 
set aside solely for watching sport on huge televisions is rather less than 
it is in the USA) still have nasty all-in-one 5.1 systems in their living 
rooms where the speakers are arranged so as not to get in the way or look 
ugly. They're not listening to properly set-up systems with well-defined 
levels and localisation, they're listening to a bunch of speakers in random 
positions and occasionally to a bit of LFE going 'boom' when a car 
explodes. It's probably far worse now in terms of localisation than it was 
when stereo first came out and everyone knew how you were supposed to set 
the system up and listen to it. 
Regards,


John



But this is an advantage of Ambisonics (any oder), because the decoder should 
be aware of the speaker positions.


Ideally, such a system should auto-measure.

5.1 is a rigid system, you can't compensate for non-ideal 
speaker-positions. (Well, you can, but then you will probably use some 
soundfield techniques anyway.)



Regards

Stefan
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-05-01 Thread Stefan Schreiber

Martin Leese wrote:

Stefan Schreiber st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote:
...

I have argued to introduce some common file format for 3D audio, for
example Ambisonics up to third order.
This standard could be based on the already existing FMH-Format.

Now, I am supposedly one of the snobs... But FMH is including B
format, or say FMH is superseding B format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics

(Table Higher order B-format channels)

...

If B format is so good for everything: Why do they use 3rd order
Ambisonics in computer games, not B format?

Just a note on terminology. I had thought the
list agreed sometime ago that the term
B-Format was not limited to first-order, but
included an Ambisonic soundfield of any order.
Hence the phrase Higher order B-format
channels; the higher-order channels are still
B-Format channels. Stefan's use of the term
seems different from this.

Regards,
Martin

1. Maybe this is your new definition. But then: B-format and .AMB are
identical.

This is certainly not the historical meaning of B format, but the
re-definition of the old term.

but
included an Ambisonic soundfield of any order.

2. Can't be, because nobody could agree on a common system for
Ambisonics = 4th order. If not, there is NO B format above third order,
because the normalization isn't clear, among other unspecified details.

Bye,

Stefan

P.S.:
Everybody knows what higher order B format means. Right? :-)
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

On 05/02/2011 12:27 AM, Richard Dobson wrote:
 On 01/05/2011 22:22, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
 ..
 But as the sound engineer who's expected to provide a solution I'm
 not in a position to argue about this. And from the same perspective
 there is another point to consider. What if you have not just a
 single piece requiring some ad-hoc speaker placement, but three or
 four in the same concert, each of them having their specific
 requirements ? In that case I (as the sound engineer) would want to
 use a technology that allows me to cover all of them without having
 to physically move speakers and rewire the whole setup for each
 piece. And that is exactly what using HOA provides in such a
 situation - it abstracts the hardware. This is a point made very
 strongly by Joern Nettingsmeier in various papers and reports about
 his work, and I couldn't agree more with what he writes about this.

 
 
 OK. As it happens my application is/will be purely synthetic (muons up
 there, electrons down here, top quarks somewhere else entirely, and the
 Higgs of course centre stage front) so ostensibly I can use whatever HOA
 order I like. I do ~really need~ to know how few speakers I can get
 away with, as that is what actually costs money! The Allosphere uses
 somewhere around 500 speakers; I need to reduce that number just a tad;
 to single figures if possible so I can put it in a hatchback with the
 back seat down... or the whole idea of it is more than a little moot and
 I will stick to stereo.

since we were talking about posterity...: by all means, use HOA for your
spatialisation process. it doesn't cost anything at all, and will make
your efforts future-proof. if you then feel you have to render it on
only 4 speakers, that will be no problem. but if you get the chance to
use a more luxurious outfit, your material will be able to exploit it.


-- 
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
Tonmeister (VDT)

http://stackingdwarves.net
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

On 05/02/2011 12:09 AM, Richard Dobson wrote:
 On 01/05/2011 20:29, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
 ..

 the point is: if you want to produce in tenth order and have the means
 to do it, your customer can still enjoy it on his/her 2nd order rig.
 
