2011/5/1 Jörn Nettingsmeier <netti...@stackingdwarves.net>: > 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 many people are perfectly content with their own > FOA systems, and also why they have so few friends to share their passion.
I think Jörn has made several important points here about learning to listen. The benefits of good 1st-order playback for me are the sense of envelopment and the accuracy of timbre. Those take a while to appreciate and I have the advantage of having many hours of b-format recordings made in halls I know very well, so I have an absolute reference. Many people are accustomed to hearing sounds come out of individual speakers, like on _A Kind of Blue_ or _Sgt. Pepper_. I put on a demo here at work (one of our conference rooms has a squashed hexagon array). People were generally impressed by the sound, but a number of people walked over to the individual speakers and were disappointed that they could "hear the violins in the front-right speaker and the basses in the front-left speaker." Also... I've noticed accommodation effects (for lack of a better term) when listening to panned test signals, both positive and negative. . after 15-20 minutes of listening to panned noise and switching between different arrays and decoders, I find the localization gets completely ambiguous. Taking a short break restores my localization abilities. . during the listening tests for BLaH4, with some decoders and listening to "eight directions", localization was indistinct to the direct left and right, until I turned and looked in that direction during the announcement, at which point the localization in that direction became distinct and precise, and remained so after turning back to the front for the reminder of the session. Aaron Heller <hel...@ai.sri.com> Menlo Park, CA US _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
