Let me be blunt: there's a lot to be said about HOA in theoretical terms, it's wonderful, exciting, yet totally irrelevant:
When it comes to "localizing" sounds, when I sit in the sofa at home, I'm not trying to shoot the second violin by sound, I just want a natural sounding, enjoyable soundscape that's not some cheap, artificial reverb/delay/hall effect thrown in by some more or less skillfully programmed surround processor. UHJ with a 4.0 setup is already PLENTY GOOD ENOUGH for that purpose. It sounds a lot more natural and thoroughly enjoyable on my ancient Onkyo receiver than any stereo or surround effect. What makes it less than enjoyable are the quality of the processing, DACs, etc. when compared to better gear. What sold me on Ambisonics? A properly set up Meridian system. Guess what that did? Play back UHJ Nimbus CDs, and listening to Stereo in Super Stereo mode. TOTALLY GOOD ENOUGH. And still leaps and bounds better than all that 5.1 crap (aside from G-Format) Again, we're not trying to shoot the musicians, so if localization is off by a few degrees, who cares, as long as it sounds realistic? 99.999% of the time the listener wasn't at the recording, and certainly not at the microphone position, so there's no way of telling if the localization is off or not. And the talk of 3D compositions by avant-garde composers is equally irrelevant, because their works make up about 0.00001% of the music for sale, which is what I as a consumer at home care about. This isn't about setting up some setup for some government arts fund sponsored special event with 64 speaker channels and some high-brow avant-garde compositions. It's about a typical garage band, local chamber ensemble, etc. setting up a mic in the performance space and being able to produce something more natural sounding than some pan-potted stereo recording. We're not doing lab experiments, we're LISTENING TO MUSIC. Similarly, what does a SoundField mic output? A/B format. Now translate that into 5.1. That's what's a realistic production flow. People are not going to have Eigenmics or stuff like that, and only some things will be synthesized sounds that can be generated in HOA. Now, if some DAW plug-in that does sound field manipulation uses INTERNALLY for processing HOA and it results in better results, that's OK and totally transparent to the user, as long as it's A/B-Format input and B/G/UHJ/binaural-Format output. The last anyone wants to see is a zillion tracks of audio the meaning of which isn't understood. So again, realistic sources and production is going to be B-Format base, mostly even tossing the Z-axis. And that's good enough for now. I'm not saying don't do research, just like because cotton shirts are good enough doesn't mean one shouldn't do research in synthetic fibers gear suitable for polar or space missions. But don't try to clothe the entire planet in ultra-performance fiber clothes, if most people will be just fine with cotton. 1st OA is something that can be grasped by the average engineer, recording band member, etc. 1 channel for the mono sound, plus three differential channels for the X, Y and Z axes. That's about as intuitive as it gets without being totally wrong. Now try to explain HOA to your average musician. Haha! You really think HOA is going to take off if the average garage band member can't wrap their head around it? So if the Ambi-Snobs could come back from their space mission and set foot on the ground for a while, then 1stOA actually would have a chance. It's not that the battle for 1st OA was lost, it was never ever fought, because between the UK government licensing, academic research, etc. it never even registered on anyone's scale outside a small circle of people in academics or into high-end British audio gear who stumbled over it reading a Meridian instruction manual. Once 1st OA is as widely used as stereo is today, THEN it's time to push further. One doesn't feed a baby with a steak! Ronald _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