 Fine. I agree.  But what exactly is a '2nd order rig'? Some number of
 speakers, or the combination of source, decoding and layout?

actually, that was just an off-hand remark. i might as well have said
first-order, the point is it's downwards compatible to whatever your
consumer has at home, down to mono if necessary.

in theory, five speakers are sufficient for second-order horizontal,
although six are a lot better (and as BLaH have shown, six also
outperform the square for native first-order material).

 All I am asking is, what the smallest acceptable entry-level setup is.
  It used to be first-order horizontal, and four speakers, or 1st-order
 peri and 8 speakers. Clearly that is no longer acceptable - but what the
 new entry-level is is still less than clear to me. From the above it
 would appear to be 2nd-order source played over whatever the smallest
 acceptable 'second-order rig' is defined to be.

what is all this talk about smallest acceptable? if you want to enjoy
music with half a speaker, be my guest.
if you are able to enjoy first-order horizontal on four speakers, that's
great. but when you want to drag somebody away from 5.1 (kicking,
screaming and cursing), they have certain expectations that first-order
ambisonics cannot, ever, meet. at the same time, alas, they will be
totally insensitive to the subtle beauty of first-order's strengths.

 the bus width restriction is actually a bogus argument, which is only
 true in practice because that's how avid and friends milk their
 customers. heck, going from a 16ch bus width limit to 32ch should not
 ever include more than a recompile on decently written software.

 
 Depends to what extent it requires GUI features. At the moment the
 typical DAW draws all sorts of stuff for each channel of the main bus.
 Without the need to draw flashy graphics, I totally agree. We can do it
 in Csound already. 95% of the cost of any GUI application is the
 graphics.  I am still wondering what a full native HOA DAW (with height
 and full automation) would look like.

not native, but here's a very simple one that has been shoehorned into a
third-order workstation:
http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/11_3/nettingsmeier_ambisonics.html

scroll down a bit to see the the screenshots.

the maker of this program does not know much about ambisonics. he was
just wise enough to refrain from arbitrary bus width restrictions and to
allow modular panners.

 how can localisation and separation be distinct?
 
 
 I think the two words are too useful to be treated as exact synonyms -
 that would mean one of them is simply wasted. So I would say the former
 is absolute - this or that degree azimuth. The latter is relative - A is
 20deg to the right of B (or even, 2M behind B). If that's not a useful
 distinction, OK.

no, works for me. but then localisation precision _is_ separation.
localisation accuracy is maybe of secondary importance.

 All I can say is, my memories are different - I saw/heard very accurate
 localisation and separation in a live Electric Phoenix gig at the
 Arnolfini, Bristol, maybe 20 years ago as I mentioned before - the
 amplified voice was localised so that you heard each voice  ~exactly~ at
 the position the singer was in. They were some 40 feet away, so very
 much less than 20 degrees, and I was sat a long way left of centre, in
 raked seating. The effect was somewhat jaw-dropping; and as far as I am
 aware, that was all first-order analog panning, engineered by John
 Whiting. Of course, it was an auditorium-sized space. Dave Malham may
 know what order he was actually using as he probably designed the
 decoder - if it was HOA I will fully and gladly acknowledge my
 misunderstanding. I have no memory at all of the number or location of
 the loudspeakers.
 
 Sadly I live at the opposite end of the country from all the UK
 Ambisonic centres of excellence, so my prospects for hearing the state
 of the art and being duly persuaded thereof are presently fairly remote.

i'm pretty sure that the effect you heard was not due to the performance
of first-order ambisonics, but rather
* because you had visual cues (the reinforcement system may have created
a sense of striking nearness, and your visual system filled in the
localisation), and
* because you're an ambi fanboy.

that's not meant in any derogatory sense. i've been flabbergasted time
and again how people could be totally unimpressed by first-oeder
ambisonic systems that to me were between pretty good and totally
awesome.
it's still a conjecture, and i haven't tried to confirm it
experimentally, but i'm convinced that lower-order ambisonic listening
takes training - when your brain has learned to discard all the bogus
cues, the curtain opens.

