subject:"Re\: \[Sursound\] OT\: Spatial music"


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:


On 14 Apr 2012, at 16:47, Stefan Schreiber st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote:

 


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

   


UHJ is simple and convenient, because people can buy it as a regular stereo 
track like the rest of the music. No pop-up with a choice: stereo or surround 
version, no playlists where one has to make sure the stereo version ends up on 
the iPod, and the surround version is used for home playback. None of that. One 
file, one solution, stereo, portable, home, car, whatever. No confusion for 
consumers, distribution channel, radio capable, etc. THAT works.

 


No, it didn't work.
   



That's just a plain lie. Obviously I can listen to a UHJ encoded CD or radio 
transmission as regular stereo, and if I have the equipment/software, I can 
also decode it into surround.
It works, I've heard it, I have the UHJ CDs that I can (and often have to) play 
back as stereo.

 


UHJ will (mostly) be heard as plain stereo,
   



So what? That's the entire point. Selling UHJ encoded material requires hardly 
a change in the distribution channel, and requires no change at all for the 
consumer, unless they want to explore the surround sound feature.



Anthony, this is my point: UHJ didn't work for distribution of surround 
music.


No change at all doesn't give you surround at home. Unless they want 
to explore is exactly what didn't work out, and then people might want 
to explore some real surround.


How many people have an UHJ decoder? How many people have Dolby Surround 
decoders? (I mean the old form, not the discrete one...)


Best

Stefan Schreiber


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:



 


and then there  might  be a few issues. (Mathematically-logically, it is 
impossible to press 3 channels into 2. You will have some artefacts if presenting 
surround sound in just 2-channels.)
   



The artefacts are not significant. They are certainly less of an issue than all 
the artefacts that arise from lossy compression, and people by and large don't 
care or notice either.
 



Artefacts are probably bigger than from lossy compression (which one? 
AAC?).


People don't care: I do, and don't underestimate your customers anyway.

Best,

Stefan Schreiber

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

Did I say anything different? The thing is FOA sounds just fine with 4 speakers, and 4 decent speakers are a
lot more affordable than 6, 8, or more decent speakers. The way the world economy is going (stagnant wages
combined with inflation in the rich countries, and rising wages in poor countries, which means
global income averaging), people will in inflation adjusted terms have less disposable income for tech
gadgetry in the rich countries, and may be barely get to the point where they can afford
entry-level systems in the poor countries.

But you bought all the Apple stuff, not me... :-)

You don't buy speakers very often, this is a typical long-term buy.

If you don't have any surround market (unless for home theater), typical
audio equipment companies won't sell a lot of speakers. If I talk about
Germany or Britain, some people certainly could and would spend more on
typical hi fi (now: surround) stuff if there would be a market at all,
which isn't.
(The world economy is actually growing, so your argument doesn't
convince me.)

That means stereo systems will already be considered expensive, and something
that requires four speakers will start to push the pain envelope. Forget 6 or 8
speaker setups, these are a luxury for an upper crust of high-income or
high-networth people, and they won't sustain a mass market.

Currently nobody as 8 speaker setups because there is no music around.
It is not necessarily about luxury products, because even the richtest
customers can't listen to enough recordings.

Secondly, good speakers don't have to be so expensive as they tell you
in the local hi fi shop. And thirdly, you will buy less times speakers
in your life than iPhones/Android phones...

Best,

Stefan Schreiber

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

The solution to establish any mass market for surround would be
obviously to look into better playback via headphones.

(binaural, 5.1, FOA, .AMB, etc.)

Listening via (4-x) speakers at home would be higher en.

Motion-compensated playback is possible nowadays. Many devices have
motion sensors.
(I personally believe that motion-compenation has to be included into
the surround via headphone approach.)

Mark: I dislike this case closed rhetorics, it is just your opinion.
We know that the music industry has missed many boats, but maybe you
also had one or two wrong predictions in your recent life?

Best,

Stefan

newme...@aol.com wrote:

Folks:

ALL reproduced music is a special effect -- if you wish to hear a
performance, as it was actually played, go to the performance.

MONO is a special effect.

STEREO is a special effect.

SURROUND is a special effect.

MP3 is a special effect.

None of them is a live performance.

And, no amount of money spent by audiophiles can change that. Neither
can a few extremely well-executed recordings. It will always be a special
effect and everyone knows it.

Starting In the 1960s, the *stereo* special effect beat out the *mono*
special effect for the reproduction of music. A lot of people *made* a lot of
money as a new mass-market was generated, culminating in the CD (followed
by MP3 etc.)

Beginning in the 1990s, the music industry tried to promote the *surround*
(i.e. 5.1 style) special effect -- driven by the installed base of home
theaters and DVD players, along with a preceived need to recapture the
revenues being lost in CD sales (due to the MP3 special effect).

They *spent* a lot of money, tried various technologies, and they failed.
The consumer did not believe that it was good enough (i.e. compared to
the stereo special effect) to make the switch. No one is going to try
that again.

Furthermore, as music reproduction shifted to MP3-based online delivery and
ear-bud reproduction (i.e. another version of the stereo special effect)
-- the idea of pretending that all this isn't a *special effect* by trying
to get absolute sound in your living-room just seemed more ridiculous than
ever.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY

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Re: [Sursound] [OT] Spatial music

2012-04-15 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony

This is getting rather off-topic, but...

On 15 Apr 2012, at 23:02, Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote:

 This is very unlikely to be true, that one can justify
 getting a new TV to save electricity for the sake of the world.
 To save on your own bills will also take a very long time.

 
 People seldom do the arithmetic on this. When the first
 gas crisis occurred(in the 1970s) I did some calculation
 of how long it would take to recoup the purchase price
 of getting a more fuel-efficient car. After that, I kept
 right on driving the car I had--it was going to take forever
 in terms of the lives of cars.

This is a matter of degree. It's also a matter of ecology vs. economy.

There are many things that are cheaper, but not environmentally sound, which is 
also one of the problems with greenhouse gas emission trading: it's in some 
cases profitable to generate bad stuff, then destroy it, and then sell the so 
obtained emission credits, than not generating the bad stuff in the first place.

So obviously, since the production and disposal/recycling of a product has an 
energy and carbon footprint, too, it would be foolish to throw out a brand new 
CRT and replace it with a LED TV to save the planet. On the other hand, if 
you have an aging CRT, that eventually you plan to replace, then when to do 
this can very well be based on energy cost, particularly if indirect energy 
consumption is taken into account, too. And of course, it depends how much TV 
you watch. If all you do is watch the evening news, then there's little point. 
If you have a waiting room, and the TV runs from 7:30 till midnight 
uninterrupted, it's a different story.

So it's a matter of degree and math, whereby the almighty $ doesn't necessarily 
reveal what is the most ecologically sound moment to switch devices, only when 
it's the most economical moment, and the two, unfortunately, are not congruent.

 Saving energy is good. Stop having children--that is where
 the real energy and carbon footprint is.

True, although that's generally not a problem in 1st world countries where 
populations only remain stable through immigration, and otherwise would be 
declining.

Anyway, this is taking quite a detour, because all I was saying that there are 
other considerations, besides the lower amount of space taken up by a flat 
screen TV that make people switch, among them picture quality and energy 
consumption. So I didn't single out the latter, just pointed out that these two 
are additional factors besides less space, and a more fashionable look of the 
device.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Paul Hodges wrote:

--On 13 April 2012 03:08 +0100 Stefan Schreiber 
st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote:



I am not sure that any form of surround will make it into the home,



I have quite a lot of commercial surround music recordings, on 5.1 
media. However, because of my recording activities, my surround 
reproduction equipment is tied to my computer, and the SACD media 
containing these surround recordings is specifically designed to be 
not playable on my computer, or transferable to it - so I have heard 
hardly any of these.  I can decode and play my even larger number of 
UHJ recordings (from Nimbus, of course, but also others), but even 
setting that up is a pain to do because of the lack of integrated 
software UHJ players.



I have criticized this again and again, also at companies:

SACDs are fine, but they are not compatible with computers and the 
current crop of mobile devices.


UHJ  should  be supported on any Ambisonics decoder, such as FOA.



Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list 
listen to surround recordings on a surround system for simple 
pleasure, as opposed to in the lab or as part of specific 
investigations of the process.




This is a very valid question...;-)


Best,

Stefan
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:



UHJ is simple and convenient, because people can buy it as a regular stereo 
track like the rest of the music. No pop-up with a choice: stereo or surround 
version, no playlists where one has to make sure the stereo version ends up on 
the iPod, and the surround version is used for home playback. None of that. One 
file, one solution, stereo, portable, home, car, whatever. No confusion for 
consumers, distribution channel, radio capable, etc. THAT works.
 



No, it didn't work.

UHJ will (mostly) be heard as plain stereo, and then there  might  
be a few issues. (Mathematically-logically, it is impossible to press 3 
channels into 2. You will have some artefacts if presenting surround 
sound in just 2-channels.)


Surround reproduction requires more than 2 speakers, say: at least 4. 
(Even decoded UHJ, so to speak.)


If speakers are crappy, surround won't be enjoyable with any 
system. :-)



Best,

Stefan


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:



So who cares about bandwidth and storage? But even if these other issues were 
moot, bandwidth and storage remain at a premium, because my iPad holds only 
64GB, and the iPhone's music download over 3G or 4G has a rather hefty price 
tag.
 



Yes, but your next iPad will hold 256GB (for example), and if Apple 
doesn't want to offer this somebody else will do.


But for mere interest: How do you listen to surround on your iPad? Cos 
this question has to be asked, sorry for my ignorance.:-D


You can listen to UHJ. But as stereo. See former posting.


