Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Your dissertation question clearly touches something important, but lacks focus. By that, I mean (in a caring way, possums) that framing the question this way makes it very difficult to elicit clear answers. A better way to frame the question might be: Given ambisonic's lack of commercial success and lack of content, why has it persisted for so many years? And the answer might include things such as: - engineering minds are drawn to its mathematical elegance - audiophiles are drawn to its capacity to reproduce the experience of listening to music mediated by specific performance venue acoustics - contemporary society has a fascination with technology and, perhaps most importantly: - the eroticism of virtual reality ... Any technology that claims to be able to get close to the experience of reality holds a powerful magic. James Gibson (respected perceptual psychologist) argued that it was not possible for a mediated reality to ever be confused with reality ... but the eroticism of the idea insists on trying to achieve this. In the field of VR the notion of presence is precisely defined as the illusion that a mediated experience is not mediated (Lombard)... exactly what Gibson says is not possible. I think it is this eroticism which fuels much of the efforts behind ambisonics. [As an aside, I believe that the notion of music within VR creates a tension where the magic of the music must compete with the magic of the illusion of reality. The only time when that tension is resolved is when ambisonics is used to record/capture musical performance] Etienne -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120401/325eaa1a/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] OT: Spatial music
--On 31 March 2012 18:34 -0700 Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote: Of course music exists that is not in front. But the vast bulk of concert music is not like that. Sure; but what proportion of music are we happy to be unable to reproduce properly? My organ music (admittedly as much as 20% of my listening) was a trivial example - and it's only in combination with other things that it becomes spatially interesting, generally. You mentioned Gabrieli and Berlioz in a slightly dismissive manner; I would add to them people like Stockhausen and Earle Brown, a folk group moving among their audience, a hall full of schoolchildren bouncing their sounds off each other from different parts of the hall. Not all within the restricted form of concert music, but music in the real world where we turn our heads and enjoy our whole environment. Paul -- Paul Hodges ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] Question about directional bands
I am getting a many opinions on this as possible and I have now heard various answers. It specifically relates to boosted band and, in this scenario, elevation cues in the median plane . Blauert's 1969 experiment showed that if an if a narrow band noise or sinusoid wave with a centre frequency of 8 khz is played to both ears equally the sound is generally localized above the head. My question is how does the auditory system distinguish between 8khz as a directional elevation cue or a boosted 8 khz that might be present in a soundsource directly in front of the listener ? So far I have been told its to do with binaular differences between the two ears (the directional bands may not be the same in each ear due to the different shapes of the pinna and can be compared, visual cues, envelope shapes) any clarification or alternatives would be great. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120401/32fffd7b/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Question about directional bands
Actually, I think the ear/brain does not make this distinction without pattern recogntion, in other words, the height impression to the extent that it arises from spectrum of the sound depends on what the ear/brain expects the actual sound to be. There is a similar effect about frontal versus rear sounds. A natural familiar type of sound source can be made to sound behind when played in front if it is spectrally modified in the way it would be if it were in fact coming from hehind! Height perception similarly plays off the known sound spectrum versus the perceived one to determine height. But for height it is pretty crude--7-8 kHz tends to sound up even if it is not. Cymbals float up in perception even though the sound is familiar in spite of the source being not up. This is true in reality as well as in recordings. Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, Augustine Leudar wrote: I am getting a many opinions on this as possible and I have now heard various answers. It specifically relates to boosted band and, in this scenario, elevation cues in the median plane . Blauert's 1969 experiment showed that if an if a narrow band noise or sinusoid wave with a centre frequency of 8 khz is played to both ears equally the sound is generally localized above the head. My question is how does the auditory system distinguish between 8khz as a directional elevation cue or a boosted 8 khz that might be present in a soundsource directly in front of the listener ? So far I have been told its to do with binaular differences between the two ears (the directional bands may not be the same in each ear due to the different shapes of the pinna and can be compared, visual cues, envelope shapes) any clarification or alternatives would be great. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120401/32fffd7b/attachment.html ___ 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] OT: Spatial music
