date:20130516

On 16 May 2013, at 03:45, Eero Aro  wrote:

> Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
>> I would tend to differ. If BluRay & DVD-Audio were resounding
>> successes, then one could say: heck, just deliver binaural, stereo,
>> 5.1 etc. downmixes and not worry about distribution formats, these
>> disks have more storage capacity than we know to fill with an album
>> anyway.
> 
> There is the word "commercial" in the thread subject.
> 
> I don't think any commercial company would like to use their resources
> to produce different kinds of audio format tracks onto a disc just because
> it is possible to fill it up. That would increase the production costs but
> wouldn't bring too much more money in.
> 
> If they'd like to do that, there would be also binaural tracks already now
> on every DVD you get from the shop.
> 
> In my thinking BluRay and DVD-Audio are delivery mediums.
> Isn't DVD-Audio past and gone?

That's my point: physical media, for better or worse, is gone.

Someone made the point that as far as they are concerned Ambisonics is more of 
production tool than a delivery format, because Ambisonic productions can be 
downmixed to various delivery media formats.

My point is, physical media is gone. So while in the case of physical media, 
one can easily (and without significant added cost) downmix an Ambisonic 
production to 5.1, 7.1, stereo, and binaural, and still ship it on the same 
media (provided one chooses Ambisonic production behind the scenes), that 
doesn't hold true in the case of electronic delivery.

Once you enter electronic delivery, you'd either have spend a lot more 
(expensive) bandwidth, and/or sell different versions of the same program 
material, or *TA-DAH* you use B-format as a delivery format and push the 
decision in what way to reproduce the material to the end user.

In other words, in a world in which physical, disc-based delivery dominates, 
Ambisonics holds little value as a delivery Format, because current disk 
formats have so much spare capacity that it's easy to just pre-decode all the 
potentially interesting playback formats, and be done. One can keep Ambisonics 
out of the home, and use it strictly as a production too.

However, once you enter the digital distribution, where you have billions of 
downloads, and where user-side disk storage is limited (albeit getting 
cheaper), that's when you have an economic interest in least redundant data 
transmission and storage.

At this point, just about all the relevant (not talking niche players, but 
Amazon, Apple, Google, Spottify, etc.) players in the digital music delivery 
business are restricted to compressed stereo audio. 

Ambisonic B-format or even UHJ-format delivery has an opening here, provided 
the bickering stops and a concerted effort is made to lobby the players 
involved, because for a reasonably moderate bandwidth overhead, these outfits 
now can deliver a data file/stream that can be played back in stereo, binaural, 
surround, and the decision can be pushed to the end-user environment. 

A strong eco-system like iTunes could use B-format with proper software 
changes, weaker eco systems could use UHJ, and simply have UHJ-capable players, 
but in the absence of such, would still end up serving perfectly usable stereo 
files.

So, I think, right now, with the demise of physical media, and still rather 
limited bandwidth and end-user storage, there's a perfect sweet spot to 
introduce UHJ/B-Format as a delivery for universally compatible audio 
files/streams.

If one could get together a strong community effort, a few major acts providing 
some key productions to get things off the ground, then that would be a 
relaunch of it all.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

2013-05-16 Thread Richard

Most certainly not, there are still DVD-A (MLP) releases being done by the 
record company's

And of course there's a massive underground use of the system. To be honest, i 
don't believe Blu-Ray has any chance of replacing DVD-A.

We have a quality system that does what is needed, Blu-Ray adds nothing really, 
except additional cost.

  In my thinking BluRay and DVD-Audio are delivery mediums.
  Isn't DVD-Audio past and gone?

  Eero
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


On 16/05/2013 09:24, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

At this point, just about all the relevant (not talking niche players, but 
Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.) players in the digital music delivery 
business are restricted to compressed stereo audio.


Yes, and there are two problems here: "compressed" (as in "lossy 
compressed") and "stereo". I am not convinced that there is demand for 
(audio only) surround music, but if there is, it will have to be snuck 
in the back door. Providing high-quality audio is another challenge. At 
the moment the conventional wisdom is that convenience trumps quality: 
to succeed you would need both the convenience people have come to 
expect, plus higher quality. I believe there are people working on this 
side of this equation. So let's consider the surround.




Ambisonic B-format or even UHJ-format delivery has an opening here, provided 
the bickering stops and a concerted effort is made to lobby the players 
involved, because for a reasonably moderate bandwidth overhead, these outfits 
now can deliver a data file/stream that can be played back in stereo, binaural, 
surround, and the decision can be pushed to the end-user environment.


This is another version of the "lobby the record companies to adopt xxx 
technology" argument, which never worked in the past. What is needed IMO 
is a system that can USE EXISTING DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS UNCHANGED, and 
sneak in the back door. You would download a file in the normal way as a 
purchase from iTunes or Classics Online or wherever. It would be larger 
than a stereo file of the same material. But while it played back as a 
conventional stereo file on a regular player, if you had a more advanced 
player, it would reveal Ambisonic surround. Think of mp3Pro for example, 
where the additional cleverness is used to increase the quality on an 
advanced player, while delivering standard mp3 quality on a standard mp3 
player.


This was always actually one of the benefits of UHJ - with no special 
decoder you got superb stereo, but you could decode that to get decent 
surround (actually, in the light of modern digital decoders, more decent 
than some of us, including me, thought), and by adding one or two more 
channels you could decode full planar or with-height surround and the 
same amount of data as the original B-Format. It does seem possible to 
me that we could embed the additional channels of 3- or 4-channel UHJ in 
a file that looks and feels like a conventional stereo file, but the 
stereo part is 2-channel UHJ and the additional channels are encoded, 
hidden in the file, and are only recovered by a suitable player, decoder 
or file converter.


As an aside, I've proposed something of this kind before, years ago, 
with "reversible G-Format", where you took a B-Format source and decoded 
it to 5.1 (or whatever) speaker feeds to put on a 
conventionally-distributed product that played back unchanged on normal 
systems but, when fed to a special unit, recovered the original B-Format 
so you could decode it for a superior Ambisonic array.





A strong eco-system like iTunes could use B-format with proper software 
changes, weaker eco systems could use UHJ, and simply have UHJ-capable players, 
but in the absence of such, would still end up serving perfectly usable stereo 
files.


So, I think you are on to something here. Or maybe it's a chimera and 
what is needed is a totally digital encoding scheme that does the same 
thing but owes nothing to UHJ.


