> > Although I don’t ascribe to a single 'school' of psychology, I do buy into > James Gibson's idea that man (and animals) and their environments are > inseparable (this is at the heart of Ecological Psychology).
I think (or at least hope) that James Gibson's ideas are slowly making their way into the field of audio engineering. What I like about Gibson's ideas is that they remove the emphasis on physical modelling. For example, the perception of how far away a fly is significantly determined by what _other_ sounds exist at the same time. For example, a fly always has low loudness. If one can hear a fly very clearly and the environmental sound levels are high ... then something rings wrong. But it is not just the relative loudness ... it is also the entire acoustic ecology ... ecological consistency etc. An other aspect of Gibson's ideas that are interesting concerns the difference between mediated environments and non-mediated environments. Gibson argues that it is impossible for a mediated environment to ever be confused with a non-mediated environment... no matter how good the technology. The reasons are environmental again. Ofcourse, that doesn't mean that there cant be a 'suspension of disbelief' ... but some argue that the suspension of disbelief is the domain of art, not science. It is the expression (of the art) that fools the perception (not the stimuli). > Here is where I find 'fault' or room for improvement with a lot of > controlled laboratory experiments: this has been argued by a few researchers. Personally, I am starting to question that the centrality of 'direction', not just evident in audio synthesis interfaces but also evident in the underlying theory of ambisonics (and in Gerzon's ideas), is not actually just a direct result of the limitations of a laboratory based scientific understanding of sound perception. I wonder if perhaps direction is *not* that important to spatial audio. Ofcourse, it is a part, but is it central? This view leads to the questioning of the value of higher order ambisonics. > Anybody tried this? I think I’ll give it a go using a four speaker > arrangement (horizontal only) while playing a live recording of persons > talking at eight equally-spaced locations around a Soundfield mic. Upon > playback, I’ll place the Soundfield mic in the four-speaker arrangement, > record this, and then listen to the recording of the recording. How much > localization info do you believe will be lost? Could be fun, plus I’m a > firm believer in learning by doing. > would be interesting to do it over and over again .. effectively doing calculus on the effect (or bias) of the microphone. Very similar concept to Alvin Lucier's composition "I am sitting in a room" ... except Lucier is amplifying the effect of the room .. and it is significant... and this suggests that the experiment should be done in an anechoic chamber ... because you will be capturing not just the effect of the microphone, and the limitations in the decoding, as well as the character of the speakers, but also the character of the room. Etienne > Thanks for reading, > Eric > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120530/081156c8/attachment.html > > > _______________________________________________ > Sursound mailing list > Sursound@music.vt.edu > https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound > -- http://etiennedeleflie.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120531/6b2ced5e/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
