Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
Yep, I've downloaded it too and it does look nice - I am _very_ envious of that display! The following comments are on the free player. Aside from any worries I (and no doubt many of those who remember active steering quad decoders) have about any sort of active level/position dependent processing, the current version has, as far as I am concerned, some limitations which rule out its use at present. The most serious of these is a lack of with-height surround playback (except, presumably, over phones). I mean, come on guys - this is the 21st century! The player also does not have any means (as far as I can see) to route outputs to audio channels (Windows version, not checked the OSX one yet). This is one of the big limitations of VLC which has stopped us pursuing that as the optimum cross platform player. There's no option to play UHJ...which is still important. No loop or playlist mode on the player. Anyway, more next week when I have had a chance to get into our studio and try it out (if I can figure a way to route the signals) Dave Malham PS - I think the full plugin is counter-productively expensive! I mean, come on - a plugin that costs more than many hosts that it might be used in like Reaper or Plogue and almost as much as the full Max/MSP/Jitter package, all of which have far more functionality and represent much higher investments in development time and resources. Fair enough (I suppose) for people who can afford to shell out for Protools - but for anyone else??? On 31/03/2011 17:15, Richard Dobson wrote: On 31/03/2011 11:59, Svein Berge wrote: . In addition, there is a free B-format player application, which is intended for playing back b-format material. Hopefully, this can make some modest contribution on the popularity of b-format as a surround sound format. The player is available for windows, osx and linux. Hi, just downloaded it; plays very nicely, and looks great. One thing though - it looks like it is exclusively a decoder, i.e. treats any generic multi-channel file (.wav) as if it is BFormat, so it seems it can't double up as a general multi-channel soundfile player - which would be quite handy. Of course one reason for the AMB format was specifically to disambiguate plain m/c files from bformat ones, to make such operation easier. Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 432448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 432450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
Perhaps one answer to this is to offer academic pricing? This is what Soundfield does with the main SurroundZone plug-in, as far as I remember. Best wishes, John On 1 Apr 2011, at 05:37, Svein Berge wrote: I think it's a good deal, but don't expect much sympathy from academia. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
On 1. april. 2011, at 13:08, dave.mal...@york.ac.uk wrote: They priced the software based on a similar model to yours (and insisted on me developing a dongle which put up the costs even further) against the advice of those of us in the business (so to speak). The result - way lower sales than they estimated and that it deserved. The whole thing nearly disappeared altogether tho' it has survived in some niche markets. Hence my comment about counter- productive. If products sold in the numbers they deserved, well, need I say more... On the question of with-height - I presume that, at the very least, the binaural out produces height? Absolutely. On route outputs to audio channels, the problem is that it isn't just the channel ordering that matters, it's what speakers are connected where and if you have (say) a 5.1 rig, a stereo rig and an octagon sharing an audio interface and/or speakers, some kind of output matrix is pretty well essential. Ok, so the option of skipping channels. I see the need for that with the player. During beta testing, nobody requested this for the plugin, so I assume they had other means of dealing with it. UHJ - theoretical analysis/listening tests would be an interesting project! Sure! Svein ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
On 04/01/2011 01:55 PM, Richard Dobson wrote: On 01/04/2011 10:37, Svein Berge wrote: ... of the development. Since this plugin in practice requires the use of a soundfield-type microphone, which is not really a mass-market product, I hope composers are not entirely disregarded in this, which seems to me to be an unnecessarily limited assumption. They will likely be producing (DAW-permitting!) a B-Format stream synthetically; i.e. the stream comes directly from the host, not from a microphone. Indeed I will likely be doing this soon myself, as one obvious thing to do with LHC collision data is to sonify in surround. iiuc, it doesn't make sense to use harpex for sonification. harpex' strong point is to sharpen first-order natural recordings and thus increase the versatility of a tetrahedral microphone. to get sharp localisation for panned monophonic events, just use higher order ambisonics. -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
On 01/04/2011 14:22, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: On 04/01/2011 01:55 PM, Richard Dobson wrote: On 01/04/2011 10:37, Svein Berge wrote: ... of the development. Since this plugin in practice requires the use of a soundfield-type microphone, which is not really a mass-market product, I hope composers are not entirely disregarded in this, which seems to me to be an unnecessarily limited assumption. They will likely be producing (DAW-permitting!) a B-Format stream synthetically; i.e. the stream comes directly from the host, not from a microphone. Indeed I will likely be doing this soon myself, as one obvious thing to do with LHC collision data is to sonify in surround. iiuc, it doesn't make sense to use harpex for sonification. harpex' strong point is to sharpen first-order natural recordings and thus increase the versatility of a tetrahedral microphone. to get sharp localisation for panned monophonic events, just use higher order ambisonics. Well, yes, fair enough; but that rather highlights the feeling that one would be paying rather a lot for what is only a first-order decoder, notwithstanding all the refinements. As Dave says elsewhere, the display is really what sells it, and from my point of view it rather successfully evokes a 2D view of (say) the ATLAS particle detector, e.g. along the beam axis. As our current project is focussed on outreach into schools (and the wider community where we can), such display tools would clearly contribute greatly to the impact of the exercise, even if we end up rendering mostly to stereo or headphones. Having a multi-speaker periphonic rig is unlikely to be a priority for schools any time soon, sadly! But if it can be justified under the science budget, who knows? So I am likely to be more than happy to stick to first-order for the time being. Many other prospective users may feel the same. But my point was in any case more general than that; there are many composers out there using plain 1st-order (as evidenced by so many of the tracks on Ambisonia, etc), and the plugin has an obvious relevance to them, even though they neither own nor feel the need for a tetra microphone. As for income etc, take a look at the new iPad 2 (dual core). It only has the single mic input, but can pass Dolby digital surround out via Apple's AV adapter (HDMI output). So the possibility to record a sound and spin it around the user, with that cool display, even if only as a glorified toy, might garner enough purchases (NB low price, high volume) to pay for all the RD! Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