So. I am looking for the development of an open-source encoding 
"envelope" that embeds Ambisonic surround information (can we start with 
first-order, please, and not complicate matters by trying to do 
everything at once as that will stop it ever going anywhere) into a file 
that can be purchased on iTunes or Amazon or wherever (I think streaming 
it could be tricky) with NO CHANGES WHATSOEVER TO THE DISTRIBUTION 
SYSTEM - and that is vital - ie it looks and behaves like a standard 
audio file in one or more of the commonly accepted formats, it's just 
rather larger, and in which the obvious stereo information it contains 
can be combined with the non-obvious embedded surround data to 
reconstruct the original B-Format if you have a suitable (open-source) 
player or file-converter. But if you don't... it plays back in stereo in 
iTunes or WinAmp or Amazon Cloud Player or whatever.


Could this be done by using 3- or 4-channel UHJ depending on whether 
height was present or not, channels 3 and/or 4 being hidden in the file 
while the main L and R channels are the "outer" content of the file? 
Your special player/transcoder/converter would re-constitute the 
complete content, either delivering planar or with-height B-Format or 
simply decoding the recovered multichannel UHJ.


Or would it be better to start from scratch and devise a completely new 
digital technique to hide the surround data in a way that could be 
combined with the main "stereo" to recover a surround file? It'

Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


On 16/05/2013 08:45, Eero Aro wrote:

In my thinking BluRay and DVD-Audio are delivery mediums.
Isn't DVD-Audio past and gone? 


They may not be gone technically - there is still the odd release and 
the odd player - but they are certainly gone from public consciousness. 
I don't think any future solution relies on packaged media of any kind.


--R

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

On 16 May 2013, at 05:24, Richard G Elen  wrote:

>> Ambisonic B-format or even UHJ-format delivery has an opening here, provided 
>> the bickering stops and a concerted effort is made to lobby the players 
>> involved, because for a reasonably moderate bandwidth overhead, these 
>> outfits now can deliver a data file/stream that can be played back in 
>> stereo, binaural, surround, and the decision can be pushed to the end-user 
>> environment.
> 
> This is another version of the "lobby the record companies to adopt xxx 
> technology" argument, which never worked in the past.

Nope. Screw the record industry. This is "lobby the distributors".
Google, Apple, Amazon, these are the driving forces, they call the shots, not 
the record industry. Each one of them is going to try hard to differentiate 
themselves from the rest of the competitors, each one of them has a lot of 
muscle to get stuff they want from the content providers if that means the 
content providers can gain ever-so-little power back over the distributors 
calling the shots.

e.g. if distributor A can get the content providers to allow them to 
exclusively distribute UHJ-stereo at a digital lossless format, while charging 
$1.29 instead of $0.99 provided they can get an exclusive, and market the 
living shit out of it, to differntiate their digital storefront from the 
others, meanwhile distributor B may get a deal for B-Format for a $1.49 while 
distributor C gets stuck at $0.99 for lossily compressed stereo, then the 
content providers gain by increasing their revenue, and each of the 
distributors gains by hitting a different sweet spot in the market.

Not saying that's exactly how things would be carved up, but that's just a 
thought experiment.

You want to save money, you go to C, you want the best of the best, you go to 
B, you want a better quality, with some ambience and a no-head-ache file 
compatibility, you go to vendor A.
Overall revenues increase, vendors can differentiate their stores from each 
other, so they gain, and customers gain because they have more choice.

Record companies have become as irrelevant as mobile phone companies. What 
matters at this point are the platform providers, be that Apple, Microsoft, 
Google, Samsung.

Ronald

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

On 16 May 2013, at 05:24, Richard G Elen  wrote:

>> A strong eco-system like iTunes could use B-format with proper software 
>> changes, weaker eco systems could use UHJ, and simply have UHJ-capable 
>> players, but in the absence of such, would still end up serving perfectly 
>> usable stereo files.
> 
> So, I think you are on to something here. Or maybe it's a chimera and what is 
> needed is a totally digital encoding scheme that does the same thing but owes 
> nothing to UHJ.

I think the MP4 container format would easily allow that. The question is if 
e.g. Apple would tolerate if you send them a file that's two or three times the 
size it needs to be, because it adds an extended tag that points to additional 
audio streams, particularly if the iTunes.app couldn't play them back and it 
would require a third party app to play it back.
So Apple would carry the cost of extra bandwidth and some other vendor would 
reap the benefits of fully utilizing the audio files. They'd not swallow that.

That's why the deals need to be made with the Apple's, Google's etc. of this 
world, because they provide the infrastructure. Nobody has as seamless a 
purchase and playback experience as Apple does. So from that POV, gaining Apple 
as an ally for such an enterprise would be top.

On the other hand, all of the others try to compete against Apple by gaining 
some sort of edge over Apple. So they might be motivated to be the first ones 
to offer this, if they can make Apple look backwards.

It's that sort of dynamic that would have to be used to get Ambisonics back 
into the game.

The record companies don't really figure into that, because the major players 
are big enough to directly make deals with major acts to get desirable content 
in their stores. e.g. remember the Apple deals they had with U2, etc. so any of 
them is financially big and powerful enough that they can get some world-class 
act to produce some content for the launch of that platform, and others will 
follow suit.

Ronald

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


On 16/05/2013 10:36, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

This is another version of the "lobby the record companies to adopt xxx 
technology" argument, which never worked in the past.

Nope. Screw the record industry. This is "lobby the distributors".
Google, Apple, Amazon, these are the driving forces, they call the shots, not 
the record industry.


I think I wasn't clear on this. I regard "lobby the [anyone]" as a lost 
cause unless you're, say, Dolby. I mean that "lobby the distribs" is the 
same tactic as "lobby the record companies" was in the old days, and 
it's doomed to fail. We don't have the muscle.


--R

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


On 16/05/2013 10:44, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

The question is if e.g. Apple would tolerate if you send them a file that's two 
or three times the size it needs to be, because it adds an extended tag that 
points to additional audio streams, particularly if the iTunes.app couldn't 
play them back and it would require a third party app to play it back.


I think that for horizontal surround the file would not be more than 
around 1.5 x the size - it would depend on how you did the encoding. The 
thought DID cross my mind that "an extended tag that points to 
additional audio streams" might perhaps not have to point solely at 
streams within the same file - it could get them from somewhere else, eg 
the content-producer's site, thus meaning that the system you bought the 
file via would not have to carry any overhead - but I doubt this is a 
good idea. And even if f you were going to do that then the surround 
playback system might as well retrieve the entire surround file from 
elsewhere and not bother with any additional embedding at all.



So Apple would carry the cost of extra bandwidth and some other vendor would 
reap the benefits of fully utilizing the audio files. They'd not swallow that.

That's why the deals need to be made with the Apple's, Google's etc. of this 
world, because they provide the infrastructure. Nobody has as seamless a 
purchase and playback experience as Apple does. So from that POV, gaining Apple 
as an ally for such an enterprise would be top.