Best,

Stefan Schreiber

P.S.: Surround reproduction is not related in any form to cheap  hard 
drives () vs. SSD storage. I am actually tired of reading this 
stuff about cheap, crappy speakers, cheap hard drives etc. Nice 
rhetorical attempt, but what is the aim of that?

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Robert Greene wrote:



I was not objecting to high order for production.
But it is never going to fly in playback terms.
Everyone takes for granted (I assume) that
people can and often do things to make recordings
that do not happen at the playback end.
(How many consumers know Protools?)
That was hardly the point.

What seems to have emerged from this long discussion
is that Ambisonics is really not going to be much use
as a consumer format--or perhaps more precisely, that
rather few people here are interested in making it
of much use as a consumer format.

I think this is a shame, because I was under the
impression(and still am) that it makes for rather
nice playback.

Robert

Future consumer formats will be file-based, computer-decodable. If so, 
there is more opportunity for several surround formats existing next to 
each other. (5.1 has to be included into the bigger framework.)


I mean, you have to decode  AVC and HEVC (successor standard for video 
compression, nearly finished), and you have to decode a movie which is 
presented in some container format. (sound, menus, synchronization...)


Mobile  smart  devices are not PCs, but obviously computers.


Best,

Stefan Schreiber
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-14 Thread Dave Hunt


Hi,

Generally I totally agree with Ronald C.F. Antony and Robert Greene.  
Ambisonics is useful and pleasing, even at first order. Until that  
gets out of the starting blocks into more widespread use it will  
remain a minority pursuit. I think all on this list would agree that  
this is undesirable.


It is scalable, and first base is first order. As Ronald says we need  
to make it widely hearable and available for people at all levels to  
use. Anyone who takes care to set up home cinema, home studio  
monitoring or public address systems effectively can understand the  
basics, and these can easily be promulgated. This would promote more  
widespread use and content creation.


This doesn't stop anyone with the interest and budget exploring and  
using higher orders.


There have been suggestions of using higher order ambisonics as a  
production format, with UHJ or first order as a distribution format.  
This could be regarded as unnecessary. The Soundfield microphone has  
a fairly large user base, and higher order microphones are unlikely  
to be widely available and used for some time. Other than such direct  
recording nearly all productions are going to involve panning of mono  
and stereo sources, and possibly mixing them with Soundfield mic  
recordings or even 5.1 (etc.) recordings.


As these productions are nearly all done with DAWs now, it is the  
scene description (direction, distance, width etc.) of each source  
that is important and already future proof. This can be applied  
subsequently to any spatial audio algorithm, ambisonics to any order,  
WFS, VBAP, zillion.1, Delay/Amplitude panning etc.


Any software or plug-in that we use now may not be useable in five  
years time, and may have been replaced with something else. Any  
finished material will survive and hopefully be playable. A scene  
description could survive, or could be recreated by careful  
listening, much as old multi-track recordings can be remixed and  
polished up now.


Ciao,

Dave Hunt
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-14 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony

On 14 Apr 2012, at 16:47, Stefan Schreiber st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote:

 Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
 
 
 UHJ is simple and convenient, because people can buy it as a regular stereo 
 track like the rest of the music. No pop-up with a choice: stereo or 
 surround version, no playlists where one has to make sure the stereo version 
 ends up on the iPod, and the surround version is used for home playback. 
 None of that. One file, one solution, stereo, portable, home, car, whatever. 
 No confusion for consumers, distribution channel, radio capable, etc. THAT 
 works.
 
 
 No, it didn't work.

That's just a plain lie. Obviously I can listen to a UHJ encoded CD or radio 
transmission as regular stereo, and if I have the equipment/software, I can 
also decode it into surround.
It works, I've heard it, I have the UHJ CDs that I can (and often have to) play 
back as stereo.

 UHJ will (mostly) be heard as plain stereo,

So what? That's the entire point. Selling UHJ encoded material requires hardly 
a change in the distribution channel, and requires no change at all for the 
consumer, unless they want to explore the surround sound feature. The latter is 
something people can explore at their leisure, as time and budget and equipment 
allow. But there's never a choice to make about which track to buy, which track 
to sync, what information to strip out to reduce size. There are also no 
choices about which versions of a track to produce, which versions to bundle, 
etc. because there's always only one mix, and one product, it only can be 
listened to in different ways.
This is the path that provides the least options, meaning the least confusion 
and the least overhead; and that's always the winning path in any business 
that's consumer oriented.
This is NOT an engineering or technical product, nor is it a professional 
product, where people might like and want options and choices.

 and then there  might  be a few issues. (Mathematically-logically, it is 
 impossible to press 3 channels into 2. You will have some artefacts if 
 presenting surround sound in just 2-channels.)

The artefacts are not significant. They are certainly less of an issue than all 
the artefacts that arise from lossy compression, and people by and large don't 
care or notice either.

 Surround reproduction requires more than 2 speakers, say: at least 4. (Even 
 decoded UHJ, so to speak.)

And? Did I ever say anything different?

 If speakers are crappy, surround won't be enjoyable with any system. :-)

Did I say anything different? The thing is FOA sounds just fine with 4 
speakers, and 4 decent speakers are a lot more affordable than 6, 8, or more 
decent speakers. The way the world economy is going (stagnant wages combined 
with inflation in the rich countries, and rising wages in poor countries, 
which means global income averaging), people will in inflation adjusted terms 
have less disposable income for tech gadgetry in the rich countries, and may 
be barely get to the point where they can afford entry-level systems in the 
poor countries. That means stereo systems will already be considered 
expensive, and something that requires four speakers will start to push the 
pain envelope. Forget 6 or 8 speaker setups, these are a luxury for an upper 
crust of high-income or high-networth people, and they won't sustain a mass 
market.

On 14 Apr 2012, at 16:58, Stefan Schreiber st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote:

 Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
 
 
 So who cares about bandwidth and storage? But even if these other issues 
 were moot, bandwidth and storage remain at a premium, because my iPad holds 
 only 64GB, and the iPhone's music download over 3G or 4G has a rather hefty 
 price tag.
 
 
 Yes, but your next iPad will hold 256GB (for example), and if Apple doesn't 
 want to offer this somebody else will do.

That doesn't make the cost much lower. SSD prices, although they have come down 
quite a bit, are still prohibitively expensive for large capacities. A 480GB 
SSD still costs well over $1k, a 480GB disk drive you can get for $50. That's a 
factor of 20, and it's not going to go away that quickly.

Besides, bandwidth is a separate issue: a lousy 2GB data allowance costs $30 or 
more in the US.
In Austria, where mobile data is globally speaking dirt cheap, 1GB is about €1 
when bought in bulk, but even so, transmitting large sound files would cost as 
much to transfer as the purchase price of a track would end up being in e.g. 
the iTunes store. So for mobile devices, bandwidth costs matter greatly.

 But for mere interest: How do you listen to surround on your iPad? Cos this 
 question has to be asked, sorry for my ignorance.:-D

Binaural decoding would be the way to go. Besides, the iPad ends up in the dock 
when at home, which is hooked up to the power amp. An iPad with amp is a 
complete entertainment system, for those who haven't noticed that fact. What is 
missing is software, and that's why convincing companies like Apple to get

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-14 Thread Richard Lee

 can a tetrahedral mic be used to create a room (correction) impulse response 
 in B format? and how?

Yes.

I can make a sensible attempt today for an Ambi rig spaced away from the walls 
as the HiFi pundits and other gurus have mandated for years.  This however has 
near zero Wife Acceptance Factor.

What i can't figure out is how to EQ for speakers mounted on or close to a 
wall.  (Unless the speakers have been designed to work well in such positions.  
eg from the Unobtainium Speaker Co.)

This is necessary to move towards Jeff's integrate in-wall loudspeakers at 
pre-specified locations (including ceiling) except the Supa Ambi Decoder 
doesn't need pre-specified locations.  It measures the speaker positions using 
the TetraMike.

I think Angelo has tried the 1st method using some naive strategies; just EQing 
WXYZ to get matching WXYZ from a Soundfield.  This doesn't give very good 
results cos in speaker / room EQ, what you DON'T EQ is probably more important 
than what you do.

Perhaps Fons knows more.

You need some strategy like what's used in Dennis' Digital Room Correction but 
taking into account multiple speakers and B-format.

I'd dearly love details of what Trinnov do.

If I ever get to grips with 21st century programming tools, I intend to do some 
work on this so expect results before the end of the millenium.
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Paul Hodges

--On 13 April 2012 03:08 +0100 Stefan Schreiber st...@mail.telepac.pt 
wrote:



I am not sure that any form of surround will make it into the home,


I have quite a lot of commercial surround music recordings, on 5.1 media. 
However, because of my recording activities, my surround reproduction 
equipment is tied to my computer, and the SACD media containing these 
surround recordings is specifically designed to be not playable on my 
computer, or transferable to it - so I have heard hardly any of these.  I 
can decode and play my even larger number of UHJ recordings (from Nimbus, 
of course, but also others), but even setting that up is a pain to do 
because of the lack of integrated software UHJ players.


Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list listen to 
surround recordings on a surround system for simple pleasure, as opposed to 
in the lab or as part of specific investigations of the process.


Paul

--
Paul Hodges


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Steven Dive


Me for one.

Steve

On 13 Apr 2012, at 08:37, Paul Hodges wrote:

Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list  
listen to surround recordings on a surround system for simple  
pleasure, as opposed to in the lab or as part of specific  
investigations of the process.


Paul


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Richard Dobson


On 13/04/2012 09:07, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:

On 04/13/2012 03:49 AM, Robert Greene wrote:


While the mode of expression is even more emphatic
than my own, RCFA is to my mind right all up
and down the line. Talking about 3rd order is
just castles in the air. As a theoretical mathematician,
I spend most of my life building castles in the air.
But one ought to know that that is what they are!


you know, for every email you guys write about this tired old topic, i
have _set up_ and _calibrated_ a higher order ambisonic system, and
believe me, that's way more exciting.

can you please stick your heads out the window eventually? it's 2012,
bandwidth is ridiculously cheap, storage even more so [1]. there is
absolutely no valid argument to be made against very high orders indeed
for production and archival.