On Sun, April 1, 2012 5:20 am, Paul Hodges wrote: Sure; but what proportion of music are we happy to be unable to reproduce properly? My organ music (admittedly as much as 20% of my listening) was a trivial example - and it's only in combination with other things that it becomes spatially interesting, generally. You mentioned Gabrieli and Berlioz in a slightly dismissive manner; I would add to them people like Stockhausen and Earle Brown, a folk group moving among their audience, a hall full of schoolchildren bouncing their sounds off each other from different parts of the hall. Not all within the restricted form of concert music, but music in the real world where we turn our heads and enjoy our whole environment. Thank you, Paul. I've been a member of this group for several years and generally skim the messages as most threads focus on face-forward listening and 3D illusions. As a composer, I have written acoustic and electroacoustic (plus 'soundwalks') that surround the listener for years (my first such piece was composed in 1972). I'd love to hear more discussion of producing convincing surround music and environments, especially effective plug-ins using multitrack electroacoustic sources in programs like Adobe Audition. The last time I asked (a few years ago) I was told such things exist but are very expensive and the topic was dropped. Dennis ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Question about directional bands
Out of interest - what research has been done on this where the listeners were lying down? Do they hear such sounds still as above, or behind their heads? And, in the same vein, one the degree of such perception with respect to intensity? Richard Dobson On 01/04/2012 12:56, Robert Greene wrote: Actually, I think the ear/brain does not make this distinction without pattern recogntion, in other words, the height impression to the extent that it arises from spectrum of the sound depends on what the ear/brain expects the actual sound to be. There is a similar effect about frontal versus rear sounds. A natural familiar type of sound source can be made to sound behind when played in front if it is spectrally modified in the way it would be if it were in fact coming from hehind! Height perception similarly plays off the known sound spectrum versus the perceived one to determine height. But for height it is pretty crude--7-8 kHz tends to sound up even if it is not. Cymbals float up in perception even though the sound is familiar in spite of the source being not up. This is true in reality as well as in recordings. Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Question about directional bands
Thanks for the ref. Pity, it is AES, which I am not a member of, and $20 is a lot to pay for a 29-yr-old paper of mostly anecdotal interest :-( Richard Dobson On 01/04/2012 13:36, Eero Aro wrote: Richard Dobson wrote: Out of interest - what research has been done on this where the listeners were lying down? The subject is not my area, but I know of an old paper: James Lackner: Influence of Posture on the Spatial Localization of Sound http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=4554 Eero ___ 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] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Etienne: the eroticism of virtual reality ... Good point! And now we shift from the engineering explanations to the social and more theoretical ones. Here, I would recommend a careful consideration of Marshall McLuhan. His 1962 The Gutenberg Galaxy summarizes his views of how Western culture shifted from a *visual* to an *acoustic* sensory bias -- driven by the shift from a media environment that was largely dominated by printed materials to those that relied on electricity, including the telegraph, newspaper, motion picture, radio and television. This shift brought a new psychological ground of sounds -- coming from everywhere, stimulating concerns over noise and even acoustics in architecture -- and a shift from the *eye* to the *ear*! This process continues, of course. Virtual reality -- which was the hot topic in venture capital circles in the early 1990s, before the Internet took over for startup funding -- could be thought of as representing the next shift away from analog electrical media towards the next group of technologies that are *digital*! As McLuhan (and others) also describe, when the environment changes like this, the previous ground (which, as per Gestalt psychology, tends to be thought of as in the background) becomes the new figure -- to which we pay a great deal of attention. Surround sound -- which had been in the background in movie theaters -- become something that anyone could have in their living-room (via DVD Dolby Surround and then 5.1 movie mixes), so you could say that it shifted from the ground to the figure in psychological terms. Now we can play with sounds . . . which is of course what electronic music, home studios and, I suspect, this mailing list are all about. Yes, this also begs the question of what then become the new ground of our experience! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120401/d2a6ba8b/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