If you have to change the distribution mechanism then you need to have 
the clout to do it. As I say, you need to be Dolby or someone. We have 
no chance. Next?


--R


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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

Exactamente (;  However I'm not sure I agree that our hearing cant tell the
difference between whether a sound is coming from one or several speakers -
especially if you are close to the soundsource - in my experience people
have pretty good localisation sometimes in the region of centimetres. One
example was I had to make the sound of fire come from a burnt bush - you
know crackling etc - it was dark and there was vegetation around this burnt
bush. The speaker cable wasnt long enough so I had the speaker hidden about
15 cm to the right of the bush in the undergrowth. People walking through
turned their heads to look at the burning sound in the exact patch of
vegetation where the speaker was and not at the burnt bush right next to it
- despite the cognitive effects of vision, suggestion etc I think when it
comes to point sources if you want to have a sound coming from in front of
you to have any energy coming out the bins in any other direction ,
especially behind you should be avoided if possible. That said ambisonics
is capable of producing some quite wonderful effects which would be quite
impossible in nature.

On 15 May 2013 17:53, Eero Aro  wrote:

> Augustine Leudar wrote:
>
>> if I want a sound to come from a point source I would not use
>> ambisonics- I would try and have the sound come out of only one speaker
>> use
>>
>
> Augustine, I don't see anyone objecting you. :-)
>
> I definitely agree with you. I have pointed out the same thing several
> times
> during the years. However, some folks in Sursound sometimes have a little
> fixed wiews about sound reproduction and I have been told that certain
> things
> don't work, as you are using some certain concept or a setup.
>
> However, our hearing doesn't know (or care) if the sound is coming from one
> single speaker or from several speakers at the same time. If you have
> direct
> feeds into each speaker, you can use them as single speakers (when the
> localization is pinpointed from any listening point), or you can use them
> as
> pairs for stereo, or triangles with VPAB, or whatever multichannel
> reproduction
> setup.
>
> Eero
>
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>



-- 
07580951119

augustine.leudar.com
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[Sursound] Musicologist Post @ Huddersfield

2013-05-16 Thread Pierre Alexandre Tremblay

Dear all

This will be of interest to the musicology inclined of you... and you would 
have access to the studios too ;-)

pa

http://jobs.timeshighereducation.co.uk/jobs_jobdetails.asp?source=jobalert&ac=104356
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[Sursound] Recreating a 3d soundfield with lots of mics.....

Recently I did a little experiment - i was creating the illusion of a
barman serving drinks to some people in a "snug" which is little room where
ladies off "ill repute" would have a drink in pubs in Ireland when only men
generally drank in pubs.
I did this by placing one microphone in the snug with two actors - and one
microphone on the bar and recording the scene. I then placed two speakers
in exactly the same place the microphones had been facing the inverse
direction (which happens to be towards the "audience"). An absurdly simple
idea but it worked fantastically well with the banning of the barman
walking over to the hatch and asking the people in the snug what they
wanted creating very effective spatialisation. Of course there wasnt the
same height information. I have since experimented with recreating whole
soundfields like this with many microphones placed in 3d to record a
soundfield spaced apart and then placing the speakers in exactly the same
place. It works wondefully - recently we did a church filling up and then
people taking the places in their pews and having individual conversations
(here the cocktail effect kicks in - you can listen to an individual
conversation or just hear the general hubbub of the church). Does anyone
know of others who have miced up a 3d soundfield in this way ? I have read
a couple of things but none of them are quite the same,
best,
Gus
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Re: [Sursound] Naive question on MS and Ambisonics

2013-05-16 Thread Justin Bennett


On May 14, 2013, at 6:00 PM, sursound-requ...@music.vt.edu wrote:

> 
> From: revery 
> Subject: Re: [Sursound] Naive question on MS and Ambisonics
> To: sursound@music.vt.edu
> Message-ID: 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> Thank you all for your replies. I can see now that my questions was not 
> expressed at all well and somewhat sparsely, so thanks for the efforts made 
> to respond, they have been very helpful.
> 

I just saw that Harpex now have an online file-conversion page which makes 
mulitchannel files of various speaker 
configurations from input files of various mic configurations - including MS - 
and B format of course. maybe worth trying!

http://harpex.net/convert.html

best, Justin
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

On 16 May 2013, at 05:55, Richard G Elen  wrote:

> On 16/05/2013 10:36, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
>>> This is another version of the "lobby the record companies to adopt xxx 
>>> technology" argument, which never worked in the past.
>> Nope. Screw the record industry. This is "lobby the distributors".
>> Google, Apple, Amazon, these are the driving forces, they call the shots, 
>> not the record industry.
> 
> I think I wasn't clear on this. I regard "lobby the [anyone]" as a lost cause 
> unless you're, say, Dolby. I mean that "lobby the distribs" is the same 
> tactic as "lobby the record companies" was in the old days, and it's doomed 
> to fail. We don't have the muscle.

I said "lobby" not "bully" ;)

Of course we don't have the muscle. But that's not what it's about. The 
question if one can convince one of the players if the small investment is 
worth it to be able to differentiate themselves against their competition in a 
market that's otherwise dominated by me-too products.

Look at how that dumb Samsung feature of waving in front of the phone is hyped 
up:
"Oh, but when I'm eating ribs, I don't want to touch the phone with the greasy 
fingers, but now I can just wave my hands, and it will pick up on speaker phone 
without me touching the phone."
Plays really well in commercials, but in reality, you'll likely have the phone 
in the pockets of your pants, and you'll have to touch the phone and the pants 
before you could even wave your hands in front of the phone.

Comparatively speaking, surround sound for music is a much bigger deal than 
waving your greasy hands in front of a phone to make it answer.

So if that silly feature is worth that much advertising time, how much is it 
worth to have better functionality in an entire music infrastructure vs. just 
in a particular model phone?

Ronald

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[Sursound] Spatial Music Artist Stories

2013-05-16 Thread Timothy Schmele


Maybe some nice reading material:

http://www.roebroeks.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Spatial-Music-Artist-Stories1.pdf
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

The original conception of the Grand Duchy of Ambisonia was that it was a fairy 
tale place where magic happens, where you could do fantasmagorical things with 
sound... but you couldn't bring all the magic back with you into this world. 
Furthermore, time is different there - you pop in through the portal in Dave 
Malham's cupboard, to do a quick bit of wiring, or software, or production... 
and when you popped out, days, weeks months had passed! - if you went in to 
have a two or three day stint, setting up a 16 speaker rig (that was a lot in 
those days), when you came out, the season had changed and everyone looked a 
bit older.

So, I agree that it's sometimes touted as a universal panacea, leading to 
inevitable disappointment.