That's not the point (well, at least, not mine). Out of the many choices 
available, which type of HOA system have you set up? What decided you on 
that choice rather than another?  And which Higher Order would you 
choose as standard out of the many possibilities available?  The 
closest to a consensus I have seen is third-order horizontal with second 
or even first-order height.


For production and archival etc, should it be a free-for-all (= order 
creep), or would it be constructive to settle on one specific order 
(hybrid or otherwise) which everyone agrees to use as standard?



Richard Dobson


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Richard Dobson


On 13/04/2012 03:08, Stefan Schreiber wrote:
..


If you promote G format, 99% would see and listen to this as a 5.1
surround file. (An 99% would listen to an UHJ as a stereo file, cos
there are really very few decoders around. In fact, 5.1 seems to be way
more mainstream than decoded UHJ.)




Part of the issue seems to be that people want it to be known that this 
or that soundtrack or album uses Ambisonics. Without that piece of 
information, all 5.1 tracks are simply understood as 5.1 tracks, and the 
sound may be in some unspecified way better or worse than expected.
This must be something of a dilemma - B-Format (and G-format) may well 
be the best example of art that conceals art. In just the same way 
that people geneally have no idea of the techniques used to record 
something - single-point, multi, or whatever. The engineer knows, and 
that is enough. And hope for a good review.  Or...


Richard Dobson
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony


On 13 Apr 2012, at 04:08, Stefan Schreiber st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote:

 Steven Dive wrote:
 
 
 
 IMHO I can't see how FOA isn't  clearly worth promoting along with up  to 
 3rd order G-format decodes for 5.1/7.1 setups for home users.  Basically, 
 get UHJ and, while we are at it, superstereo into people's  homes, then get 
 on with full 1st and higher orders.
 
 Steve
 
 
 Steve, Anthony:
 
 In which sense is UHJ and superstereo a viable alternative to 5.1 surround, 
 if 5.1 is clearly better than any 2-channel system can be?

Because it's NOT better. 99.9% of 5.1 mixes SUCK because they are pan-pot BS. 
0.1% maybe use Ambisonic panning to do the mix, and they may be great, provided 
your setup is matching exactly the setup for which it is pre-decoded, at which 
point it is barely better than UHJ, shedding some matrixing constraints, while 
adding issues of irregular speaker arrays. Chances are, a 5.1 surround mix is a 
4.0 in reality, using only 5.1 distribution.

Further, as I said, 90%+ of 5.1 installations are not suitable for music 
playback anyway, because of the fact that the speakers are neither full-range, 
nor even matching in tone coloration. Without excessive room EQ and speaker 
compensation, phase is all over the place, and any moving sound changes 
character as it goes from front speakers to side or rear speakers, because they 
are typically different and cheaper speaker models.

None of that matters for a bit of sci-fi whoosh or action flick shooting, it's 
however useless for music.
So as far as my experience goes, the assertion that 5.1 is better than UHJ 
Stereo or 4.0 1st order horizontal-only Ambisonics is plain wrong. 

 You should introduce something which exceeds the existing solutions, not 
 going back to something which fits into the stereo distribution chain. We 
 already had this.

Because that's still the only thing we have, the stereo distribution chain. A 
new technology needs to get the foot into the door. Nobody is going to make a 
speculative investment costing massive amounts of money, for an unproven, 
no-demand system. The only way to get it in the door is through guerilla 
tactics.

Quality doesn't matter, convenience and simplicity do. Why do you think MP3 
trounced AAC, which in turn trounced CD sales, which again are leaps and bounds 
above DVD-Audio and SACD?

Only AFTER surround music is common can one address quality issues, just like 
only after online music was established, slowly the cries for better quality 
were raised, and the bit rates went up, and DRM was removed. According to your 
line reasoning, online music distribution cannot possibly be successful until 
it's lossless audio without DRM, but the reality was different. People bought 
lousy 128kbit/s compressed files encumbered with DRM, over better quality and 
DRM-free CDs, because it was SIMPLE and CONVENIENT.

UHJ is simple and convenient, because people can buy it as a regular stereo 
track like the rest of the music. No pop-up with a choice: stereo or surround 
version, no playlists where one has to make sure the stereo version ends up on 
the iPod, and the surround version is used for home playback. None of that. One 
file, one solution, stereo, portable, home, car, whatever. No confusion for 
consumers, distribution channel, radio capable, etc. THAT works.

 I have written that you could decode a 3rd order .AMB file on a 4 or 6 
 speaker home installation, for example ignoring the 2nd and 3rd order 
 components. 8 speakers would be even better, but less is still possible.

And I have said that none of that matters, because no musician in the world, 
except some esoteric avant guard musicians with a cumulative audience smaller 
than the number of members on this list is going to go through the cost and 
trouble of doing HOA productions.

The only Ambisonic productions you're going to see are the ones that Tony 
Fatso Miller (and similarly unknown people) can do in their basement studios 
for some garage band that scratched together $500 to finally get a 
professional demo CD made. That sort of production is where the vast majority 
of music originates. Even if you go up three notches, do you really think the 
producer of Madonna's MDNA album has the slightest clue about HOA? You might be 
able to get such industry people to toy around with one extra channel and go 
from a LR or MS setup to a XYW setup, provided they can ship regular CDs that 
sell millions of copies. If they can mention in the liner notes, that as a 
special bonus it is surround encoded for playback on systems capable for that, 
then that's an added bonus, and that's ALL you're going to get until 100 
million people or more have Ambisonic setups at home and ask for more. It is 
exactly these things, where e.g. some hard core Madonna fan would want to
  hear the album the way it was meant to be heard that will get people to buy 
a decent 4.0 setup, and spread the word.

Nobody is going to have 6 or 8 speakers in the house,

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony


On 13 Apr 2012, at 10:07, Jörn Nettingsmeier netti...@stackingdwarves.net 
wrote:

 On 04/13/2012 03:49 AM, Robert Greene wrote:
 
 While the mode of expression is even more emphatic
 than my own, RCFA is to my mind right all up
 and down the line. Talking about 3rd order is
 just castles in the air. As a theoretical mathematician,
 I spend most of my life building castles in the air.
 But one ought to know that that is what they are!
 
 you know, for every email you guys write about this tired old topic, i have 
 _set up_ and _calibrated_ a higher order ambisonic system, and believe me, 
 that's way more exciting.

Exciting in the same way as people spending massive amounts of money on speaker 
wire and listening to the same recording over and over to decide if the CD 
player sounds better with a magic brick on top, or without

 can you please stick your heads out the window eventually? it's 2012, 
 bandwidth is ridiculously cheap, storage even more so [1]. there is 
 absolutely no valid argument to be made against very high orders indeed for 
 production and archival. get it in your heads that there is a difference 
 between what the consumer uses and what the production format is. this is 
 what ambisonics is all about: scalability. you get to keep your meridians and 
 your four quad speakers, and everyone can just live happily ever after.

None of that matters:

- there are globally speaking between zero and none studios that even 
understand the concept of higher order ambisonics
- there are between zero and no artists who ask for their works to be produced 
in HOA
- there are between zero and none record labels that will pay the extra expense 
for a HOA production.

So who cares about bandwidth and storage? But even if these other issues were 
moot, bandwidth and storage remain at a premium, because my iPad holds only 
64GB, and the iPhone's music download over 3G or 4G has a rather hefty price 
tag.

The reality of music, in 2012, isn't a desktop computer with cheap hard drives 
attached to it, that's so 90s, its a wireless, low-power portable device with 
expensive SSD storage and expensive always-connected wireless networking.

So yes, even despite all the other cost factors and hurdles that speak against 
a system of the complexity of HOA, bandwidth and storage still matter, or 
should I say, matter again?

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread John Leonard

As my 'studio' is my spare room in our flat, I have decent set up where I can 
use the surround set-up, which Ronald will be pleased to know uses five matched 
loudspeakers, an LFE unit and has proper bass management, to listen for both 
work and pleasure. I play my SACD recordings on an inexpensive Pioneer unit 
that plays almost anything, has six separate outputs and is hooked up to a 
Metric Halo ULN-8. My wife has the same unit, used as a CD player, hooked up to 
a Yamaha receiver that has six separate inputs and outputs, although we don't 
have a surround system in the living-room. (Too full of 'cellos and 
house-plants)

A long time ago, I asked how many people on this list actually had any sort of 
surround systems, let alone properly set-up home-cinema 5.1 systems, in their 
homes and I think about three people said they did. I wonder how many there are 
now?

Regards,

John


On 13 Apr 2012, at 08:37, Paul Hodges wrote:

 Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list listen to 
 surround recordings on a surround system for simple pleasure, as opposed to 
 in the lab or as part of specific investigations of the process.

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread David Pickett


At 02:37 13/04/2012, Paul Hodges wrote:

Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list 
listen to surround recordings on a surround system for simple 
pleasure, as opposed to in the lab or as part of specific 
investigations of the process.


I try to do this; but it is not always easy.  The most friendly media 
are DVD-A and SACD which have a good enough bit rate.  These I can 
play and enjoy. Playing wavefiles, which is what I would like to do, 
while relatively easy for two-channel stereo, is for me a PITA for 
ambisonics.  Someone suggested using an Oppo BDP-95 for this, but 
then I heard that it will only play one wavefile and stop, thus one 
wavefile per track (movement) is a pain: even an LP will play four 
movements of a Mozart symphony without stopping.