Robert: But I think that using this sort of thing as a way to persuade people they ought to have 16 channels of playback or something is wrong headed. Of course it is but how about THREE? Remember that the most obvious home-playback application of Michael Gerson's mathematical work is *not* Ambisonics but TRIFIELD. As I recall, it was the addition of a center speaker that Gerzon himself thought would become the most widely adopted of his inventions -- or did I read the biography wrong? Here, the licensing seems to have gotten in the way. Did anyone other then Meridian ever implement Trifield for consumers? Was it ever (or is it now) available as a *cheap* license, so that it can be put in Japanese or Korean recievers? Yes, we know how you feel about sound-stage reproduction, but given that the US hi-fi market has largely pursued this goal, did anyone ever seriously try to tackle the center speaker issue for music? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120401/ee3933da/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Question about directional bands
On 04/01/2012 11:55 AM, Augustine Leudar wrote: I am getting a many opinions on this as possible and I have now heard various answers. It specifically relates to boosted band and, in this scenario, elevation cues in the median plane . Blauert's 1969 experiment showed that if an if a narrow band noise or sinusoid wave with a centre frequency of 8 khz is played to both ears equally the sound is generally localized above the head. My question is how does the auditory system distinguish between 8khz as a directional elevation cue or a boosted 8 khz that might be present in a soundsource directly in front of the listener ? So far I have been told its to do with binaular differences between the two ears (the directional bands may not be the same in each ear due to the different shapes of the pinna and can be compared, visual cues, envelope shapes) any clarification or alternatives would be great. off the top of my head, i think blauerts findings were as follows: * narrow-band artificial test signals fed to both ears in the same way produce unambiguous auditory events located at various elevations on the median plane, the elevation depending only on the center frequency. this phenomenon is more or less the same with different individuals. * the brain can use elevation-dependent linear distortion of sufficiently wide-band signals to infer height, but this only works with familiar signals where an un-elevated (and hence uncolored) reference is known to the subject. e.g. some synth signal: practically no height cues a human voice: usable height cues your spouse or close friend: quite good height cues so you can exploit this by boosting any given sound in blauert's critical bands to give some height impression, but don't expect miracles. even with proper soundfield reconstruction, the human ability to judge height is not too good, unless the listener tilts her/his head. visuals or content usually win over actual direction, i.e. a sound is where you think you see its source, and birds are up, footsteps are down. -- 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] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
I raised earlier the question of why Trifield is not available to the general public. Given that there are other people(e.g. J. Bongiorno in High End and all kinds of things in home theater) offering devices to synthesize a third channel--and that lots of people already have a center channel speaker-- it seems somehwat peculiar that Trifield, presumably the correct way to do it, effectively does not exist in commercial form(Meridian is so expensive that it might as well not be there). This is weird and unfortunate to my mind. But of course audio tends to be like that. Logic is often lost in the shuffle(no pun intended) Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote: Robert: But I think that using this sort of thing as a way to persuade people they ought to have 16 channels of playback or something is wrong headed. Of course it is but how about THREE? Remember that the most obvious home-playback application of Michael Gerson's mathematical work is *not* Ambisonics but TRIFIELD. As I recall, it was the addition of a center speaker that Gerzon himself thought would become the most widely adopted of his inventions -- or did I read the biography wrong? Here, the licensing seems to have gotten in the way. Did anyone other then Meridian ever implement Trifield for consumers? Was it ever (or is it now) available as a *cheap* license, so that it can be put in Japanese or Korean recievers? Yes, we know how you feel about sound-stage reproduction, but given that the US hi-fi market has largely pursued this goal, did anyone ever seriously try to tackle the center speaker issue for music? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120401/ee3933da/attachment.html ___ 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] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
