Re: [Sursound] Why Ambisonics Didn't Become A Standard, OT: Spatial Music; Low Cost Speakers
On 16 Apr 2012, at 04:12, David Pickett d...@fugato.com wrote: At 19:44 15/04/2012, Len Moskowitz wrote: A lot of stuff, with which I agree, plus: Ronald Antony talked about the cost of good speakers being a barrier: ... and anything halfway acceptable is on a good sale at least $250/speaker. This has changed in the last ten years. Good speakers today are acceptably inexpensive: around $75 to $175 per speaker channel. Have a look at: Pioneer SP-BS41-LR ($149.99/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/pioneer-sp-bs41-lr-loudspeaker Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 ($350/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/wharfedale-diamond-101-loudspeaker NHT SuperZero 2.0 ($198/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/entry-level-10 Boston Acoustics A 25 ($299.98/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/boston-acoustics-25-loudspeaker PSB Alpha B1 ($279/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/507psb/index.html Infinity Primus P162 (or older P150 and P160, or newer P153 and P163) loudspeaker ($298/pair) -http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1007inf/index.html All of them have been reviewed on Stereophile's web site. Most of the reviews include a nice set of measurements. This is an impressive list. Only one caveat: bookshelf speakers need to be mounted on stands in order to be close to optimally placed, which increases the system price and probably diminishes the Wife Acceptance Factor. One reason wny I went for the BW DM603s. Maybe I'm a bass fetishist, but as nice as many bookshelf speakers sound, even relatively cheap ones, they don't go low enough. By the time you add stands and a subwoofer, you're easily above the price range I said you have to consider. Still, it's good things are coming down in price somewhat. My strategy for years was to hunt for good speakers being discontinued, and then snap them up at close-out sales. This works well, because speakers really don't get outdated. Currently listening to music on a pair of AR90 from the early 80s which I refurbished, and they sound better than things that sell for well in the four digits range today, and are truly full-range. I wish I had a second pair, that would be a nice Ambi setup. Ronald ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Why Ambisonics Didn't Become A Standard, OT: Spatial Music; Low Cost Speakers
Excellent! Most serious manufacturers seem to feel thatthe way to make an inexpensive speaker is to take the top two thirds of a more expensiveone. But of course it is a kind of convention of High End audio that warmth and so on are really not importnat nor perhaps even desirable Cf my guest editorial in The Absolute Sound last issue but one. Robert On Mon, 16 Apr 2012, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote: On 16 Apr 2012, at 04:12, David Pickett d...@fugato.com wrote: At 19:44 15/04/2012, Len Moskowitz wrote: A lot of stuff, with which I agree, plus: Ronald Antony talked about the cost of good speakers being a barrier: ... and anything halfway acceptable is on a good sale at least $250/speaker. This has changed in the last ten years. Good speakers today are acceptably inexpensive: around $75 to $175 per speaker channel. Have a look at: Pioneer SP-BS41-LR ($149.99/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/pioneer-sp-bs41-lr-loudspeaker Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 ($350/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/wharfedale-diamond-101-loudspeaker NHT SuperZero 2.0 ($198/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/entry-level-10 Boston Acoustics A 25 ($299.98/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/boston-acoustics-25-loudspeaker PSB Alpha B1 ($279/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/507psb/index.html Infinity Primus P162 (or older P150 and P160, or newer P153 and P163) loudspeaker ($298/pair) -http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1007inf/index.html All of them have been reviewed on Stereophile's web site. Most of the reviews include a nice set of measurements. This is an impressive list. Only one caveat: bookshelf speakers need to be mounted on stands in order to be close to optimally placed, which increases the system price and probably diminishes the Wife Acceptance Factor. One reason wny I went for the BW DM603s. Maybe I'm a bass fetishist, but as nice as many bookshelf speakers sound, even relatively cheap ones, they don't go low enough. By the time you add stands and a subwoofer, you're easily above the price range I said you have to consider. Still, it's good things are coming down in price somewhat. My strategy for years was to hunt for good speakers being discontinued, and then snap them up at close-out sales. This works well, because speakers really don't get outdated. Currently listening to music on a pair of AR90 from the early 80s which I refurbished, and they sound better than things that sell for well in the four digits range today, and are truly full-range. I wish I had a second pair, that would be a nice Ambi setup. Ronald ___ 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] Why Ambisonics Didn't Become A Standard, OT: Spatial Music; Low Cost Speakers