that could explain why

Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Jörn Nettingsmeier

On 04/30/2011 02:12 AM, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
 On 29 Apr 2011, at 19:15, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
 
 but you are right, we are still heavily in the DIY + slightly
 kludgy realm. then again, most ambisonics fans will be, too. have
 to :)
 
 That's large part of the problem of lack of adoption. And a lot of
 that is to blame on the Ambisonics fans themselves: the snob's won't
 accept anything but 2nd or higher order Ambi, and no software or
 electronics maker is seriously going to go to that effort for
 something as iffy in terms of market acceptance.
 
 Instead of pushing for the perfectly pleasant 1st order listening and
 recording experience, and thinking of 2nd and higher order once that
 step has successfully been completed, every effort to get someone to
 accept basic B-format and UHJ support, results instead of cheers in
 jeers, and bitching and whining how anything but HOA isn't good
 enough, until any interest in even supporting 1st OA is evaporated.
 
 I sometimes wish these people could be locked away in a closet and
 released only after 1st order Ambisonics is sufficiently accepted by
 the audio community at large and the consumer electronics and
 computer software makers. Maybe we might get somewhere that way.

i sometimes wish people who have been advocating first-order ambisonics
for 30 years and failed miserably could be locked in a closet and let me
and others get on with their work, to be released only after HOA has
gained some foothold in the industry (yeah, i know, that can be a
*long* time).

tongue firmly in cheek,


jörn





-- 
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
Tonmeister (VDT)

http://stackingdwarves.net
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Michael Graves

On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:57:53 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:

On 04/29/2011 02:30 PM, Michael Graves wrote:
 On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:28:06 +0300, Eero Aro wrote:
 
 Hi All

 A Minim AD7 Ambisonic decoder seems to be for sale on a
 Finnish discussion forum:

 http://www.hifiharrastajat.org/forum/index.php?topic=1037823.0

 I don't know the person selling the decoder.

 Eero
 
 Could any one comment on the utility of this device? That is, if I'm
 starting from scratch to build a small residential ambi playback
 environment would I want it? or should I go another route?

i'd say unless you are very traditional in what goes into your hifi
stack, get a small, quiet computer with a good soundcard and do your
decoding in software. much more future-proof, cheaper, and more
flexible. unless you have stacks of UHJ-encoded LPs or CDs, where a
dedicated old-school hardware box might actually realize its potential
for userfriendliness.

Many thanks for the comments. This is as I expected. I struggle my own
desire for small appliance-like devices over the compexity of
computers. Yet, around my home there are a dozen computers. I like
single board computers for thngs like routers, because of their low
power, low noise, low maintainance requirements. I suppose a media PC
could be assembled in a similar fashion.

Michael
--
Michael Graves
mgravesatmstvp.com
http://www.mgraves.org
o713-861-4005
c713-201-1262
sip:mgra...@mstvp.onsip.com
skype mjgraves
Twitter mjgraves



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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread umashankar mantravadi

it would be nice if somebody put together - created a recipe - with readily
available components which will do one thing only. play four channel Bformat
files through an eight output sound card. just enough controls to set up the
speakers and select files to be played.

it would be nice if it cost very little (the hardware should not be more than
200 usd)

umashankar

i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar

From: mgra...@mstvp.com
To: sursound@music.vt.edu
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 09:05:16 -0500
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:57:53 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:

On 04/29/2011 02:30 PM, Michael Graves wrote:
On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:28:06 +0300, Eero Aro wrote:

Hi All

A Minim AD7 Ambisonic decoder seems to be for sale on a
Finnish discussion forum:

http://www.hifiharrastajat.org/forum/index.php?topic=1037823.0

I don't know the person selling the decoder.