David

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Robert Greene

I disagree with this. I suppose for some things like
pop vocals that do not have a natural acoustic venue
surrounding them, surround is not helpful.
But for large scaled acoustic music like orchestral
music(which of course some people here would
dismiss as a niche market) it really does help
generate a better facsimile of the real experience.
The problem is that practically none of the commercial
material available does it right.
But anyone who knows anything about acoustics
knows that the concert experience of orchestral
music has a very large amount of diffuse field sound
involved--in energy terms, there is more diffuse field
than direct arrival at most audience locations, quite
a lot more. The precidence effect to some extent
conceals this fact from people who listen superficially.
But the reality is that stereo presentation of orchestral
music is very much wrong. It can be pleasing, even beautiful,
but it is always wrong.

Surround can be right, or closer to right. But it usually is not,
actually, as it is currently practiced.

In most cases, you would be better off to take a stereo
recording and make it into surround yourself.

Quite disappointing situation, actually.
But then people in contemporary High End audio do not
seem to want to think about how music actually works in concert.
It is not that the information is not available. I wrote
this
http://www.regonaudio.com/Records%20and%20Reality.html
more than twenty-five years ago in The Absolute Sound.
But not very many people seemed to understand the essential
message--that a LOT of what you hear in concert ie
diffuse field reverberation.
People should have been trying to figure out how
to generate that effect at home all along, but they
mostly were not. And they still are not. They are
worrying about other things entirely.

Robert

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote:

Ronald:

Wrong. They would want it, if they ever heard it.

Sorry. I've heard surround and it's just not good enough to matter -- for
MUSIC.

I've heard Dark Side and I've heard Kind of Blue . . . and most of the
rest of the SACD and DVD-A releases. Some are fabulous, some are not but
none of it was enough. Good try. Experiment failed.

I've recorded with Tetramics and I've set up an HSD 3D system, on which I
enjoyed the 3RD DIMENSION of music -- height -- but none of this is enough.

Amibsonics (i.e. FOA) is fabulous for AMBIENCE but, alas, not for MUSIC
(due to the lack of frontal emphasis) and c'mon . . . we all know it.

The reason why Ambisonics hasn't succeeded -- after all this time -- for
MUSIC is that it's not *good* enough to make a difference.

That's why the HOA debates happened. Smart people with well-trained
ears KNOW that FOA isn't good enough.

It has nothing to do with MAG or the British government or bad timing or
bad business decisions -- it doesn't *improve* the listening to MUSIC enough
for people to care. Seems that Apple also figured that out.

I also know many people in the music *business* and they also heard it
(indeed, spent a lot of money on it) and have universally come to the same
conclusion.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread umashankar mantravadi

folks i just looked out of my window and it is 1975! Wireless World gave up
waiting for the third part of MAG's article and started publishing somebody
called Ivor Catt, who wanted to fight Maxwell in single combat. umashankar

i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:40:31 -0700
From: gre...@math.ucla.edu
To: sursound@music.vt.edu
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Surround can be right, or closer to right. But it usually is not,
actually, as it is currently practiced.

In most cases, you would be better off to take a stereo
recording and make it into surround yourself.

Robert

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote:

Ronald:

Wrong. They would want it, if they ever heard it.

Sorry. I've heard surround and it's just not good enough to matter -- for
MUSIC.

I've heard Dark Side and I've heard Kind of Blue . . . and most of the
rest of the SACD and DVD-A releases. Some are fabulous, some are not but
none of it was enough. Good try. Experiment failed.

I've recorded with Tetramics and I've set up an HSD 3D system, on which I
enjoyed the 3RD DIMENSION of music -- height -- but none of this is enough.

Amibsonics (i.e. FOA) is fabulous for AMBIENCE but, alas, not for MUSIC
(due to the lack of frontal emphasis) and c'mon . . . we all know it.

The reason why Ambisonics hasn't succeeded -- after all this time -- for
MUSIC is that it's not *good* enough to make a difference.

That's why the HOA debates happened. Smart people with well-trained
ears KNOW that FOA isn't good enough.

I also know many people in the music *business* and they also heard it
(indeed, spent a lot of money on it) and have universally come to the same
conclusion.

Case closed.

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony

Could you explain to me this phrase:

 Amibsonics (i.e. FOA) is fabulous for AMBIENCE but, alas, not for  MUSIC 
 (due to the lack of frontal emphasis) and c'mon . . . we all know  it.

For one, why would I want frontal emphasis? The whole point of Ambisonics is 
that it does NOT have any emphasis, that things can be whereever.

If one might have a complaint, then that UHJ might HAVE a frontal emphasis, but 
then again, that doesn't matter with most kinds of music.

Again, we're not trying to shoot virtual musicians blind folded. It's about 
creating space in a small-ish living room, what you might call ambience, which 
you admit it's great for. So then what's the problem?

Clearly I and many of the people who even know about Ambisonics never heard 
anything but FOA, e.g. I was convinced of the technology having listened to a 
bunch of Ambisonic UHJ encoded recordings on a Meridian system, and comparing 
them to stereo playback. I also listened to stereo recordings played back in 
SuperStereo, and the conclusion was the same: vastly superior listening 
experience.

On 13 Apr 2012, at 17:09, newme...@aol.com wrote:

 Ronald:
 
 Wrong. They would want it, if they ever heard it. 
 
 Sorry.  I've heard surround and it's just not good enough to  matter -- for 
 MUSIC.

So how can you unilaterally decide that this isn't worth it, when there are 
plenty of people who by the very experience were convinced of Ambisonics?

How many of the people you claim have decided FOA isn't worth it, have 
expectations that don't matter to the average music listener? e.g. I'm not 
interested in the opinion of a professional musician who complains that the 
string section isn't exactly where it was during the performance. I'm not 
interested in the opinion of some Audiophile geek with a recording of someone 
walking in a circle clapping their hands complaining that the motion perceived 
isn't as uniform as the person was walking in a circle. All these things don't 
matter at all to the enhanced euphonic experience FOA provides during playback 
on a half-way decent 4.0 home setup.

 
 I've heard Dark Side and I've heard Kind of Blue . . . and most of the  
 rest of the SACD and DVD-A releases.  Some are fabulous, some are not but  
 none of it was enough.  Good try.  Experiment failed.

Most of that stuff has really nothing to do with FOA, because that to a large 
degree was 5.1 junk, with old-fashioned pan-pot mixes.

If you're trying to say that ANY surround sound isn't good enough for music 
unless it has oodles of speaker channels, HOA and height information, then you 
might as well say there will never be surround sound good enough for music in 
the home, because the bar you set is too high to ever be surpassed in a home 
listening environment for the foreseeable future.

 I've recorded with Tetramics and I've set up an HSD 3D system, on which I  
 enjoyed the 3RD DIMENSION of music -- height -- but none of this is  enough.

Maybe you should just decide it's not for you, and let the rest of us enjoy a 
less than perfect world. 

The way you talk reminds me of some of my friends who are single, because no 
girl is ever good enough for them, they will keep finding flaws even if they 
have a super model in front of them. If these women are not good enough for 
them, that's fine, they can remain single, but they should stop being spoilers 
for all the rest of us who enjoy women (and FOA) the way they are (it is).

 That's why the HOA debates happened.  Smart people with well-trained  
 ears KNOW that FOA isn't good enough.

Elitism pure. I don't need someone else's smarts nor their well trained ears.
As a matter of fact, IQ tests claim I'm well above average in smarts, and given 
that I can hear a good portion of bats in flight, I'd say my hearing isn't the 
worst, either.
I'm sick and tired of other people deciding what I'm allowed to enjoy because 
of their perceived sense of superiority and qualifications.
If I and many others of the few who ever even had a chance to listen to an 
Ambisonic setup enjoy the improvements in listening pleasure then that's plenty 
enough reason for this technology to exist, because the people who don't like 
it, like you, are not forced to listen to it. They should just be quiet and 
wait 500 years until maybe their perfect world manifests itself.

 It has nothing to do with MAG or the British government or bad timing or  
 bad business decisions -- it doesn't *improve* the listening to MUSIC enough 
 for  people to care.  

Yeah, right. That's why Meridian keeps investing time and money into the 
system, that's why the system was invented at all etc. 
Let's face it, Dolby surround, matrixed, which is clearly inferior to even 
FOA/UHJ did have a success in the market, because the right people were behind 
it, and it lasted until Dolby pushed the next greatest thing (AC3), etc. Dolby 
understood that these things go incrementally, even though they chose a 
fundamentally inferior approach to the

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Robert Greene



I think that the idea that surround is not good enough
for music , good enough to matter, really does
not make sense. This is more or less like restricting
the idea of music to what works well enough in stereo
to be all right. But that is not all music, and indeed
for example it does not include orchestral music.

Of course we have all experienced this kind of reasoning
in practice. When I had electrostatics with limited bass
and dynamics, I hardly ever listened to big orchestral
music(in recorded form). It did not work well with that
system so I just listened to other stuff(even though
I really like big orchestra music). When all there
were were turntables and before I got a Nakamichi
disc centering turntable, piano music was a 
problem(on account of off centered records). Once

 I got a Nakamichi (and digital came along), piano
music became a joy again, instead of a watery imitation.
And so I listened to more of it.

What has happened to the audio industry in my view is
that for more than fifty years, they have dealt almost
exclusively with stereo. So people have evolved in their
tastes to suit the medium. They listen only to music
that works in stereo, and even when they do listen
to things like orchestral music that obviously do not
really work right in stereo, they have become adjusted to completely
unrealistic presentations of the music (which really
means only the notes and some of the dynamics since most
of the rest is pretty screwed up). They have come to accept
stereo on its own merits and have simply given up on
its sounding real.

Of course this happened with mono. People accepted it, completely
unrealistic though it is.

Then stereo showed up and all of a sudden mono seemed sort of 
Nowheresville.