I've been following the dissertation thread. (We are one of the two companies that build first-order Ambisonic microphones.) First-order Ambisonics has/had lots of positives: 1. Needs only four source tracks for an essentially unlimited number of playback formats 2. A set of good tools for studio and field recording was/is available 3. It offered/offers fine surround sound presentation, especially realistic rendering of ambience, for many recordings. That makes a real difference for live recordings (e.g., club performances), but not studio recordings. 4. If offered/offers good enough surround sound presentation for more complex spatial recordings 5. It encodes height at no cost. Whether you use the height information is up to you. And a few negatives: 1. No one could/can figure out a way to build a very profitable company around its intellectual property. A profitable company is necessary to promote/champion the idea. 2. Other companies had very powerful profit-related motives to oppose it (e.g., Dolby). 3. Higher order Ambisonics, with its need for more source tracks, is needed to meet the full surround sound agenda of large sweet spot and detailed spatial location 4. Better is the enemy of good enough -- we Ambisonic boosters tend to shoot ourselves in the foot, completely dismissing first-order in favor of higher-order. 5. People understand one source track per playback speaker much more easily than a decoding process. 6. Open systems are really difficult to standardize. Witness the popularity of seriously unwieldy Linux-based Ambisonic solutions here in this newsgroup. And on the OT: Spatial Music thread: Ronald Antony talked about the cost of good speakers being a barrier: ... and anything halfway acceptable is on a good sale at least $250/speaker. This has changed in the last ten years. Good speakers today are acceptably inexpensive: around $75 to $175 per speaker channel. Have a look at: Pioneer SP-BS41-LR ($149.99/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/pioneer-sp-bs41-lr-loudspeaker Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 ($350/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/wharfedale-diamond-101-loudspeaker NHT SuperZero 2.0 ($198/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/entry-level-10 Boston Acoustics A 25 ($299.98/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/boston-acoustics-25-loudspeaker PSB Alpha B1 ($279/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/507psb/index.html Infinity Primus P162 (or older P150 and P160, or newer P153 and P163) loudspeaker ($298/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1007inf/index.html All of them have been reviewed on Stereophile's web site. Most of the reviews include a nice set of measurements. Len Moskowitz (mosko...@core-sound.com) Core Sound LLC Home of TetraMic ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Why Ambisonics Didn't Become A Standard, OT: Spatial Music; Low Cost Speakers
At 19:44 15/04/2012, Len Moskowitz wrote: A lot of stuff, with which I agree, plus: Ronald Antony talked about the cost of good speakers being a barrier: ... and anything halfway acceptable is on a good sale at least $250/speaker. This has changed in the last ten years. Good speakers today are acceptably inexpensive: around $75 to $175 per speaker channel. Have a look at: Pioneer SP-BS41-LR ($149.99/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/pioneer-sp-bs41-lr-loudspeaker Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 ($350/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/wharfedale-diamond-101-loudspeaker NHT SuperZero 2.0 ($198/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/entry-level-10 Boston Acoustics A 25 ($299.98/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/content/boston-acoustics-25-loudspeaker PSB Alpha B1 ($279/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/507psb/index.html Infinity Primus P162 (or older P150 and P160, or newer P153 and P163) loudspeaker ($298/pair) - http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1007inf/index.html All of them have been reviewed on Stereophile's web site. Most of the reviews include a nice set of measurements. This is an impressive list. Only one caveat: bookshelf speakers need to be mounted on stands in order to be close to optimally placed, which increases the system price and probably diminishes the Wife Acceptance Factor. One reason wny I went for the BW DM603s. David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Why Ambisonics Didn't Become A Standard, OT: Spatial Music; Low Cost Speakers
I should add one more thing: In my opinion TetraMic is probably the finest Blumlein array available today. That means that for stereo decodes, if you like how Blumlein sounds (and I do), FOA is at the top of the heap. It's interesting that Ambisonics - a technology that most people think of in the context of Surround Sound - can be used to record superlative stereo. Len Moskowitz (mosko...@core-sound.com) Core Sound LLC Home of TetraMic ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Why Ambisonics Didn't Become A Standard, OT: Spatial Music; Low Cost Speakers
Interesting indeed, but not new. I think the Unicorn Fenby Legacy(Music of Delius), the part that was done with the Soundfield mike, is one of the finest of all stereo recordings of an orchestra. For naturalness of sound, it is unbeatable and hard for anything else to equal in my view. Robert On Sun, 15 Apr 2012, Len Moskowitz wrote: I should add one more thing: In my opinion TetraMic is probably the finest Blumlein array available today. That means that for stereo decodes, if you like how Blumlein sounds (and I do), FOA is at the top of the heap. It's interesting that Ambisonics - a technology that most people think of in the context of Surround Sound - can be used to record superlative stereo. Len Moskowitz (mosko...@core-sound.com) Core Sound LLC Home of TetraMic ___ 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