Strictly, it is a phantom image system. A phantom image is not physically the 
same as a real source. For moving perceivers especially, the distinction 
becomes clear very quickly - precedence effects and all that.

So, for precise control of perceptual effect via phantom imagery, the listening 
circumstances have to be tightly controlled. If you want a sound to come from a 
particular place, no matter where the perceiver actually is, then it had better 
come from that place.

However - there is a slight problem: for many sounds, a speaker sounds all to 
like, er, a speaker. Especially, if you're making the sound of a large 'thing' 
(which would have 'facingness' because of own-body occlusion) using a small 
point source device, it still doesn't quite do the trick - and of course, if 
you want it to move, well...

Meanwhile, if you want to use ambisoncs as a soundfield projector system, where 
precise imagery is not the point (music festivals, clubs,  museum ambience etc) 
the it's excellent for that - you can hear there's stuff all around, moving, 
near and far (to some extent), just not pinpoint images. For the latter, you'd 
probably combine ambisoncs with discrete speaker feeds (the 'speaker-ishness' 
of individual speakers is ameliorated when there's a lot going on - it's a 
cognitive thing that isn't really described in the literature) and /or VBAP

Cheers
ppl
Dr. Peter Lennox

School of Technology,
Faculty of Arts, Design and Technology
University of Derby, UK
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk 
t: 01332 593155


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Augustine Leudar
Sent: 15 May 2013 15:28
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

I think the thing is people think that ambisonics is some incredible magic 
spatialisation technique that surpasses all others - yet is so complicated that 
nobody can understand it except for a few mega nerds and mathematicians that 
speak in mysterious riddles whenever you ask them anything and therefore this 
feat of incredible genius is doomed to commercial failure. This opinion it 
seems to me is help by people who havent had a lot of hands on experience 
actually using it in a proffesional context (ie actually producing film, 
theatre, sound design etc) - in fact thats what I originally thought about  . A 
lot of people seem to equate ambisonics with "surround sound with height " as 
well (hands up I was guilty of that too once) . Basically if I was going to 
design a full 360 degree soundtrack for a film (which will probably not happen 
by the way - the last thing film producers want is people turning away from the 
screen and looking over their shoulder because a dog barked behin
 d them - roll on holospheres !) - the last thing I would use ambisonics for is 
point sources
- ideally I would use an individual speaker in the right position as the point 
source, and failing that some sort of amplitude panning . I would use it for 
panning sometimes - and for some weird phase effects and a few other things , 
ideally you will mix ambisonics with other spatialisation techniques and then 
render your multichannel audio tracks.
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[Sursound] Install Ambdec Problems

2013-05-16 Thread Paul Power

Hi Fons,
I am trying to install Ambdec on my Mac which has Mountain Lion Ver10.8.3, i 
have managed to compile the Libcthreads but an error is generated when trying 
to compile the Libclxclient '
ld: warning: directory not found for option '-L/usr/X11R6/lib64'
ld: library not found for -lXft


I also have Jack, Freetype, and Libpng installed. Your help on this matter 
would be much appreciated. 

Thank you, Paul Power
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Re: [Sursound] Install Ambdec Problems

2013-05-16 Thread Fons Adriaensen

Hi Paul,:

> I am trying to install Ambdec on my Mac which has Mountain Lion Ver10.8.3,
> i have managed to compile the Libcthreads but an error is generated when
> trying to compile the Libclxclient '


(Assuming you are using the OSX makefile)


> ld: warning: directory not found for option '-L/usr/X11R6/lib64'

Do you have X11 installed ?  If yes, try to find out where the libraries are.


> ld: library not found for -lXft

That means you don't have the Xft library installed.


There's no OSX Makefile for ambdec itself, you'll probably have to 
modify the Linux one a bit.


Ciao,

-- 
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

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[Sursound] Ambdec

2013-05-16 Thread Paul Power

Thanks Fons,
I have X11 and Quartz, and Xft installed on my machine, and i am using the OSX 
makefile anyway thanks, will keep trying.

Paul Power
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Re: [Sursound] theatrical ambisonics

2013-05-16 Thread chris boozer



 srs labs has developed mda 3d audio which is essentially pcm+x,y,z and 
supports binaural - or any number of speakers. it is almost ambisonics at the 
pcm digital level. it is also open source. DTS aquiered srs labs and is 
developing development tools and a back end to there neox 11.2 system for mda 
play back. mda is ambisonics object oriented pcm + x,y,z spatial info.it is 
also backwards compatible with stereo an multi channeel audio so uhj over 
stereo could still be useful.
Chris Boozer


>
> From: Martin Leese 
>To: sursound@music.vt.edu 
>Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 12:14 AM
>Subject: Re: [Sursound] theatrical ambisonics
> 
>
>Iain Mott wrote:
>
>> These are excellent references, thank you! Curious to know why
>> ambisonics and uhj encoding ceased to be used in the 90s? I know nothing
>> about digital radio - but is dolby surround or some other surround
>> format being used presently in Europe, elsewhere? What is the present
>> state of play in surround broadcasting?
>
>If what I write below is incorrect then I am sure
>somebody will correct me.
>
>Ambisonics (and UHJ) died in the 1980s.
>What remains is a few enthusiasts.  These
>include a few radio producers who broadcast
>programmes in UHJ, but they do so without the
>support (and often without the knowledge) of
>their various managements.  Dolby MP would
>be a poor choice for stereo transmission
>because, unlike UHJ, it is not stereo
>compatible.
>
>Looking at the equipment installed in people's
>homes then the only surround format that
>currently has a chance is 5.1.  One problem is
>lack of material.  An example of what is
>possible was the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
>Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase, broadcast by BBC
>Radio 4/Above the Title Productions in 2004.
>Two mixes were produced: Stereo and 5.1.
>The stereo mix was broadcast via radio,
>Internet, and CD.  The 5.1 mix was broadcast
>via Internet and DVD-Video.
>
>(I have "The Tertiary Phase" as 5.1 WMA files;
>if anybody in interested in them contact me
>off-list.  I have never been able to play them.)
>
>The present state of play is that no national
>broadcasting organisation is regularly
>transmitting in surround.  However, a number
>of music radio stations are currently
>broadcasting in 5.1.  National broadcasting
>organisations are investigating other surround
>technologies, such as Ambisonics (BBC) and
>22.2 (NHK, BBC).
>
>Regards,
>Martin
>-- 
>Martin J Leese
>E-mail: martin.leese  stanfordalumni.org
>Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/
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>
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

2013-05-16 Thread Eero Aro


Augustine Leudar wrote:

However I'm not sure I agree that our hearing cant tell the
difference between whether a sound is coming from one or several speakers


I try to be more precise.