Surround could have had the same effect for music. It could have raised 
one's expectations of realism and made some kinds of music sound nearly 
right in a big way.  But for various 
reasons, it did not happen. For one thing, the pop music industry had 
moved
into a realm where people no longer cared about the acoustics of the 
venue. Music became something that was not anchored in acoustic reality 
with a real venue.


But a lot of music is so anchored. And for that , surround done
right is still valuable.

But done right is the operative phrase.

Robert
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Newmedia

Folks:

ALL reproduced music is a special effect -- if you wish to hear a
performance, as it was actually played, go to the performance.

MONO is a special effect.

STEREO is a special effect.

SURROUND is a special effect.

MP3 is a special effect.

None of them is a live performance.

And, no amount of money spent by audiophiles can change that. Neither
can a few extremely well-executed recordings. It will always be a special
effect and everyone knows it.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY

P.S. By the 1990s, the ground of our experience had shifted from the
acoustic/electric to the tactile/digital and we were freed to do whatever we
wanted with sound. People playing with Ambisonics was the result. But
our personal interests no longer intersect with the now obsolete efforts to
generate mass-markets around new sonic special effects. Lou Reed can play
around all he wants. It will not create a new mass-market for a new special
effect.
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Robert Greene

Being doctrinaire is really not a substitute for thinking.
Of course no reproduced music at home is going to be
identical to live experience. No one suggested
it was. But one could get closer.

And it is just silly to say go to the performance.
The music played , even in major cities,
is a very small fraction of what one might like to hear.

It makes no sense to say case closed all the time.
And monotonous repetition of buzz words like special effect
contributes nothing to anything.

Things like this are never closed. Who would have predicted
in 1975 the current state of things? (IBM famously
said that computers would never become popular home
appliances, to take a particularly egregious instance
of case closed being completely wrong.)

Things change all the time. Furthermore it is silly
to say that surround failed because of its not
being musically interesting. The first try failed
(SQ, Quad etc) because it really does not work
well to try to put multiple channels on an LP.
The second round failed at least in part because
the industry shot the effort in the foot by failing
to agree on a single format. DVD versus SACD ruined
everything at that point.

But who is to say that it will never come back? Lots
of people have 5.1 home theater setups. They could
play music on them. It could sound good. It could
all happen easily enough especially since data distribution
is getting so easy.

It would be nice if Ambisonics were positioned to participate
if this does happen.
c
Robert

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote:

Folks:

D ALL reproduced music is a special effect -- if you wish to hear a

performance, as it was actually played, go to the performance.

MONO is a special effect.

STEREO is a special effect.

SURROUND is a special effect.

MP3 is a special effect.

None of them is a live performance.

And, no amount of money spent by audiophiles can change that. Neither
can a few extremely well-executed recordings. It will always be a special
effect and everyone knows it.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Newmedia

Robert:
 
 Who would have predicted in 1975 the current state of things? 
 
Many did exactly that.  In particular, the reality of technology  
increasing the productivity of manufacturing such that labor-arbitrage would  
come to 
dominate global trade and that the post-industrial economies would not  
understand how to cope with these new circumstances, was widely  appreciated.
 
 IBM famously said that computers would never become popular 
 home appliances, to take a particularly egregious instance
 of  case closed being completely wrong.

Sorry, that is not what  happened.  In fact, right around 1975, a fellow at 
IBM named Gary Chen (who  I knew well) predicted to IBM's senior management 
that there was a *very* large  market opportunity at the $5K (and below) 
price-point (based on a Paretto curve  of demand vs. price/performance), which 
began the effort that led to the IBM PC  -- based on the same Microsoft 
and Intel technology that still dominates the  500M unit market for the PC 
today.
 
The fact that so many people in the hi-fi industry have been wrong in  
their predictions doesn't mean that predictions can't be made --  just that 
they aren't very good at it.
 
Obviously no one should take my own predictions with anything more than a  
LARGE grain-of-salt -- even if (or maybe because) I might be one of the few 
on  this list who has made a 40-year career out of predicting these things 
--  however, I can only hope that I have at least stimulated some thinking 
and  perhaps even a little entertainment!
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Gerard Lardner

I do. I have two classic Ambisonic decoders, a old Meridian in the
sitting room, decoding to 5.1 speakers (the TV shares the speakers), and
an ancient Minim AD10-based system in my office with 4 good speakers
(soon to be extended to a 6-speaker hexagon array).

Both are horizontal-only, obviously; much as I would like a full
periphonic system, I prefer not to invade my living space with more
speakers.

Gerard


On 13/04/2012 08:37, Paul Hodges wrote:
 --On 13 April 2012 03:08 +0100 Stefan Schreiber
 st...@mail.telepac.pt wrote:
 ...
 Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list
 listen to surround recordings on a surround system for simple
 pleasure, as opposed to in the lab or as part of specific
 investigations of the process.

 Paul

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Gerard Lardner

On 13/04/2012 00:43, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
The cardboard speakers that ship with affordable 5.1 systems are not suitable
for music, and anything halfway acceptable is on a good sale at least
$250/speaker, which means with four speakers you're at or above $1k, add a
decent four channel amp, cables, speaker stands, etc. and you're well above
the typical consumer price level already.
Agreed generally. But it _*is*_ possible to get decent speakers more
cheaply, if you try. I got eight Wharfedale Diamond 8 Pro Active
speakers at prices ranging from £100/pr to just under £200/pr, all new
in their boxes. About half were unopened, still with the original
Wharfedale tape and staples on the boxes; the others were new 'B'-stock
- opened for display, but otherwise perfect. All came with a full
guarantee from the dealer - most of them came from Dolphin Music. Great
value, and no need to spend money on separate power amps. It took me
about a year to get them, buying one or two pairs at a time as they
became available at a price I was willing to pay (the last ones were the
cheapest!).
Technology hasn't moved on. 5.1 is 4.0 plus a crappy center speaker that has
a totally different tonal quality and never blends with the other four lousy
speakers, plus a subwoofer to make up for the fact that the other speakers
are lousy. Four full-range speakers in a 4.0 configuration is better than
what 99% of people have in their homes, and cost near what they could
possibly afford. To talk about higher channel count is totally disregarding
economic realities.
Again, not necessarily so. I have a '5.1' set of Wharfedale bookshelf
speakers (not the same as the ones mentioned above). Actually it's 5.0
since with four decent bookshelf speakers and a matching, slightly
larger, centre speaker, bass is adequate for TV/videos and surprisingly
good for classical music; so I didn't get a '.1' subwoofer. The
bookshelf speakers all have a 5 bass unit as well as a tweeter; the
centre speaker has 2 x 5 bass units of the same type as the bookshelf
speakers and the same tweeter. Driven via the Meridian preamp, they put
out a nicely balanced sound, provided you don't want too loud; the
Meridian makes sure the bass goes to the 5 normal speakers.

Gerard
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Gerard Lardner

I ain't objecting to HOA. I'd love to have a HOA system again for normal
listening; I /have/ heard it and agree it is good. But two things argue
against it: 1.) Cost for a home installation. Despite what I wrote in an
earlier message today, it was hard work to assemble even 8 /good/
speakers cheaply. I got them for HOA, but I probably will not use them
for it, at least not for long, because 2) Having lots of speakers on one
room is not compatible with home harmony or with visual aesthetics.
Sadly, that is the killer.

Bandwidth, storage, processing power? Yes, they are all affordable now.
Now we need to find a solution to my point 2 above - and that is not an
Ambisonics problem!

In practice, Ambisonics is most useful as a production tool. Only a
dedicated few will use it in a home environment. Only when the speakers
can be effectively hidden from view without compromising the qualities
needed for Ambisonics and for serious music reproduction will it have
the potential to become part of the home system.

Gerard Lardner

On 13/04/2012 09:07, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
On 04/13/2012 03:49 AM, Robert Greene wrote:

While the mode of expression is even more emphatic
than my own, RCFA is to my mind right all up
and down the line. Talking about 3rd order is
just castles in the air. As a theoretical mathematician,
I spend most of my life building castles in the air.
But one ought to know that that is what they are!

you know, for every email you guys write about this tired old topic, i
have _set up_ and _calibrated_ a higher order ambisonic system, and
believe me, that's way more exciting.

can you please stick your heads out the window eventually? it's 2012,
bandwidth is ridiculously cheap, storage even more so [1]. there is
absolutely no valid argument to be made against very high orders
indeed for production and archival. get it in your heads that there is
a difference between what the consumer uses and what the production
format is. this is what ambisonics is all about: scalability. you get
to keep your meridians and your four quad speakers, and everyone can
just live happily ever after.

[1] the only thing that's probably even cheaper is opinions.
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread seva


yes indeed. perfect example.
and easily applied to gaming (i use that adjective with tongue 
approaching cheek).
imagine the laser quest with HUD in a room, with virtual fighters, 
and true sound placement around you. kids would (of all ages) pony up 
large money for such an experience.


but for me, i'd really like some tools to use in film mixing (even 
with the distributed Ls and Rs speakers). anyone on the list care to 
tell me what tools might be best, or why it just won't work? the 
idea is to simply improve location and immersive aspects of film 
sound, whether played in a theatre or in home theatre.  (yes, assume 
the home has a decent home theatre playback, and by decent, i include 
something like a Bose-qulality system with 5 small satellites --not 
full range-- and appropriate sub, such as the one bob ludwig uses at 
Gateway for clients to listen on as a real world living room).


would G format *not* benefit this type of setup at all? (yes! assume 
the speakers are in the right places, ITU layout).





At 8:38 -0400 4/11/12, Neil Waterman wrote:
We have been using ambisonics for several years now to provide 
immersive soundfields for use within the flight simulation and 
training environments. Prior to this we were using gain panning that 
was restrictive and highly coupled to each installation. The use of 
ambi allows us to port a model from one implementation to another 
with little modification to the underlying sound simulation model.