Eero

Could any one comment on the utility of this device? That is, if I'm
starting from scratch to build a small residential ambi playback
environment would I want it? or should I go another route?

i'd say unless you are very traditional in what goes into your hifi
stack, get a small, quiet computer with a good soundcard and do your
decoding in software. much more future-proof, cheaper, and more
flexible. unless you have stacks of UHJ-encoded LPs or CDs, where a
dedicated old-school hardware box might actually realize its potential
for userfriendliness.

Many thanks for the comments. This is as I expected. I struggle my own
desire for small appliance-like devices over the compexity of
computers. Yet, around my home there are a dozen computers. I like
single board computers for thngs like routers, because of their low
power, low noise, low maintainance requirements. I suppose a media PC
could be assembled in a similar fashion.

Michael
--
Michael Graves
mgravesatmstvp.com
http://www.mgraves.org
o713-861-4005
c713-201-1262
sip:mgra...@mstvp.onsip.com
skype mjgraves
Twitter mjgraves

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Richard Dobson


On 30/04/2011 01:12, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

On 29 Apr 2011, at 19:15, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:

..
I sometimes wish these people could be locked away in a closet and
released only after 1st order Ambisonics is sufficiently accepted by
the audio community at large and the consumer electronics and
computer software makers. Maybe we might get somewhere that way.



I remember arguing much the same point ten years ago (or eleven - AMB 
was announced at ICMC in 2000) - and got precisely nowhere. The 
preoccupation on this list has always been the pursuit of the best 
possible, defined as mm-perfect localization over a more or less large 
area, with cost and number of speakers no object. While for mere users 
the attraction of a format is clearly in inverse proportion to the 
number of speakers required, and to the the number of decisions they 
have to make before pressing play. Those discussions about the 
ultimate HOA file format (4th-order or better, no doubt) are, I imagine, 
still ongoing. Worse than useless to anyone still pondering whether to 
go up to a full 5.1 system.


And of course there is absolutely no mileage whatsoever in any research 
application dealing with first-order. Any such application would, I have 
no doubt, be likely shot down in flames by those asked to referee the 
proposal. I even have such a project in mind - periphonic sonification 
of LHC collision data. There are reasons enough why such a project would 
get short shrift from the powers that be, but one of them would 
certainly be should be using at least third-order.


So I fear the battle for Ambisonics has already been lost; it remains a 
niche interest for a few researchers and individuals with the time, 
money and space to indulge it.


And then there is Wavefield Synthesis...



Richard Dobson

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Eero Aro


Richard wrote:

Hmmm, out of interest, how many more should there be.


I am definitely not the right person to answer to that, but:
UHJ decoders with better directional resolution used to have
four 10-pole phase shifters. The three AD7 shifters are eight pole
(if I remember right, would need to check the schematics.)


Also a
question, I thought on only X  Y were phase shifted +90 degrees
during encoding, am I wrong in this thinking?


AFAIK it is difficult to design phase shifters with so low shifts.
It is the relative phase difference between the phase shifters
inside the decoder that counts. The W shifter has a certain phase shift
and the other shifter outputs are leading or lacking the W in phase.

A further difficulty is that the relative phase difference between the
component signals should be the same on all frequencies.
Again - as far as I have understood, this is difficult to solve in
analog phase shifters.

As the encoders also were made with analog phase shifters, errors
in both of them added up as directional distortion.

This is the way a sound designer sees it, other people on the list
may be able to give you a more scientific explanation.

Eero
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Richard

Hmmm, thanks for that. I was thinking of doing a software decoder. I've been
using Audiomulch and the UHJ impulses up till now, but have been having phase
issues with the final audio (which by he way the hardware decoders suffer from
as well)

Just thought it would be interesting to do a software version of a hardware
decoder
I am definitely not the right person to answer to that, but:
UHJ decoders with better directional resolution used to have
four 10-pole phase shifters. The three AD7 shifters are eight pole
(if I remember right, would need to check the schematics.)

Also a
question, I thought on only X Y were phase shifted +90 degrees
during encoding, am I wrong in this thinking?