There are quite a few free downloadable files on the 2l.no website that are worth exploring. Not Ambisonic, but good sound and exciting playing. A pity the website is not easier to navigate. There is a mini drop down menu at the top. Click on Test Bench HD audio files. David At 17:00 31/03/2012, Eero Aro wrote: David Pickett wrote: One of the most exciting recordings I have is the Tallis Scholars' later version of the Allegri Miserere Here is another great performance and recording: 2L29SACD Ensemble 96 IMMORTAL NYSTEDT http://www.2l.no/ Amazing! Not Ambisonics, not SFM. Eero ___ 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] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
I have tried playing three channels over two speakers. I used Gerzon's equations, with inverted crosstalk -- does one need anything more sophisticated? I achieved this in Totalmix with my RME FF800. It sounds good, but the L/R speakers need to be on 90 degree axes, which implies a large room. David At 12:53 01/04/2012, Robert Greene wrote: I raised earlier the question of why Trifield is not available to the general public. Given that there are other people(e.g. J. Bongiorno in High End and all kinds of things in home theater) offering devices to synthesize a third channel--and that lots of people already have a center channel speaker-- it seems somehwat peculiar that Trifield, presumably the correct way to do it, effectively does not exist in commercial form(Meridian is so expensive that it might as well not be there). This is weird and unfortunate to my mind. But of course audio tends to be like that. Logic is often lost in the shuffle(no pun intended) Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote: Robert: But I think that using this sort of thing as a way to persuade people they ought to have 16 channels of playback or something is wrong headed. Of course it is but how about THREE? Remember that the most obvious home-playback application of Michael Gerson's mathematical work is *not* Ambisonics but TRIFIELD. As I recall, it was the addition of a center speaker that Gerzon himself thought would become the most widely adopted of his inventions -- or did I read the biography wrong? Here, the licensing seems to have gotten in the way. Did anyone other then Meridian ever implement Trifield for consumers? Was it ever (or is it now) available as a *cheap* license, so that it can be put in Japanese or Korean recievers? Yes, we know how you feel about sound-stage reproduction, but given that the US hi-fi market has largely pursued this goal, did anyone ever seriously try to tackle the center speaker issue for music? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120401/ee3933da/attachment.html ___ 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 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Hi A pity the website is not easier to navigate Yes, they have made it as difficult as possible.. Here is a more clear site of the Immortal Nysted record: http://www.2l.musiconline.no/shop/displayAlbum.asp?id=29968 The last track, Immortal Bach is one of the best 5.0 recordings I have ever heard. The stereo prewiew doesn't do right to the complete piece in surround. Eero ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
again to anyone who says things like ambisonics cant compete with 5.1 please bear in mind this is like saying amplitude panning can't compete with 5.1 - it doesnt make any sense at all. You mix your tracks horizontally ,without elevation, using ambisonics plugins and burn your ac3/dts file like any other surround mix. Ambisonics is an approach to creating a soundfield it does not require any special hardware it can be done with software. The new 22.4 (or something) sound systems that cinemas are launching soon will allow height information as well. You could mix a lot of films using ambisonics when this happens. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] POA/HOA vs 5.1
On 04/01/2012 09:05 PM, Augustine Leudar wrote: again to anyone who says things like ambisonics cant compete with 5.1 please bear in mind this is like saying amplitude panning can't compete with 5.1 - it doesnt make any sense at all. You mix your tracks horizontally ,without elevation, using ambisonics plugins and burn your ac3/dts file like any other surround mix. higher order ambisonics can compete. first order cannot. a competently created discrete 5.0 recording or mix will be more robust _and_ more enveloping than any g-format derived from first order. try it. it's quite obvious really: first order gives you just three channels worth of information. the rest is crosstalk, which can (and will) created phasing artefacts, particularly in the front between L, C and R. that kind of speaker density just doesn't make sense with first order. the benefits of ambisonic localisation (particularly the phase information at LF) will disappear as soon as the loudspeaker placement differs from the layout assumed during encoding. as many others have observed, there are practically no correct ITU layouts in the wild, and there's usually no delay compensation, either. 