Cheers, Neil

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread Martin Leese

seva s...@soundcurrent.com wrote:
...
 but for me, i'd really like some tools to use in film mixing (even
 with the distributed Ls and Rs speakers). anyone on the list care to
 tell me what tools might be best, or why it just won't work? the
 idea is to simply improve location and immersive aspects of film
 sound, whether played in a theatre or in home theatre.

Cinemas are hostile environments for
Ambisonics.  Theatre managers want to cram
in as many paying punters as possible so,
inevitably, some of them end up close to a
surround speaker.  Low order Ambisonics has
trouble with this.

While we happily denigrate 5.1, it is always
worth remembering that it was designed to
work in these hostile environments.  Chris
Travis expressed this succinctly in a post in
October 2008:

|| Surround sound in cinemas is less ambitious
|| than many people assume.  This is a matter
|| of practicality, given the number/spread of
|| the seats.

Regards,
Martin
-- 
Martin J Leese
E-mail: martin.leese  stanfordalumni.org
Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread Richard Dobson


On 12/04/2012 18:31, Martin Leese wrote:

sevas...@soundcurrent.com  wrote:
...

but for me, i'd really like some tools to use in film mixing (even
with the distributed Ls and Rs speakers). anyone on the list care to
tell me what tools might be best, or why it just won't work? the
idea is to simply improve location and immersive aspects of film
sound, whether played in a theatre or in home theatre.


Cinemas are hostile environments for
Ambisonics.

...


Possibly I simply haven't been to enough high-spec cinemas, but I tend 
to the opinion that cinemas are fairly hostile environments for audio 
generally. Too often, dialogue + foley + sfx + music = a mess, immersive 
or otherwise.  A person may see a film once in the cinema, but maybe 
many times at home, so strategically, at least, the latter should 
arguably be the priority.


Richard Dobson

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony

On 12 Apr 2012, at 22:27, Fons Adriaensen f...@linuxaudio.org wrote:

 First order definitely isn't good enough. As long a you insist that
 one can't go up in order, just forget about it all.

Tell that Meridian, and all their customers who have enjoyed immensely not only 
listening to horizontal-only 1st order Ambisonics, but also to 1st order 
horizontal-only Ambisonics crippled by UHJ matrix-encoding constraints.

So maybe you should forget about it all, because there are plenty of people who 
enjoy that which you claim one should forget about. It's these sort of phrases 
that killed the potential adoption of Ambisonics a few years ago. The nice 
thing, people keep outing themselves...

It's exactly this elitist attitude that keeps the ball from moving. 1st order 
is thoroughly enjoyable, and were it not for the not-so-smooth DACs maybe some 
other digital sins that Onkyo did in it's 808 receiver, I'd be a happy camper 
with that setup, but the sound quality of that device can't compete with a 
clean stereo amp, so it's surround vs. good sound. Some day, I'll fix that by 
using an old computer as a processor, and some high-end DAC as converter, and 
then I'll have the best of both. And I'll still massively prefer 
UHJ-1st-order-Ambisonics on four speakers over plain stereo.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread HAIGELBAGEL PRODUCTIONS


On 13/04/2012 12:13 AM, seva wrote:
but for me, i'd really like some tools to use in film mixing (even 
with the distributed Ls and Rs speakers). anyone on the list care to 
tell me what tools might be best, or why it just won't work? the 
idea is to simply improve location and immersive aspects of film 
sound, whether played in a theatre or in home theatre.
Have you tried SPAT from IRCAM? It's pretty good and has sped up 
workflow for film mixing.


Cheers,

Haig
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread Steven Dive

Meridian may be expensive, too, but at least they are sticking with  
Ambisonics. Full horizontal 1st order B-format is now included in  
their decoders, as well as UHJ, superstereo and Trifield. Oh, and I'm  
a Meridian customer enjoying one of the few (only?) current domestic  
ambisonic decoders. Still damned expensive, so I've not replaced mine  
for nearly 15 years.


I could just about cope with full 2nd order horizontal (6 speakers)  
but not 3rd with eight speakers in my typically small UK sitting room.  
Height is out of the question, People clearly put 5 and sometimes 7  
speakers in their listening/entertainment rooms (in all sorts of odd  
places, though), so G-format should be possible, too (up to 3rd  
order?). For home use, I use superstereo with the TV and, as long as  
the width control is kept narrow-ish, centrally based sounds tie in  
well with what's happening on-screen. Sounds-off, such as doors  
closing and people speaking about to come into the image from left or  
right, can give a nicely widened perspective on a performance. I've  
only really been used to UHJ as a home user so I'm looking forward to  
full 1st order for music, classical and otherwise. I'd love to try UHJ  
with the TV. I suspect the dominance of a large TV image will tend to  
direct (sharpen?) perception of sound source positions on a TV screen,  
as happens anyway with TV speakers placed well off centre. Cinema may  
be a non-starter but not home use.


IMHO I can't see how FOA isn't  clearly worth promoting along with up  
to 3rd order G-format decodes for 5.1/7.1 setups for home users.  
Basically, get UHJ and, while we are at it, superstereo into people's  
homes, then get on with full 1st and higher orders.


Steve

On 12 Apr 2012, at 22:05, Fons Adriaensen wrote:


On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 10:47:04PM +0200, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
On 12 Apr 2012, at 22:27, Fons Adriaensen f...@linuxaudio.org  
wrote:



First order definitely isn't good enough. As long a you insist that
one can't go up in order, just forget about it all.


Tell that Meridian, and all their customers who have enjoyed  
immensely not only listening to horizontal-only 1st order  
Ambisonics, but also to 1st order horizontal-only Ambisonics  
crippled by UHJ matrix-encoding constraints.


First order is certainly fine for classical orchestral music,
and I enjoy that as well even without Meridian's help.
But that will reach a minoriy classical music lovers audience
only. And first order fails rather miserably for anything else
compared to 5.1 which is what people already have and can compare
with. It won't produce a stable front channel for movie sound,
nor has it the the required spatial definition for effects that
work outside a very small sweet spot. And what's the problem with
five or seven channels anyway ?

This has nothing to do with 'elitism'. Try selling 256-color
computer displays to today's consumers. Won't work even if they
would do fine for 99% of all practical computer applications.
It's too late for that. Technology has moved on, and people
know it.

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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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony


On 12 Apr 2012, at 23:05, Fons Adriaensen f...@linuxaudio.org wrote:

 On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 10:47:04PM +0200, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
 On 12 Apr 2012, at 22:27, Fons Adriaensen f...@linuxaudio.org wrote:
 
 First order definitely isn't good enough. As long a you insist that
 one can't go up in order, just forget about it all.
 
 Tell that Meridian, and all their customers who have enjoyed immensely not 
 only listening to horizontal-only 1st order Ambisonics, but also to 1st 
 order horizontal-only Ambisonics crippled by UHJ matrix-encoding constraints.
 
 First order is certainly fine for classical orchestral music,
 and I enjoy that as well even without Meridian's help.

It works also for all sorts of other music that wants to create swirling sound 
scapes, etc.

We're not trying to help blind people to target shoot by sound, we're 
essentially looking for artificial musical sound effects and natural sounding 
ambience.

 But that will reach a minoriy classical music lovers audience
 only. And first order fails rather miserably for anything else
 compared to 5.1 which is what people already have and can compare
 with.

Essentially nobody listens to music in surround format, particularly not in a 
mass market. Also, I rather have less precise spatial resolution than what 
might be achievable with 5.1, but have it sound natural, not the sound out of 
speakers that most 5.1 productions end up having.

Besides, G-Format would also end up being 5.1.

 It won't produce a stable front channel for movie sound,
 nor has it the the required spatial definition for effects that 
 work outside a very small sweet spot.

Movies have no reason to switch to Ambisonics. The visual dominates the ear, 
and so there's no need for natural sound, because we're absorbed by the 
movie, and the movie studios are not going to change their production workflow 
or their love affair with DTS/Dolby anytime soon.
So Ambisonics for movies is utterly irrelevant, at least until such point that 
it has proven to be a resounding success in music.

 And what's the problem with
 five or seven channels anyway ? 

Three things: cost, cost, and cost.

The cardboard speakers that ship with affordable 5.1 systems are not suitable 
for music, and anything halfway acceptable is on a good sale at least 
$250/speaker, which means with four speakers you're at or above $1k, add a 
decent four channel amp, cables, speaker stands, etc. and you're well above the 
typical consumer price level already.

This isn't about what grant money can buy in a computer lab, this is what a 
waiter, someone making $1500/month, etc. i.e. the typical iPad/AppleTV buyer 
could afford, not what a doctor or lawyer would buy if only they had a clue 
about technology.

 This has nothing to do with 'elitism'. Try selling 256-color
 computer displays to today's consumers. Won't work even if they
 would do fine for 99% of all practical computer applications.
 It's too late for that. Technology has moved on, and people
 know it.

Technology hasn't moved on. 5.1 is 4.0 plus a crappy center speaker that has a 
totally different tonal quality and never blends with the other four lousy 
speakers, plus a subwoofer to make up for the fact that the other speakers are 
lousy. Four full-range speakers in a 4.0 configuration is better than what 99% 
of people have in their homes, and cost near what they could possibly afford. 
To talk about higher channel count is totally disregarding economic realities.

Further, it's also not about Madonna or some stars who have the budget and 
access to engineers who might actually understand what they are doing. This is 
about the majority of musicians who record themselves, or who go to some local 
dude with a computer and analog mixing desk that sounds horrible but looks 
impressive to have their music produced. These people are not going to ever 
understand spherical harmonics, nth order something or another. They can 
intuitively grasp front-back, left-right and mono. They will be able to make a 
stereo CD (UHJ), and have an extra gimmick to sell: now you can listen to your 
CD in surround sound.