If you have a normal 5.1 speaker setup around you and you have several
playback devices in your use, you can drive a mono sound to one of the
speakers and the listener will locate the sound into the direction of that
loudspeaker.

If you have a two channel stereo recording and you play it through the
FL and FR speakers, the listener will hear a stereo image in front of him.

If you have a discrete 5.1 recording, you can play it back through the 5.1
setup and the localization will work according to that.

If you have a B-Format recording, you can decode it for example to a
horizontal layout and use the four "corner" speakers. Again, 
localization will

occur as we know it does.

Now - you can hit Play on all of these players at the same time and the 
listener
will hear a mix of your recordings regardless of their format of origin. 
This is
what I mean by that "the hearing doesn't know" about the reproduction 
system.


From what you have written before, I have understood that the above is 
exactly what

you have been doing, using discrete speakers for sharp imaging.

Some people think that you need to route _all of the sounds_ through the 
same
decoder and that would reduce the localization of pinpointed phantom 
sources.
You don't need to do that, you can feed the amplifier of a certain 
loudspeaker from

two or several playback sources.

Eero
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

ah ok - I understand better now and agree entirely - thats kind of what I
was trying to say you can mix ambisonics with vbap and any other thing you
want and have the best of all world ;)

On 16 May 2013 15:55, Eero Aro  wrote:

> Augustine Leudar wrote:
>
>> However I'm not sure I agree that our hearing cant tell the
>> difference between whether a sound is coming from one or several speakers
>>
>
> I try to be more precise.
>
> If you have a normal 5.1 speaker setup around you and you have several
> playback devices in your use, you can drive a mono sound to one of the
> speakers and the listener will locate the sound into the direction of that
> loudspeaker.
>
> If you have a two channel stereo recording and you play it through the
> FL and FR speakers, the listener will hear a stereo image in front of him.
>
> If you have a discrete 5.1 recording, you can play it back through the 5.1
> setup and the localization will work according to that.
>
> If you have a B-Format recording, you can decode it for example to a
> horizontal layout and use the four "corner" speakers. Again, localization
> will
> occur as we know it does.
>
> Now - you can hit Play on all of these players at the same time and the
> listener
> will hear a mix of your recordings regardless of their format of origin.
> This is
> what I mean by that "the hearing doesn't know" about the reproduction
> system.
>
> From what you have written before, I have understood that the above is
> exactly what
> you have been doing, using discrete speakers for sharp imaging.
>
> Some people think that you need to route _all of the sounds_ through the
> same
> decoder and that would reduce the localization of pinpointed phantom
> sources.
> You don't need to do that, you can feed the amplifier of a certain
> loudspeaker from
> two or several playback sources.
>
>
> Eero
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>



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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

Exactly.

Strictly, much stereo one hears is a bit like that - a mixture of panpotted 
stereo, coincident mic, spaced mic, pseudostereo effects and even 
mono-stuck-in-a-speaker.

Dr. Peter Lennox

School of Technology,
Faculty of Arts, Design and Technology
University of Derby, UK
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk 
t: 01332 593155

-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Eero Aro
Sent: 16 May 2013 14:56
To: sursound@music.vt.edu
Subject: Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

Augustine Leudar wrote:
> However I'm not sure I agree that our hearing cant tell the difference 
> between whether a sound is coming from one or several speakers

I try to be more precise.

If you have a normal 5.1 speaker setup around you and you have several playback 
devices in your use, you can drive a mono sound to one of the speakers and the 
listener will locate the sound into the direction of that loudspeaker.

If you have a two channel stereo recording and you play it through the FL and 
FR speakers, the listener will hear a stereo image in front of him.

If you have a discrete 5.1 recording, you can play it back through the 5.1 
setup and the localization will work according to that.

If you have a B-Format recording, you can decode it for example to a horizontal 
layout and use the four "corner" speakers. Again, localization will occur as we 
know it does.

Now - you can hit Play on all of these players at the same time and the 
listener will hear a mix of your recordings regardless of their format of 
origin. 
This is
what I mean by that "the hearing doesn't know" about the reproduction system.

 From what you have written before, I have understood that the above is exactly 
what you have been doing, using discrete speakers for sharp imaging.

Some people think that you need to route _all of the sounds_ through the same 
decoder and that would reduce the localization of pinpointed phantom sources.
You don't need to do that, you can feed the amplifier of a certain loudspeaker 
from two or several playback sources.

Eero
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

And we sometimes use multiple decoders on the same rig - 1st order periphonic, 
2nd order periphonic, plus some 2nd or 3rd order pantophonic - all in parallel. 
Works fine.

Dr. Peter Lennox

School of Technology,
Faculty of Arts, Design and Technology
University of Derby, UK
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk 
t: 01332 593155


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Augustine Leudar
Sent: 16 May 2013 15:02
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

ah ok - I understand better now and agree entirely - thats kind of what I was 
trying to say you can mix ambisonics with vbap and any other thing you want and 
have the best of all world ;)

On 16 May 2013 15:55, Eero Aro  wrote:

> Augustine Leudar wrote:
>
>> However I'm not sure I agree that our hearing cant tell the 
>> difference between whether a sound is coming from one or several 
>> speakers
>>
>
> I try to be more precise.
>
> If you have a normal 5.1 speaker setup around you and you have several 
> playback devices in your use, you can drive a mono sound to one of the 
> speakers and the listener will locate the sound into the direction of 
> that loudspeaker.
>
> If you have a two channel stereo recording and you play it through the 
> FL and FR speakers, the listener will hear a stereo image in front of him.
>
> If you have a discrete 5.1 recording, you can play it back through the 
> 5.1 setup and the localization will work according to that.
>
> If you have a B-Format recording, you can decode it for example to a 
> horizontal layout and use the four "corner" speakers. Again, 
> localization will occur as we know it does.
>
> Now - you can hit Play on all of these players at the same time and 
> the listener will hear a mix of your recordings regardless of their 
> format of origin.
> This is
> what I mean by that "the hearing doesn't know" about the reproduction 
> system.
>
> From what you have written before, I have understood that the above is 
> exactly what you have been doing, using discrete speakers for sharp 
> imaging.
>
> Some people think that you need to route _all of the sounds_ through 
> the same decoder and that would reduce the localization of pinpointed 
> phantom sources.
> You don't need to do that, you can feed the amplifier of a certain 
> loudspeaker from two or several playback sources.
>
>
> Eero
> __**_
> Sursound mailing list
> Sursound@music.vt.edu
> https://mail.music.vt.edu/**mailman/listinfo/sursound<https://mail.mus
> ic.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound>
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Re: [Sursound] Recreating a 3d soundfield with lots of mics.....