5.0 on the other hand can be used to deliver completely decorrelated information in each speaker, which is extremely robust and pleasant to listen to, even if not exactly meaningful :) creating 5.0 from higher-orders can reduce crosstalk problems to some extent, but it doesn't help much if the listening layout is too different from the encoding assumption. snip The new 22.4 (or something) sound systems that cinemas are launching soon will allow height information as well. it's 22.2, in fact. not that it makes much difference :) You could mix a lot of films using ambisonics when this happens. 22.2 is a strong argument to go for at least 4th order in production. -- 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] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
I don't think anyone thinks that! What people do think is that Ambisonics needs some sort of commercial accesibility-- which it could get if discs were put out that provided not abstract Ambisonics as it were but Ambisonics as decoded to the 5.1 set up. The message was that no one (statistically speaking) in the real world wants anything that requires thought and effort. Given that Ambisonics can be decoded to any speaker setup (even if the result is not idea), why are there no 5.1 SACDs that show how Ambisonics works on a 5.1 setup? One cannot expect people to be interested in something they cannot hear in demo form Robert On Sun, 1 Apr 2012, Augustine Leudar wrote: again to anyone who says things like ambisonics cant compete with 5.1 please bear in mind this is like saying amplitude panning can't compete with 5.1 - it doesnt make any sense at all. You mix your tracks horizontally ,without elevation, using ambisonics plugins and burn your ac3/dts file like any other surround mix. Ambisonics is an approach to creating a soundfield it does not require any special hardware it can be done with software. The new 22.4 (or something) sound systems that cinemas are launching soon will allow height information as well. You could mix a lot of films using ambisonics when this happens. ___ 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] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
At 18:28 01/04/2012, Neil Waterman wrote: I agree totally with Robert here. Most of my work mates have 5.1 set-ups at home, but would never be bothered to have anything that required more thought, so bring on the 5.1 mixes of ambisonic source material and at least let the masses get a listen. One can always encode the front two channels into L/C/R, but would they notice if it were left as 4.0? David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please?
OK I thought that was a good idea, for people to say what they thought was good and not good about Ambisonics. So here I go(first I guess but my mother always said Act in haste, repent at leisure. I think she meant it as cautionary but I have always taken it as advisory!). Good 1 Elegant as mathematics 2 Forces people to use one point miking which in itself is already a HUGE thing because it eliminates the absurd manipulativeness of much of commercial recording practice. 3 In principle, has the capability of reconstructing the complete soundfield. 4 Puts height in the picture and gets rid of the sound through a horizontal slit of stereo(which is ironically more like that the better it is done!) 5 In practice, more robust than one might have expected at working over a large listening area (if that matters). 6 In principle, the timbre errors of stereo arising from around the head summation are eliminated. Not so good 1 Emphasis on homogeneity makes it inefficient when not high order. (Everyone knows that perception to the side of a listener is quite different from perception frontally, but this is ignored) 2 (related to 1) Because one- point miking ignores transient time of arrival differences as such , one of the basic cues of sonic perception is suppressed explicitly and is only returned to the picture with higher order. 3 Impractical number of speakers needed really to work(cf point 2). 4 Impractical number of channels needed to really work(because higher order is needed). 5 In practice, keeping noise low enough is difficult. 6 Nearly oomplete lack of demo material, which makes it all but impossible to interest the public. One somewhat incidental issue 7 Mathematics is too tricky for most people in audio to appreciate (I know this is so because I have tried to write about Ambisonics for the general audio public--no dice, people did not get it even though I thought what I wrote was clear as crystal) About point 2: the same issue arises in Blumlein stereo, which is why some people like ORTF better. Ideal would be Blumlein up to around 700 Hz and switch to ORTF above that, it seems, or something along those lines. (Blumlein the man had ideas on this, of course). I could go on, but perhaps that is enough to get the ball rolling. Good suggestion, I think, that people should make such lists. I am curious to see what others have to say. Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