Nobody is talking about stable images, just as little as The Beatles stereo 
recordings were Blumlein stereo. But they can make sounds swirl around, and 
people who do location recording can get a decent ambience.

All of that is better than what is accessible to most consumers, musicians, and 
recording studios today. It is breadth that will get something like this going.

It's not the best that is winning, but the most accessible. Once limited 
Ambisonics is sufficiently adopted, then it's time to show that there's more to 
this. You're not going to get people to mix single tracks with the channel 
count that e.g. 2nd order requires unless there's already established demand 
for surround music. There are also no decent tools around, no DAWs with 
built-in support for 2nd or 3rd order Ambisonic production, and they won't be, 
because nobody is going

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread Ronald C.F. Antony

On 13 Apr 2012, at 00:53, Steven Dive stevend...@mac.com wrote:

 IMHO I can't see how FOA isn't  clearly worth promoting [...] Basically, get 
 UHJ and, while we are at it, superstereo into people's homes, then get on 
 with full 1st and higher orders.

Amen. Can't feed a baby with a steak.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-12 Thread Stefan Schreiber


Steven Dive wrote:




IMHO I can't see how FOA isn't  clearly worth promoting along with up  
to 3rd order G-format decodes for 5.1/7.1 setups for home users.  
Basically, get UHJ and, while we are at it, superstereo into people's  
homes, then get on with full 1st and higher orders.


Steve



Steve, Anthony:

In which sense is UHJ and superstereo a viable alternative to 5.1 
surround, if 5.1 is clearly better than any 2-channel system can be?


You should introduce something which exceeds the existing solutions, not 
going back to something which fits into the stereo distribution chain. 
We already had this.


I have written that you could decode a 3rd order .AMB file on a 4 or 6 
speaker home installation, for example ignoring the 2nd and 3rd order 
components. 8 speakers would be even better, but less is still possible.


(You can watch a 1080p movie on an underspecified SD television, or a 
720 line TV. The loudspeaker number above  is just the equivalent. 
Downsizing a format to a device with lower resolution is mostly not an 
issue. You also can watch a photo on a computer screen, even if the 
resolution of a current digital camera is certainly much higher than any 
computer monitor can show.)



Anthony: You should read what people (this means: me! :-) ) say, not 
what you would like to read. For example, I never said anywhere that 
music should be distributed on BD discs. (Have been here a long time 
before. This is probably just history. IMO the distribution of surround 
music via UHJ stereo tracks belongs into the same category. Listen to 
UHJ if available and if you can decode this, but don't promote this for 
the future practical distribution of surround, because 5.1 already 
exists.)


I said that Apple doesn't support BD  movies  on any  Mac OS version. 
I don't buy into the excuse that the Blu-ray DRM (AACA/BD+  support) 
would break the Mac OS architecture, which would be a longer 
discussion. But I have actually more important things to do than to 
discuss these issues here, honestly. (Historically: Apple had pretended 
they would finally support Blu-Ray, in 2005/2006. They didn't tell it 
would not be possible. The bag of hurt story was invented way later.  )


I don't have to promote Ambisonics, specifically I don't have any plans 
to replace 5.1 with FOA. What is the huge deal about? (Both formats have 
advantages and disadvantages, compared to each other. You also have to 
consider that 5.1 can be mixed or recorded in very different ways, and 
some or actually pretty convincing. For film, 5.1 is probably superior. 
You could say that FOA has been unfaily neglected which is probably right.)


If you promote G format, 99% would see and listen to this as a 5.1 
surround file. (An 99% would listen to an UHJ as a stereo file, cos 
there are really very few decoders around. In fact, 5.1 seems to be way 
more mainstream than decoded UHJ.)



Therefore, don't push for stereo-matrixed (UHJ) or pre-encoded (G 
format, 5.1) Ambisonics variants in 2012. In fact, Apple (or Microsoft, 
Google Music (?), Sony Music Unlimited  or whoever sells movies/music) 
should firstly offer 5.1 surround files.
It doesn't cost anything to offer another surround format in an online 
shop, if music/audio is available in this format. The consumer could 
chose. But if you offer something beside 5.1 surround, I believe this 
should be something better. Not something reduced. Try to find solutions 
which are viable for the next 10 or 20 years, and don't go back 20 
years. (Sorry for being slightly polemic, but I think this is a valid 
argument.)


Surround tracks are sold via the Internet, there are plenty of existing 
online shops. The problem is that you would have to sell 5.1 (or FOA...) 
tracks of well-known music, which means the hits. The Majors are 
missing this opportunity. (Plenty of recordings ae available, which 
means many thousands.)


As a musician, I am participating in plenty recordings which are done 
also in 5.1. In this sense, don't call me elitist, or whatever.

But FOA probably won't make it. The time of UHJ has been.

I am not sure that any form of surround will make it into the home, but 
I think there is still a real chance that it will happen. The iTunes 
shop is currently irrelevant for surround music, and there are more 
companies around than Apple.


Best,

Stefan Schreiber






On 12 Apr 2012, at 22:05, Fons Adriaensen wrote:


On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 10:47:04PM +0200, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:


On 12 Apr 2012, at 22:27, Fons Adriaensen f...@linuxaudio.org  wrote:


First order definitely isn't good enough. As long a you insist that
one can't go up in order, just forget about it all.



Tell that Meridian, and all their customers who have enjoyed  
immensely not only listening to horizontal-only 1st order  
Ambisonics, but also to 1st order horizontal-only Ambisonics  
crippled by UHJ matrix-encoding constraints.



First order is certainly fine for classical orchestral music,
and I

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-11 Thread Neil Waterman

We have been using ambisonics for several years now to provide immersive 
soundfields for use within the flight simulation and training environments. 
Prior to this we were using gain panning that was restrictive and highly 
coupled to each installation. The use of ambi allows us to port a model from 
one implementation to another with little modification to the underlying sound 
simulation model.

Cheers, Neil

On Apr 10, 2012, at 4:48 PM, seva wrote:

 
 i firmly believe there are existing and evolving areas for use of immersive 
 audio.
 
 movies, anyone? i'd prefer to have something other than 5, 6, 7 .1 formats 
 with various implementations (3 across front, 5 across front, 1 center, 2 
 sides, whatever) that simply gives a better immersive experience to the 
 audience.
 
 games, anyone?  as mentioned later in this thread, head-tracking systems 
 combined with immersive audio would be a rather serious elephant in the room 
 for the Very Large Money in gaming.
 
 Seva D. L. Ball
 Audio Engineering / Systems
 Soundcurrent Mastering
 AES, NARAS, ARSC, IASA, FAM
 
 
 At 11:12 -0400 4/3/12, newme...@aol.com wrote:
 Peter:
 
 So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a specialized  musical
 presentation.
 
 Correct!  This is the presentation that  comes along with perspective
 in Renaissance painting and the linearity of  printed books, etc.
 
 It is a product, if you will, of the Gutenberg Galaxy -- which, in  turn,
 started to unravel in the 19th century, yielding electric music and  ending
 the classical period in composition.
 
 This is, perhaps, why the Bell Labs experiments that yielded the 3-channel 
 stereo (which they determined was the minimum needed to actually produce
 a  solid musical image, especially for an audience) was discussed in  the
 1934 Symposium on Auditory Perspective.
 
 _http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf_
 (http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf)
 
 So, on this account, you might expect that some music that preceded the 
 imposition of this EYE-based conformity would exhibit more respect for the 
 surround, just as you would expect that some music that followed the 
 relaxing of this *environmental* constraint might also begin to explicitly 
 investigate the *spherical* nature of sound.
 
 That is, of course, exactly what seems to have happened!
 
 None of which, however, changes the fact that in the electric era -- the 
 first and only media environment which created MASS audiences -- music
 continued  to be largely an expression of the unconscious orientation for
 perspective  (i.e. linear, eye-based, frontal performances), which then 
 became a
 very  conscious part of the commercialization of performances -- in our
 own  living-rooms.
 
 It would have to wait for the further shift from *electric* to *digital* 
 media environment for all of this -- both the linearity of Gutenberg and the 
 chaos of modernity -- to begin to appear as arbitrary and merely
 historical  accidents.
 
 Now, we are ready for Ambisonics (but not as a mass-market phenomenon) . . . 
 as we all become MEDIEVAL (or, if you prefer, post-modern) once again!!
 
 Mark Stahlman
 Brooklyn NY
 
 
 In a message dated 4/3/2012 10:44:35 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
 p.len...@derby.ac.uk writes:
 
 I've  always assumed that frontal, proscenium arch -type presentations came
 out of  the logistics of clocking large numbers of musicians together -
 generally  using a visual cue in the form of a conductor (also, individual
 musicians  might feel a bit lonely if they can't hang out with their mates) -
 and this in  turn helped reify the distinction between the music makers and
 the music  listeners.
 In other musical forms (music to have your dinner by, Telemann,  lounge
 music, ambient, scallywags employed to amuse the medieval court , up  there 
 in
 the minstrels gallery, modern club music, wedding party celebration  music,
 religious music [various cultures] etc etc) 'front' would have less, if any, 
 relevance.
 So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a  specialised musical
 presentation.
 
 So, then, saying 'stereo is all you  need' is a bit like saying 'you don't
 need 4 wheel drive' - true, but in  circumscribed circumstances.
 