I was wondering why Digital Performer wasn't included in your Plug-in list? On Apr 1, 2011, at 8:29 AM, Svein Berge wrote: http://harpex.net/download.html On 1. april. 2011, at 17:26, Danny McCarty wrote: Could you post the link again please? ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound Danny McCarty Monolith Media, Inc. 4183 Summit View Hood River, Or 97031 415-331-7628 541-399-0089 Cell http://www.monolithmedia.net/ http://www.danielmccarty.com/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
On Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 03:22:18PM +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: iiuc, it doesn't make sense to use harpex for sonification. harpex' strong point is to sharpen first-order natural recordings and thus increase the versatility of a tetrahedral microphone. to get sharp localisation for panned monophonic events, just use higher order ambisonics. Indeed. Regarding the Linux version, what interfaces does it have ? Will it output to Jack ? To any of the 24..64 ch soundcards I use ? Ciao, -- FA ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] Harpex-B pricing
Svein said: Since this plugin in practice requires the use of a soundfield-type microphone, which is not really a mass-market product, I don't expect to recoup any reasonable wage for the time spent on it. From a customer's point of view, the price should be considered in relation to the cost of all the other gear involved - the microphone, recorder, computer, daw etc and the relative value added by the plugin. I think it's a good deal, but don't expect much sympathy from academia. and John Leonard said: Perhaps one answer to this is to offer academic pricing? This is what Soundfield does with the main SurroundZone plug-in, as far as I remember. When I was considering my purchase I wanted a more portable system to upgrade my PDAudio system. Soundfield has the hardware controllers and also the computer controlled mics. The SurroundZone plug-in for the SPS200 computer controlled mics is free and the system is very robust for field recordings(with the Zephix mount and windshield). I have between twelve and fifteen thousand dollars Cdn invested in the hardware so far. If this plug-in is compatible with Soundforge Pro 10, I would consider it a bargain -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20110401/8d41cabb/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
Congratulations! I was looking forward to this release after trying the online conversion. Any chance there will be a non-commercial price (I'm a sound artist, not a commercial producer)? It feels a bit unfair to me that something like this gets focused only on main stream commercial production when it could be a great tool for artists. Paying for this plugin would be way more than what I paid for my DAW (Reaper) and my b-format mic (custom made) all together. Or maybe a pricing Reaper style where you pay according to how much your yearly revenue is? Just a thought. Cheers, Hector On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Trond Lossius trond.loss...@bek.no wrote: On Apr 1, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Svein Berge wrote: 5. counter-productively expensive (compared to Reaper or Plogue) As you all know, the marginal cost of software is close to zero, everything is in the development. So, when you compare a specialized product to a mass-market product, it makes no logical sense to compare their feature set without at the same time dividing by the potential sales numbers. It should be noted that I am not paid by anyone to do this work, so the business model here is that the users must pay for all of the development. Since this plugin in practice requires the use of a soundfield-type microphone, which is not really a mass-market product, I don't expect to recoup any reasonable wage for the time spent on it. From a customer's point of view, the price should be considered in relation to the cost of all the other gear involved - the microphone, recorder, computer, daw etc and the relative value added by the plugin. I think it's a good deal, but don't expect much sympathy from academia. I don't know enough regarding software sales and pricing strategies to have any clear opinion on what's the right price to eventually cover the development costs. The reasoning above seems sensible, but is assuming that the same person/organization owns and use the mic, recording hardware and equipment/software for playback. That might not always be the case. I'm working at BEK, a media lab for artists in Bergen (NO). We have a SoundField mic and it's getting increasingly popular among local artists. Depending on the project they often get to borrow it and the hard disc recorder for free (or almost free). For many of them it will be interesting to be able to use Harpex for decoding later on. While BEK itself can and probably will get a plug-in license, I'm less sure how many of the artists we work with that will be able to afford it. On the other hand it might well be that they can do decoding when required at the BEK studio, and thus won't depend on having their own license. Just my 5 cents. I've set aside a full day at the study next week to try it out. Natasha Barrett has been very enthusiastic about Harpex, so I'm looking forward to playing with it. Best, Trond ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Exciting news anyone?
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:50:46 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier netti...@stackingdwarves.net wrote : Regarding the Linux version, what interfaces does it have ? Will it output to Jack ? To any of the 24..64 ch soundcards I use ? svein, will there be a linux version? if so, i might have a customer for you. my attempts at running the beta version under wine were unsuccessful, but then i really don't know anything about wine... My personalized demo works in Linux with jackd when using the dssi-vst host. And it works very well. But it works as long as I am connected to the Internet; it sends a long and unique identification message to http://harpex.net/license.php, and the immediate response alloys the plugin to work after displaying the amount of time left in demo mode. Since this mechanism is not explained (appart from a vague reference to activation in the license), the demo I installed is technically a sneakyware... -- Marc ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
