Hello Steve,
Just to clarify:
I had the idea for a 'spherical microphone' and discussed it with
Michael Gerzon in February 1972. This was before Michael became
involved with Prof. Fellgett at Reading. My motivation was to
improve signal-to-noise ratio by averaging the output of large number
of capsules located on the surface of a football-sized sphere,
possibly with a weighting network so that one can synthesise omni,
figure-of-eight etc..
When Michael joined Fellgett's group he realised that this idea was
needed for Ambisonics, but it needed to be made practical. Michael
reduced my 'large number of capsules' to four cardioids in a
tetrahedral arrangement, as explained on Stephen Thornton's website:
http://www.michaelgerzonphotos.org.uk/ambisonics.html
The Schoeps "Stereo Sphere" mic is different - it is not intending to
mimic the output of an omni or fig-8 mic placed at its centre. One
might however consider Gary Elko's "Eigenmike" as a modern development
of the original "spherical microphone" principle.
Peter Craven
-----------------------------
Thursday, February 10, 2011, 12:22:47 PM, Steve Higgs wrote:
> I was facinated to learn that Peter Craven empirically 'discovered' the
> tetrehederal layout of the 4 capsules, (and so nearly 'discovered the much
> larger Stereo Sphere mic) and Michael worked out why it sounded
> so good and predictably.
_______________________________________________
Sursound mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
