Hi Alfons!
I went to ambisonic and read the FAQ. I do not agree with them when they say that 2-channel stereo is only good for imaging between the speakers. It is possible by using phase differences (and the assumption that people are not living in sound-dead laboratories) to project sounds outside of the stereo-field.
I did not find anything either to support that 4-channel is superior to 7-channel ... Maybe I was not looking hard enough ??
/jens
not superior, but equivalent, less snake-oil-infested, cheaper, more general and more elegant. ahem, yes, superior :-D
you can express any spatial sound with just 4 channels, where one is the mono component, and 3 are the x, y, and z-axis difference signals (similar to m/s stereo).
you can then render it to any speaker layout you want.
imnsho all those n.1 surround techniques (where n is defined as the number of speakers you have or want to afford plus any positive integer greater than one) are money-making schemes. anything above 5.1 in one plane is plain stupid (even the center is not necessary in theory, although it makes the job for the mix engineer a lot easier).
and the mutually incompatible encoding formats are not helping either...
and as to encoding anything outside the line between the speakers in stereo, well, it just does not work very well. it's ok for the occasional "wow, cool" effect, but for not much else. all those nifty little tricks have very small sweet spots and fall apart as soon as you move just a little, and those oh-so-cool 3d phasing effects completely and utterly wreck the low end in practice.
-- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Germany http://spunk.dnsalias.org (my server) http://www.linuxaudiodev.org (Linux Audio Developers)