AFAIK it is difficult to design phase shifters with so low shifts.
It is the relative phase difference between the phase shifters
inside the decoder that counts. The W shifter has a certain phase shift
and the other shifter outputs are leading or lacking the W in phase.

A further difficulty is that the relative phase difference between the
component signals should be the same on all frequencies.
Again - as far as I have understood, this is difficult to solve in
analog phase shifters.

As the encoders also were made with analog phase shifters, errors
in both of them added up as directional distortion.

This is the way a sound designer sees it, other people on the list
may be able to give you a more scientific explanation.

Eero
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Martin Leese

Richard zoanne...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

 I think Eero wrote:
   The AD-7 was designed to use a small number of components,
   it has just three phase shifters. The AD-7 is not a precision
   reference decoder, but at least for me, it did it's job for music
   listening.

 Hmmm, out of interest, how many more should there be. Also a question, I
 thought on only X  Y were phase shifted +90 degrees during encoding, am I
 wrong in this thinking?

This is described in MAG's 1985 JAES article;
look at Appendix A3.1.2 Simplified UHJ
decoding equations using three phase shifters,
and particularly at Fig 13.  The unsimplified
block diagram in Fig. 14 uses four phase
shifters.

The key was that the simplified design used
fewer op-amps (which came in packages of
four), and so could be implemented for less
money.  As Eero pointed out, the AD 7 was
cheap and cheerful.  The AD 10 was the
proper decoder.

The paper should be in the Ambisonic
Motherlode, but I don't see it.  You never know,
perhaps the Magic Paper Fairy will drop a
copy into your inbox.

Regards,
Martin
-- 
Martin J Leese
E-mail: martin.leese  stanfordalumni.org
Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Richard

Many thanks for that priceless info, shame the paper isn't available


  :
  This is described in MAG's 1985 JAES article;
  look at Appendix A3.1.2 Simplified UHJ
  decoding equations using three phase shifters,
  and particularly at Fig 13.  The unsimplified
  block diagram in Fig. 14 uses four phase
  shifters.

  The key was that the simplified design used
  fewer op-amps (which came in packages of
  four), and so could be implemented for less
  money.  As Eero pointed out, the AD 7 was
  cheap and cheerful.  The AD 10 was the
  proper decoder.

  The paper should be in the Ambisonic
  Motherlode, but I don't see it.  You never know,
  perhaps the Magic Paper Fairy will drop a
  copy into your inbox.

  Regards,
  Martin
  -- 
  Martin J Leese
  E-mail: martin.leese  stanfordalumni.org
  Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Marc Lavallée

LSat, 30 Apr 2011 21:39:56 +0100,
Richard zoanne...@yahoo.co.uk wrote :

Many thanks for that priceless info, shame the paper isn't available

Here it is (for a fee):
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=4419

:
This is described in MAG's 1985 JAES article;
look at Appendix A3.1.2 Simplified UHJ
decoding equations using three phase shifters,
and particularly at Fig 13. The unsimplified
block diagram in Fig. 14 uses four phase
shifters.

The key was that the simplified design used
fewer op-amps (which came in packages of
four), and so could be implemented for less
money. As Eero pointed out, the AD 7 was
cheap and cheerful. The AD 10 was the
proper decoder.

The paper should be in the Ambisonic
Motherlode, but I don't see it. You never know,
perhaps the Magic Paper Fairy will drop a
copy into your inbox.

Regards,
Martin
--
Martin J Leese
E-mail: martin.leese stanfordalumni.org
Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Richard

Seems you need to be a member

LSat, 30 Apr 2011 21:39:56 +0100,
Richard zoanne...@yahoo.co.uk wrote :

Many thanks for that priceless info, shame the paper isn't available

Here it is (for a fee):
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=4419

The paper should be in the Ambisonic
Motherlode, but I don't see it. You never know,
perhaps the Magic Paper Fairy will drop a
copy into your inbox.

