On 05/01/2011 01:33 PM, Paul Hodges wrote: > --On 01 May 2011 12:15 +0100 Richard Dobson > <[email protected]> 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.)
my personal answer is: 3rd horizontal is vastly preferrable. for me, 1st order horizontal is nice but on the brink of collapsing due to ambiguous source localosation, 1st order peri tips it over the edge. that's with my sound engineer's ear, not with my music appreciation ear. 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. there is no conclusive answer really, since if you're after "maximum sense of envelopment", first order 3d is nice. i guess a better question is: at what order do ambisonic systems stop falling flat on their faces with "hostile" content? otherwise we'll always be re-iterating those old arguments with old geezers who still maintain that there's nothing like stokowski in mono. it's lovely, but it's because the makers went through great pains to make it work in mono. 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". -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister (VDT) http://stackingdwarves.net _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
