Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
On 07/18/2011 06:18 PM, Stefan Schreiber wrote:
Which means that they are probably using HRTF techniques. Because HRTF
is an individual parameter, they would have to use some form of
"standard" HRTF, as long as they don't perform individual measurements.
For me, the interviewer didn't ask the right questions.
quite obviously, the interviewer either doesn't have much insight into
surround sound psychoacoustics as a whole, or he's deliberately
playing dumb for the (dubious) benefit of his readers.
Jörn, yes, but I tried to distinguish between the interviewer and the
technique which is actually reviewed. ..
And again, that’s not just amplitude.
master of suspense. to the uninitiated, this wording implies high
magic. to the slightly more initiated, the word "phase" begins to glow
in deep blue letters on the wall, and we have read so many amazing
things in our hifi magazines about phase, and our friends in the pub
don't understand it.
Right you are ;-) , even completey right, but see my first commentary above.
So we’re taking advantage of
what we learned there to create this feeling that things are being
projected into space in the D axis, the depth axis.
<sound of coffee being expelled through the nose>
the what?
so this is 4d spacetime, right? x, y, z, and d :) now this funny
drone noise, is that minkowski spinning in his grave?
Careful, here I differ!
In a parametric approach, d makes a lot of sense. It is not clear from
the interview < how > the distance cues are reproduced, agreed.
Music representation according to this approach is clearly
five-dimensional (x,y,z, d and t!), so they call this "multidimensial
audio"/MDA... O:-) :-)
This < might > be something new, and indeed difficult to obtain with 5.1
or (classical) Ambisonics. (If at all.)
ambisonics is about recreating a sound field (for many listeners).
head-tracked binaural (whether fed over loudspeakers or headphones) is
a single-listener thing.
any cues that will work without head tracking for more than a single
person with known orientation in the room can be tacked to ambisonics
just as well.
Ambisonics 1st order doesn't reproduce close distance. And maybe it is
just for one or two listeners. We have to be fair...
However, X-talk cancelling techniques would require close speakers.
i'm not sure about this. from what i've heard, rwth aachen are running
a CAVE with head tracking and binaural feeds delivered by a cube of
speakers (as that is the only layout that wouldn't interfere too much
with their screen configuration). no idea how exactly they do it, but
there should be some papers out there. iirc they can even accomodate
more than one listener. haven't heard it, though.
Heinrich Hertz Institut (Berlin) does reproduction of 3D video without
glasses, while they are tracking observer positions.
Even the XBox might track players, so what? (Kinect, distance cues
quite directly via IR camera, if I remember well.)
What I heard that day at SRS was a witch’s brew of breakthrough audio
technologies, a combination of new psychoacoustic depth-rendering
techniques applied through the filter of a game-changing approach to
mixing movie soundtracks that SRS calls Multi-dimensional Audio, or
MDA. Together, they form the basis of CircleCinema 3D, a feature that
will begin appearing in flat-panel HDTVs and soundbars from SRS
licensees in 2012, and perhaps later, in A/V receivers.
this is gibberish.
Look, he is just a journalist, not a sursound-trained suround
scientist... 8-)
One technique journalist I know has told me that he plans to visit SRS
when he is next time in LA, which will be soonly. The interview should
include better question, he already knows...
But the coding of depth cues seems to be something new, and if this
works, it is really impressing.
actually, i don't see that happening for more than one person, without
head tracking.
Very unclear, indeed. Somebody has to review the approach from a more
technical point of view!
P.S.: The next surround system has to be independent of speaker
configurations, and to include the 3D/"sphere" aspect. If you can
reproduce distance cues, even better.
distance cues are mostly gimmickry in my opinion. you can fake
distance in a number of ways, but most are really dependent on the
spectrum and envelope of the program material. most aspects of
distance encoding are also orthogonal to most surround techniques,
which means they can be added at will, today. they don't even
necessitate a fancy new name.
Ok. So just < do > this in a commecial system?!
But again, if they design some parametric or "audio object" based
system, it is natural to add some distance parameter. (In 3D video, the
parallel approach would be "2D and depth". It is pretty natural and
efficient, although there are some limits in accuiracy.)
you could just say "i'm doing crosstalk-cancelled binaual delivery via
speakers using near-field hrtfs as described by menzies and others",
or you could say "i'm using vector-base amplitude panning of anechoic
audio objects as introduced by pulkki, combined with room synthesis
based on well-known algorithms a, b, and c, some lowpass to mimic air
absorption and adaptive resampling delay to obtain doppler shifts".
Absolutely, but this an area where they just might stop talking. I
already have suspected that they are using VBAP and X-talk cancelled
binaural representation (not on this list). Your analysis seems to be
very sophisticated, and probably pretty close to the real thing. Bravo!
But even if they use ingredients which are all known in the scientific
community, they are trying to define a new standard, or at least a new
commercial system which is based on all this science. It is hard to
design anything commercial when the science behind is not understood. In
this sense, I don't have any problem with the SRS appoach. (It is still
hard enough to get a system work...)
Now, compare this to "our" different European WFS attempts, and you will
see what I mean. (This is very interesting and scientifically probably
more advanced, but commecially, this is just going nowhere. A new cinema
audio standard would intend to introduce at least < some > meaningful 3D
clues. I hope that I don't have some 97 new enemies from the WFS
community... :-[ )
of course you could also say "we are harnessing ultrasound-triggered
ectoplasm for real 4-d sound projectiong using our proprietary
one-more-dimension-than-your-mum technology". yawn.
Disagree, and strongly! They are demonstrating their technology, this is
not about vaporware.
it's so friggin' hard to make the walls of the listening room
disappear (with _any_ surround technique) that i don't see how the
majority of consumers would ever respond to distance cues properly,
with the exception of some bumblebee-in-your-ear tricks or depth
effects mediated by visuals. the former are often limited to very
specific content, and for the latter, if you have visuals, then like
it or not, mono is totally adequate and the brain will do the rest
(exaggerated, but only very slightly).
And maybe they want to have some "proximity effects" in cinema/film
audio? (Some can be done now, I know.)
My opinion: It is the right time to introduce some improved surround
system into the market, at least in the cinema area there seems to be
real demand.
Scientifically, we should have gathered enough knowledge to be able to
do so, by now.
Surround is not just about Ambisonics and maybe WFS, yet again.
Even if SRS is using technology which is an old hat and based on some
very old math conceived by Huygens or even earlier :-D , well, at least
they do something.
Best,
Stefan
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