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale


Gerard Lardner wrote:


Perhaps something on the lines of a PlugComputer running Plug Ubuntu, a
USB sound card, Linux software packaged for simple use and having a web
control interface, and an iPhone app to control it all? The hardware
(PlugComputer and sound card) then could be $200, I think  (excluding
the iPhone - but some mobile providers are now giving that away free
with some service contracts).

Anyone up to doing it?

Gerard Lardner
 



So you want to combine the cheap costs of of a Ubuntu media center 
(needs some programming work, though) with the beauty of your beloved 
iPhone?


 g 

Stefan Schreiber

P.S.: Small hint

It would be better if the Linux software might work for other Linux 
distributions, too...



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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

Fons Adriaensen wrote:

Or snobs as the OP called them. And yes, I'd agree that the battle to
get 1st order into the consumer world has been lost. It was lost at
least ten years ago. I'm not going to sit in a corner and make myself
unhappy because of that.

Ciao,

However, there are now some (early!) attempts to introduce 3D audio into
cinemas, and maybe to define a standad for CE applications/home theaters.

If we speak about suround sound with height, Ambisonics is the market
leader. (Current WFS doesn't include height. And it would prove to be
costly to do so, in every sense. O:-) )

The only competition are binaural recordings.

I have argued to introduce some common file format for 3D audio, for
example Ambisonics up to third order.

This standard could be based on the already existing FMH-Format.

Now, I am supposedly one of the snobs... But FMH is including B
format, or say FMH is superseding B format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics

(Table Higher order B-format channels)

It is obvious that any translation from 3rd order Ambisonics to 5.1
works better than from B format to 5.1.(If 5.1 shall be superseded by
a 3D standard, we need backwards-compatibility to 5.1. 5.1 is the
established film standard, 10% of movies might use 7.1 suround, which
usually is 6.1.)

3rd order is a good compromise of number of channels/loudspeakers vs.
performance. And compared to WFS (also studied for cinema use),
Ambisonics certainly need less resources than WFS.

If B format is so good for everything: Why do they use 3rd order
Ambisonics in computer games, not B format?

http://etiennedeleflie.net/2008/06/24/codemasters-ups-their-useage-of-ambisonics-on-race-driver-grid/

I could imagine why, but I don't want to disturb the discussion
between the reasonable B fomat adepts and snobistic HOA rocket
scientists...

Running away... :-D

Best,

Stefan Schreiber

P.S.: Speaking of B format recordings, there are the well-known issues
of sound quality. SNR? High frequencies?

A typical B format mic is good for ambience recordings, but maybe not
for orchestral recordings, or in fact any musical recoding with a group
of people playing.
(I have participated in quite some surround recordings. Not any
tonemaster I know would do an orchestral recording with just one B
format microphone. This is not the case because tonemasters supposedly
don't know Ambisonics. There are probably too many disadvantages and
limitations?

Just speaking from a practical point of view...)
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

Richard Dobson wrote:

Should that be a surprise ? If as a composer you are used to just
placing a speaker in the right place when you want a particular
sound to come from a certain direction in a concert, would you be
impressed by the performance of first order Ambisonics ?

Yes! I still am. Even on the bare minimum four speakers. I remember
being impressed by it many years ago (eng. John Whiting, for Electric
Phoenix). I think it is high time first-order was re-evaluated, in a
more, um, realistic way. Let the question be, not how many speakers
you can justify, but how few you can manage with.

Very probably you ae right, but this will happen in a wider context.

The simple fact is that 1st order AMB has no chance against 5.1. For the
applications that are wanted by the mass consumer market, 5.1 actually
works and delivers better results than 1st order AMB ever could.

I seem to recall a certain patent was taken out a while back
specifically to enable B-format to be rendered over 5.1. Not ideal, by
any means, but ~possible~. And it ~would~ improve the vast majority of
film soundtracks, most of which do pretty rubbish
quasi-spatialization, where they bother at all.

5.1 is basically stereo with center channel (impotant in cinema use,
because it centers the voice to the screen), and two envelope channels.

It is not a perfect surround system, but it does what it is supposed to do.