I did it with 3 SF mics, played back over 3 sets of speakers, so that people 
could walk through the virtual rendition of a cathedral. It's not 
mathematically elegant, but preserves distance information (and change of 
distance info as one walks through) quite well. I didn't use extra spot mics as 
you did, but that ought to be rather good for those little details and small 
sources
cheers

Dr. Peter Lennox

School of Technology,
Faculty of Arts, Design and Technology
University of Derby, UK
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk 
t: 01332 593155


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Augustine Leudar
Sent: 16 May 2013 11:38
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: [Sursound] Recreating a 3d soundfield with lots of mics.

Recently I did a little experiment - i was creating the illusion of a barman 
serving drinks to some people in a "snug" which is little room where ladies off 
"ill repute" would have a drink in pubs in Ireland when only men generally 
drank in pubs.
I did this by placing one microphone in the snug with two actors - and one 
microphone on the bar and recording the scene. I then placed two speakers in 
exactly the same place the microphones had been facing the inverse direction 
(which happens to be towards the "audience"). An absurdly simple idea but it 
worked fantastically well with the banning of the barman walking over to the 
hatch and asking the people in the snug what they wanted creating very 
effective spatialisation. Of course there wasnt the same height information. I 
have since experimented with recreating whole soundfields like this with many 
microphones placed in 3d to record a soundfield spaced apart and then placing 
the speakers in exactly the same place. It works wondefully - recently we did a 
church filling up and then people taking the places in their pews and having 
individual conversations (here the cocktail effect kicks in - you can listen to 
an individual conversation or just hear the general hubbub of th
 e church). Does anyone know of others who have miced up a 3d soundfield in 
this way ? I have read a couple of things but none of them are quite the same, 
best, Gus
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Re: [Sursound] Recreating a 3d soundfield with lots of mics.....

3 soundfield mics ! Some people have all the luck - do you by any chance
have any documentation/speaker/mic layout of the event ?
cheers,
Gus

On 16 May 2013 16:37, Peter Lennox  wrote:

> I did it with 3 SF mics, played back over 3 sets of speakers, so that
> people could walk through the virtual rendition of a cathedral. It's not
> mathematically elegant, but preserves distance information (and change of
> distance info as one walks through) quite well. I didn't use extra spot
> mics as you did, but that ought to be rather good for those little details
> and small sources
> cheers
>
> Dr. Peter Lennox
>
> School of Technology,
> Faculty of Arts, Design and Technology
> University of Derby, UK
> e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk
> t: 01332 593155
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]
> On Behalf Of Augustine Leudar
> Sent: 16 May 2013 11:38
> To: Surround Sound discussion group
> Subject: [Sursound] Recreating a 3d soundfield with lots of mics.
>
> Recently I did a little experiment - i was creating the illusion of a
> barman serving drinks to some people in a "snug" which is little room where
> ladies off "ill repute" would have a drink in pubs in Ireland when only men
> generally drank in pubs.
> I did this by placing one microphone in the snug with two actors - and one
> microphone on the bar and recording the scene. I then placed two speakers
> in exactly the same place the microphones had been facing the inverse
> direction (which happens to be towards the "audience"). An absurdly simple
> idea but it worked fantastically well with the banning of the barman
> walking over to the hatch and asking the people in the snug what they
> wanted creating very effective spatialisation. Of course there wasnt the
> same height information. I have since experimented with recreating whole
> soundfields like this with many microphones placed in 3d to record a
> soundfield spaced apart and then placing the speakers in exactly the same
> place. It works wondefully - recently we did a church filling up and then
> people taking the places in their pews and having individual conversations
> (here the cocktail effect kicks in - you can listen to an individual
> conversation or just hear the general hubbub of th
>  e church). Does anyone know of others who have miced up a 3d soundfield
> in this way ? I have read a couple of things but none of them are quite the
> same, best, Gus
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


Timothy Schmele wrote:




The industry is moving towards object oriented encoding of 3D 
soundtracks anyway. This is perhaps the least elegant, but the most 
accurate, as every sound is stored in isolation of the others, with 
exact meta information of its spatial position. Theoretically, you 
could take this soundtrack and render it over any system you, be it 
ambisonics, higher order ambisonics, vbap or wave field synthesis 
among possibly others...



Audio objects with spatial position work only for the direct part of 
sounds, limitation which is often ignored. Reflections and ambience you 
actually would have to render on some kind of cinema sound processor. Or 
would you prefer to mix a real 3D soundfield in a studio environment, 
anyway?


(The rendering process you were referring to above is just the rendering 
of the direct sound parts on different cinema layouts.)


My fear is that audio objects work only if the system very defined, say 
Audio Atmos. (The speaker system has to be defined at least more or 
less.) Then, maybe...  But this is actually not the convincing 
layout-independent solution people are looking for


Sell something as the "most accurate" solution, and don't compare to 
anything else?



Best,

Stefan Schreiber

P.S.: The industry (which industry?) < currently thinks > that object 
oriented encoding of 3D soundtracks is the "right way".


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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


Augustine Leudar wrote:


Actually wavefield synthesis was turned down by several film companies
attending a demonstration in France because the extremely effective
holographic nature of the sound destroyed the illusion of the 2d screen.
Yes film producers do use surround with some effects travelling behind the
listener but you will find the majority of the audio activity goes on in
front of the listener (thus the middle speaker in 5.1) with much less
activity and lighter mixing behind the listener (such as an aeroplane
flying overhead etc) - precisely for the reasons already given.
 



3D audio and actually surround effects should not be "over the top".

I heard (actually from a journalist) that the 3D audio mix for the 
"Hobbit" (which he attended in a cinema equipped with a Dolby Atmos 
system, of course) seemed to be like a demonstration of spacial audio 
effects, unfortunately not anything natural.


(He didn't like this movie anyway. "Much too long"...   I don't say they 
didn't render a lot of video, also.  :-D )


Best,

Stefan


You dont need an ambisonic microphone to create ambisonic soundfields - you
can do it all in the software - there is software like Spat and ICST which
will allow for HOA - all you need is enough speakers.
I agree about the wife and the speakers though - it has already caused
several low level marital disputes.



 



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Re: [Sursound] Ambdec

2013-05-16 Thread Daniel Courville

Le 2013-05-16 09:27, Paul Power a écrit :

>anyway thanks, will keep trying

Well, there's this: .

- Daniel


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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

2013-05-16 Thread Timothy Schmele

Well, its the most accurate in terms of point source localization. Then 
again, its highly dependent on the rendering method used and the layout 
available in the final space. But, at least in terms of archiving a 3d 
soundtrack it will be the most accurate, as rendering it to a lower 
order ambisonic format will irrecoverably decrease the spatial resolution.