Considering the distribution of spectators in a typical cinema, B format
doesn't improve on 5.1, even less with 4 speakers. 4 speakers might
work at home, for one or two listeners.

(Sometimes it actually doesn't work, depending on room acoustics etc.)

And it ~would~ improve the vast majority of film soundtracks, most of
which do pretty rubbish quasi-spatialization, where they bother at all.

But maybe it is not all about spatialization, even if we speak about
surround sound? I don't want to get too polemic here, but the most
important factors for film audio seems to be that you can understand the
actors even at soft levels, and that any music sounds well...

Few film fans would analyze if you can here that a sound comes from say
170º back-right. 5.1 might not deliver this, but luckily the average
cineast doesn't know this...

It is fair to say that 1st order AMB is good (or good enough?) for
some things, but it is not perfect surround sound forever. Some people
on this list are actually using 2nd/3rd and higher order Ambisonics, and
I think that any good standard should consider different
applications/requirements.

Frankly, if .AMB format includes B format (1st order), I don't see any
fundamental conflict at all .

Best,

Stefan Schreiber

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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale

2011-04-30 Thread Marc Lavallée

Sun, 1 May 2011 07:09:04 +0530,
umashankar mantravadi umasha...@hotmail.com a écrit :

 i have the sabrent. it works very well in windows with asio for all.
 it is advertised as 7.1 but has eight identical output channels (you
 have to watch out for virtual 7,1 boxes) i have bult myself an eight
 channel digiital amplifier using quad cards from sure electronics (50
 usd including shipping for each) and eight loudspeakers using vifa
 four inch full range drivers in small wooden boxes. 
 i have so far connected four speakers. the other four - now!

I also have a bunch of amps from sure electronics (stereo, 15W/channels,
$12 each); they can be driven directly from a good computer
power-supply. 

I have two Alpair 7 4 inches drivers; they are excellent
but a bit expensive to buy much more, so I'm evaluating a pair of
Fountek FR88EX 3 inches drivers. The only problem with small full-range
drivers is their poor bass performance...

For a good computer based solution, I would suggest checking the 
new Zacate all-in-one motherboards with 8 audio ouputs.


 umashankar
 
 i have published my poems. read (or buy) at
 http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar
 
 
  
  Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:08:43 -0400
  From: m...@hacklava.net
  To: sursound@music.vt.edu
  Subject: Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale
  
  Sun, 01 May 2011 01:44:38 +0100,
  Stefan Schreiber st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote :
  
   Gerard Lardner wrote:
   
   Perhaps something on the lines of a PlugComputer running Plug
   Ubuntu, a USB sound card, Linux software packaged for simple use
   and having a web control interface, and an iPhone app to control
   it all? The hardware (PlugComputer and sound card) then could be
   $200, I think (excluding the iPhone - but some mobile providers
   are now giving that away free with some service contracts).
   
   Anyone up to doing it?
   
   Gerard Lardner

  
  That's a good idea, 
  but where to find a cheap USB sound card with 8 output channels? 
  I know about one, but I suspect it is not very good:
  http://sabrent.com/v2/8-channel-3d-usb-2-0-external-7-1-surround-sound-box-wdigital-output/
  Then an external 8 channels amplifier would be required...
  
  It might be cheaper (and better) to use a desktop computer (small or
  big) with an on-board sound card, and include 4 stereo class-D
  amplifiers in the computer box, although such a configuration could
  be subject to internal interferences.
  
   So you want to combine the cheap costs of of a Ubuntu media
   center (needs some programming work, though) with the beauty of
   your beloved iPhone?
  
  Or any Android device?
  
g 
   
   Stefan Schreiber
   
   P.S.: Small hint
   
   It would be better if the Linux software might work for other
   Linux distributions, too...
  
  The main differences between Linux distributions are the packaging
  systems and the versions of the included software. It's fairly easy
  to convert a well packaged software for other distributions (and
  packaging systems)
  
  --
  Marc
  
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Re: [Sursound] Minim AD7 for sale