As far as I imagine a possible format for object oriented audio, one 
could be easily extend it to hold an ambisonic encoding as a single 
object to include ambients and sf mic recordings. But this would require 
either a fall back solution or a flag to ensure one has the right 
encoder for the new audio object file.


On the other hand, in terms of ambients, sound engineers in the 3D 
business use several 5.1 reverb plug-ins and render them over 5 virtual 
sources each in a layout independent format. Similarly, they could 
probably reconstruct a 3D recording off of a sf mic. As I already said, 
this is far from elegant, nor in any way accurate, but viable. Also, 
remember that defining the width of a source (through decorrelation) 
goes a long way in making impressive ambients with few point sources, 
and might be included in audio object file formats.


But as far as I can see with my limited view of the "business" (Dolby is 
developing a proprietary audio-object-format, DTS is thinking of opening 
up their MDA formula (nice name, eh?)) and if the work flow continues to 
concentrate itself on objects as opposed to sound fields, I would say 
that this is the current trend.



(FYI, I am also not saying that I like nor dislike this trend)

On 5/16/13 7:01 PM, Stefan Schreiber wrote:

Timothy Schmele wrote:



The industry is moving towards object oriented encoding of 3D
soundtracks anyway. This is perhaps the least elegant, but the most
accurate, as every sound is stored in isolation of the others, with
exact meta information of its spatial position. Theoretically, you
could take this soundtrack and render it over any system you, be it
ambisonics, higher order ambisonics, vbap or wave field synthesis
among possibly others...


Audio objects with spatial position work only for the direct part of
sounds, limitation which is often ignored. Reflections and ambience you
actually would have to render on some kind of cinema sound processor. Or
would you prefer to mix a real 3D soundfield in a studio environment,
anyway?

(The rendering process you were referring to above is just the rendering
of the direct sound parts on different cinema layouts.)

My fear is that audio objects work only if the system very defined, say
Audio Atmos. (The speaker system has to be defined at least more or
less.) Then, maybe...  But this is actually not the convincing
layout-independent solution people are looking for

Sell something as the "most accurate" solution, and don't compare to
anything else?


Best,

Stefan Schreiber

P.S.: The industry (which industry?) < currently thinks > that object
oriented encoding of 3D soundtracks is the "right way".

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

As long as online music distribution grows at the rates it's growing at, and as
long as everything there is stereo, something like iTunes plug-ins, and UHJ
mixes have a use, and if one could form a partnership with some of the big fish
out there, like e.g. Apple, then B-Format distribution would be a viable way
for music distribution, because one B-format source could cover all the
applications ranging from binaural, to stereo and N.M channel surround.

However, that case has to be made, and people would have to be unified when
trying to push such a case, and not end up bickering about how anything below
3rd order is unacceptable when we exactly know that anything as relatively
complex as 3rd order will never happen as a first step.

The geek factor someone else describes that makes Ambisonics inaccessible to
mere mortals, is significantly reduced, because the 3/4 channels of 1st order
wihout/with height are intuitively understandable, because concepts like XYZ
axis are fairly common knowledge, but Nth-order spherical harmonics are not,
and will just get blank stares, and once you start talking about lobes, they
think you're making smart ass comments about their pierced ears.

Now, this is a discussion we had, and I actually agree: Ambisonics 1st
order might easily be good enough to provide a 3D audio system for
headphones. (And forget UHJ as "general" solution.)

I believe that relatively cheap head-tracked headphones could be
introduced into the marketplace, and it will happen probably soonly.
(The Oculus Rift VR headset is supposed to cost just $300 when it will
hit the market, probably in 2014. Obviously, this and other devices
include head-tracking.)

I am aware that Dave Malham quite recently has written that
head-tracking wouldn't be a big deal, but I think otherwise. Didn't we
talk about the solutions from Smyth Research, some years ago?

Just to remember:

http://hometheater.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=hometheater&cdn=gadgets&tm=18&f=00&su=p284.13.342.ip_&tt=13&bt=1&bts=16&zu=http%3A//www.barryrudolph.com/utilities/smyth.html

Ambisonics 3rd order +: Believe me, you will need < at least > this for
a bigger space/audience. (And if we talk about the next standards for
cinema/UHD surround, because these are currently defined.)

Best,

Stefan

P.S.: Some people are very aware of Ambisonics, nowadays.

But once more, the future of surround won't be decided by Apple. (I
never have seen any specific interest of Apple in surround sound. Don't
take this as a polemic statement: Apple could have sold 5.1 tracks since
10 years or so...

And 1st order B format seems to be pretty defined, of course. Maybe they
should have a look into this simple but powerful 3D audio format for all
these future < individual > head-tracked glasses/VR devices/game
helmets/ simple HT earphones for music... Otherwise, Samsung, Nokia, M$
or anybody else could be faster. Competition is healthy... O:-) )

P.S. 2: Now, I am not a geek but a musician.

is unacceptable when we exactly know that anything as relatively complex as 3rd
order will never happen as a first step.

You have to compare this to Dolby Atmos and Auro-3D (and maybe 22.2),
which are established systems for next-generation surround.

FOA Ambisonics should be compared to 5.1, and both systems have
advantages and disadvantages...

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:




My point is, physical media is gone. So while in the case of physical media, 
one can easily (and without significant added cost) downmix an Ambisonic 
production to 5.1, 7.1, stereo, and binaural, and still ship it on the same 
media (provided one chooses Ambisonic production behind the scenes), that 
doesn't hold true in the case of electronic delivery.
 



This is the typical view which has been taken way too early by analysts 
and self-declared experts: Physical media are not "gone".


Just see any real-world statistics how the film industry is earning 
money. If films are sold, most people buy DVDs/BDs, not EST formats. 
(It's different for streamed/rent movies, see Netflix etc. Blockbuster 
went bust, at least the former Blockbuster...)


Music industry: The CD is in many countries still the most important 
format. If not, it still matters a lot, in  commercial sense.


Electronic delivery: You can offer "bundles" any day.

In fact, IF surround recordings are sold (EST), mostly this will be 5.1 
and 2.0. Right?


I know what you mean, but still.


Best,

Stefan
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


Richard G Elen wrote:



This is another version of the "lobby the record companies to adopt 
xxx technology" argument, which never worked in the past. What is 
needed IMO is a system that can USE EXISTING DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS 
UNCHANGED, and sneak in the back door. You would download a file in 
the normal way as a purchase from iTunes or Classics Online or 
wherever. It would be larger than a stereo file of the same material. 
But while it played back as a conventional stereo file on a regular 
player, if you had a more advanced player, it would reveal Ambisonic 
surround. Think of mp3Pro for example, where the additional cleverness 
is used to increase the quality on an advanced player, while 
delivering standard mp3 quality on a standard mp3 player.



Good point: bundle within the  file!



This was always actually one of the benefits of UHJ - with no special 
decoder you got superb stereo, but you could decode that to get decent 
surround (actually, in the light of modern digital decoders, more 
decent than some of us, including me, thought), and by adding one or 
two more channels you could decode full planar or with-height surround 
and the same amount of data as the original B-Format. It does seem 
possible to me that we could embed the additional channels of 3- or 
4-channel UHJ in a file that looks and feels like a conventional 
stereo file, but the stereo part is 2-channel UHJ and the additional 
channels are encoded, hidden in the file, and are only recovered by a 
suitable player, decoder or file converter.



No problem at all, I would say.


Nice to see you back, by the way!

Stefan
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:


On 16 May 2013, at 05:24, Richard G Elen  wrote:

 


Ambisonic B-format or even UHJ-format delivery has an opening here, provided 
the bickering stops and a concerted effort is made to lobby the players 
involved, because for a reasonably moderate bandwidth overhead, these outfits 
now can deliver a data file/stream that can be played back in stereo, binaural, 
surround, and the decision can be pushed to the end-user environment.
 


This is another version of the "lobby the record companies to adopt xxx 
technology" argument, which never worked in the past.
   



Nope. Screw the record industry. This is "lobby the distributors".
Google, Apple, Amazon, these are the driving forces, they call the shots, not 
the record industry. Each one of them is going to try hard to differentiate 
themselves from the rest of the competitors, each one of them has a lot of 
muscle to get stuff they want from the content providers if that means the 
content providers can gain ever-so-little power back over the distributors 
calling the shots.
 



As a musician who actually is supposed to provide the "stuff", I have to 
ask of what we are even talking about. Is this "lobby the biggest", or 
what?!


I mean, there are literally hundreds and thousands of companies which 
sell some stuff online...



e.g. if distributor A can get the content providers to allow them to 
exclusively distribute UHJ-stereo at a digital lossless format, while charging 
$1.29 instead of $0.99 provided they can get an exclusive, and market the 
living shit out of it, to differntiate their digital storefront from the 
others, meanwhile distributor B may get a deal for B-Format for a $1.49 while 
distributor C gets stuck at $0.99 for lossily compressed stereo, then the 
content providers gain by increasing their revenue, and each of the 
distributors gains by hitting a different sweet spot in the market.
 



Ah, another  new business model for music delivered via the 
WWW...  :-)


Just to warn you: These exclusive contracts (where Majors pick just one 
distributor for a "special" format) might not work, in a legal sense.


As a musician (and if musicians have a say, which still can be the case) 
I would refuse this model, because it would lead to  < complete 
fragmentation > of the surround online market.


Anyway...

Stefan

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics


Stefan Schreiber wrote:


Timothy Schmele wrote:




The industry is moving towards object oriented encoding of 3D 
soundtracks anyway. This is perhaps the least elegant, but the most 
accurate, as every sound is stored in isolation of the others, with 
exact meta information of its spatial position. Theoretically, you 
could take this soundtrack and render it over any system you, be it 
ambisonics, higher order ambisonics, vbap or wave field synthesis 
among possibly others...






My fear is that audio objects work only if the system very defined, 
say Audio Atmos. (The speaker system has to be defined at least more 
or less.) Then, maybe...  But this is actually not the convincing 
layout-independent solution people are looking for



Ouch!

I meant: Dolby Atmos, not "Audio Atmos".

On the other hand, "Audio Atmos" could be a nice name for a 
trademark...:-)


Stefan

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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics

2013-05-16 Thread Sampo Syreeni


On 2013-05-15, Augustine Leudar wrote:

I have used the 48 channel system at sarc on many occasions and have 
set up my own 32 channel one - and if I want a sound to come from a 
point source I would not use ambisonics- I would try and have the 
sound come out of only one speaker use vbap or at least ambisonics 
with the directivity very much reduced [...]


That ought to be very close to what higher order converges to, 
especially when using in-phase decoding and allowing rE to vary in 
directions with closely spaced speakers. If that is not enough, maybe 
somebody should package a decent active matrix/infinite order thingy 
with a decent out-of-the-box decoder, and/or take another look at 5.0 
compatibility codings. There is room for that extra one channel in 
G-format which could be used for center panned dialog, three channel 
frontal stereo, a center back, or even order 1.25 encoding if you're 
willing to bend the rules a bit.


Speaking of dialog, one potential problem in theatrical applications is 
the frame of reference. Ambisonic is a sink standard which is rigidly 
referenced, in absolute length units, to what happens in the vicinity of 
the sweet spot. Current theatrical systems are relative source standards 
referenced to the playback rig, with that in case referenced to things 
like screen size and center position. Those two viewpoints don't always 
mesh, because even if you just work with angles, the reproduced ones 
don't match over different auditoria, and in particular when you have 
extended audiences, you get wonky parallax even at infinite order. (The 
same obviously goes for WFS too.) I have some trouble believing current 
theatrical audio people could demonstrate such effects given their 
relative mode of operation, but theoretically speaking that could be a 
bit of a snag.


Yes film producers do use surround with some effects travelling behind 
the listener but you will find the majority of the audio activity goes 
on in front of the listener (thus the middle speaker in 5.1) with much 
less activity and lighter mixing behind the listener (such as an 
aeroplane flying overhead etc) - precisely for the reasons already 
given.


Then you mix it accordingly, with only the portal represented by the 
screen reproduced holophonically.


I agree about the wife and the speakers though - it has already caused 
several low level marital disputes.


That's obviously one of the oldest promises of ambisonic as a 
distribution format: decoder adaptation to the wife. Currently the 
problem is "simply" that an easy to setup free decoder library isn't 
available. You know, the like that you can just safely link against and 
throw whatever audio you have at, and which after a reasonably simple 
setup step just Does What The User Wants (tm). Combined perhaps with a 
nice little Qt setup app where you can input angles and distances, or 
perhaps even hook up a mic for automatic guesswork. With something like 
that you'd have a possibility of getting accepted as the de facto audio 
compositing interface, and including ambisonic basically as a bonus 
feature.


Apropos object oriented transmission like Atmos or audio BIFS, you can't 
really get rid of ambisonic that way. That's because ambisonic and WFS 
are the only technologies out there which let you capture soundfields in 
addition to synthesizing them, and of the two only ambisonic scales down 
gracefully to something you can distribute for home use. So, what Dolby 
calls "bed" -- the static background -- probably should be handled as a 
multichannel ambisonic field even in an object based workflow, and only 
decoded as part of the compositing process which already has to know 
where the speakers are.

--
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - de...@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front
+358-50-5756111, 025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
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Re: [Sursound] The commercial future of Ambisonics