 Dr Peter Lennox
 School of Technology University of Derby, UK
 tel: 01332 593155
 e:  p.len...@derby.ac.uk 
 
 -Original Message-
 From:  sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]
 On Behalf  Of Dave Malham
 Sent: 03 April 2012 09:49
 To: Surround Sound discussion  group
 Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
 
 Hi  Robert,
 Umm - I was making exactly the opposite point -  invented in the
 16th century makes it, as far as music is concerned, a very  new
 concept. On the other hand,when talking about  acoustic  _concert_
 music, it's almost tautologous that they are frontally  presented,
 because the whole concept of a musical concert was invented at  the
 same time, probably

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-10 Thread seva



i firmly believe there are existing and evolving areas for use of 
immersive audio.


movies, anyone? i'd prefer to have something other than 5, 6, 7 .1 
formats with various implementations (3 across front, 5 across front, 
1 center, 2 sides, whatever) that simply gives a better immersive 
experience to the audience.


games, anyone?  as mentioned later in this thread, head-tracking 
systems combined with immersive audio would be a rather serious 
elephant in the room for the Very Large Money in gaming.


Seva D. L. Ball
Audio Engineering / Systems
Soundcurrent Mastering
AES, NARAS, ARSC, IASA, FAM


At 11:12 -0400 4/3/12, newme...@aol.com wrote:

Peter:


 So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a specialized  musical

presentation.

Correct!  This is the presentation that  comes along with perspective
in Renaissance painting and the linearity of  printed books, etc.

It is a product, if you will, of the Gutenberg Galaxy -- which, in  turn,
started to unravel in the 19th century, yielding electric music and  ending
the classical period in composition.

This is, perhaps, why the Bell Labs experiments that yielded the 3-channel 
stereo (which they determined was the minimum needed to actually produce

a  solid musical image, especially for an audience) was discussed in  the
1934 Symposium on Auditory Perspective.

_http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf_
(http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf)

So, on this account, you might expect that some music that preceded the 
imposition of this EYE-based conformity would exhibit more respect for the 
surround, just as you would expect that some music that followed the 
relaxing of this *environmental* constraint might also begin to explicitly 
investigate the *spherical* nature of sound.


That is, of course, exactly what seems to have happened!

None of which, however, changes the fact that in the electric era -- the 
first and only media environment which created MASS audiences -- music

continued  to be largely an expression of the unconscious orientation for
perspective  (i.e. linear, eye-based, frontal performances), which 
then became a

very  conscious part of the commercialization of performances -- in our
own  living-rooms.

It would have to wait for the further shift from *electric* to *digital* 
media environment for all of this -- both the linearity of Gutenberg and the 
chaos of modernity -- to begin to appear as arbitrary and merely

historical  accidents.

Now, we are ready for Ambisonics (but not as a mass-market phenomenon) . . 
. as we all become MEDIEVAL (or, if you prefer, post-modern) once again!!


Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY


In a message dated 4/3/2012 10:44:35 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
p.len...@derby.ac.uk writes:

I've  always assumed that frontal, proscenium arch -type presentations came
out of  the logistics of clocking large numbers of musicians together -
generally  using a visual cue in the form of a conductor (also, individual
musicians  might feel a bit lonely if they can't hang out with their mates) -
and this in  turn helped reify the distinction between the music makers and
the music  listeners.
In other musical forms (music to have your dinner by, Telemann,  lounge
music, ambient, scallywags employed to amuse the medieval court , up  there in
the minstrels gallery, modern club music, wedding party celebration  music,
religious music [various cultures] etc etc) 'front' would have less, if 
any, relevance.

So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a  specialised musical
presentation.

So, then, saying 'stereo is all you  need' is a bit like saying 'you don't
need 4 wheel drive' - true, but in  circumscribed circumstances.

Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology 
University of Derby, UK

tel: 01332 593155
e:  p.len...@derby.ac.uk 



-Original Message-
From:  sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]
On Behalf  Of Dave Malham
Sent: 03 April 2012 09:49
To: Surround Sound discussion  group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Hi  Robert,
Umm - I was making exactly the opposite point -  invented in the
16th century makes it, as far as music is concerned, a very  new
concept. On the other hand,when talking about  acoustic  _concert_
music, it's almost tautologous that they are frontally  presented,
because the whole concept of a musical concert was invented at  the
same time, probably as a way of making money (I haven't  researched
that, it's just a guess) - it's much more difficult to make  money from
an audience who can just walk away without embarrassing  themselves -
and if you don't believe that (the fear of) embarrassment is  not a
strong driver, just watch an inexperienced western audience at the  end
of a Gamelan concert trying to get up the courage to actually  leave
the concert _during_ the ending piece :-) . Actually, talking  about
Gamelan, that's a case in point - in the West (and  probably
increasingly in it's

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-09 Thread Newmedia

Stefan/Robert/et al:
 
 Right on! Apple clearly wants to take over the world.

Not quite.  Apple is in fact very pleased to be a *minority*  market-share 
holder -- as it is in everything except iTunes and iPads (for the  moment) 
-- just as long as it gets UNNATURAL margins from its  products.
 
As perhaps the only ex-Wall Street analyst on this list, I can tell you  
that Apple's success has been founded on two principles 1) get your  
semiconductors at below market prices (to drive up gross margins, at the  
expense 
of all the other non-fab semi-conductor buyers) and 2) keep the system  
closed (so that the minority in the market who prize this end-to-end 
engineering  
will be happy *plus* to ensure that you have no direct competitors.)
 
And, it's worked pretty well . . . however, they will inevitably run out of 
 CHEAP-chip string.
 
In particular, IBM, Motorola, Intel and Samsung (i.e. the world's largest 
 semiconductor shops) have all gotten over having Apple as a 
semiconductor  customer.  
 
Btw, Apple's shift from Power to the Intel architecture was a direct  
result of IBM and Motorola refusing to subsidize Apple anymore, whereas (for 
a  
while) Intel was willing.
 
Then (for a while) Samsung was willing . . . now Hynix and others?
 
For what it is worth (which could be a lot, if you like to gamble shorting  
AAPL), gross margins at Apple cannot remain so far outside the industry 
norm  forever and at the first sign of declines, the stock will fall and never 
again  regain its lofty valuation.
 
Or so I used to tell my hedge-fund clients . . . g
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:



There was once a slim chance of getting Apple to move on Ambisonics, as both 
some fundamental interest by some of Apple's CoreAudio group and relentless 
lobbying by an unnamed list member in an unnamed Apple product beta test group 
produced a slight opening of maybe getting 1st order B-Format adopted, when all 
the perfectionist zealots on this list more or less undermined it all by 
screaming that anything below 2nd or 3rd order is worthless, at which point 
pretty much all interest at Apple evaporated. Some people still don't get that 
I rather have imperfect 1st order Ambisonics which is perfectly adequate at 
producing realistic sounding ambiance, than wait until 50 years after my death 
to have a perfect 5th order system adopted by whoever is then a dominant player 
in audio technology.

There's a reason why there's the old phrase Shoot the engineer, start 
production...

Ronald


 

I get tired of discussions we already have had on this list, several 
times at least...   :-)


1. 3rd order .AMB format can be decoded to a 5.1 ITU/Dolby setup. 
(Results would be clearly superior than a decoding from Ambionics 1st 
order to 5.1 ITU. This is because the resolution of 3rd order .AMB fits 
better to the - relatively detailled-  front resolution of 5.1.)


2. You also can decode 3rd order .AMB to (just) 4 speakers. (Even if 3rd 
order Ambisonics is overspecified if decoded to just 4 or 6 speakers, 
I personally don't see any fundamental or even practical problems. This 
needs probably some further discussion, but at least this is something  
practically relevant  ...  Just a hint for the 
overspecification/underspecification purists: A 1st order soundfield 
recording can be reduced to plain old stereo, or say UHJ stereo. And 
Ambisonics 1st order fans usually don't complain if Ambisonics is 
presented on an underspecified loudspeaker array of just 2 speakers... )


3. Any realistic 3rd order decoder could also handle 1st order 
Ambisonics. This is important, because real-world Ambisonics recordings 
are mostly/next-to-always 1st order.


The concept of UHJ and G formats is from the 80s/90s, respectively. In 
the case of G format, height is still missing. (You can't recover height 
information from G format.)
I personally  do  support that height should be included in any future 
suround format above 5.1, especially since you can ignore height 
infomation on horizontal arrays. This is actually the way most people 
listen to the few existing Ambisonics recordings - height is just left 
out. Even so, B format is a 4-channel format, not a 3-channel reduction 
without height... Which means that you can offer more than most people 
would use.


You could also decode Ambisonics to binaural headphones with 
motion-compensation (height included), if motion-compensating headphones 
would  be introduced into the market. (I didn't write mass market, 
because markets have to grow. And currently there are headphone 
prototypes with motion-compensation, but no market, or say a very 
limited market. Probably they will use some of this stuff for virtual 
reality/ simulators/ training.)


You could also decode Ambisonics to Ambiophonics, and the 6 speaker 
variant Mark (Stahlman) has mentioned before. (Not a hybrid system, BTW.)


Coming back to former postings of this thread: Of course we don't live 
in KANSAS, and the iPhone and iPad are not really mass-market! (Think of 
different smallish ecosystems of users, which accidentally buy the same 
product. :-P )




Surround and Apple:

Apple doesn't even sell 5.1 tracks on iTunes, and there is clearly 
plenty of recorded/mixed 5.1 stuff around. Though don't blame the list 
for internal bickering/infighting when Apple is just not offering  any 
 surround sound on iTunes!

(Some other online shops offer surround sound, but remain small.)

G format is 5.1, so no way around some  simple facts. Apple doesn't 
offer any surround recordings, they never have supported Blu-Ray (being 
a BDA board member), and I could find many other examples. It appaently 
doesn't matter for the financial health of Apple if they support 
surround or not. (If it is about their customers, they frankly didn't 
care if anyone wanted to reproduce a BD disc on a Mac PC - which 
clearly has been demanded by a few.)


So, Blu-Ray is a bag of hurt for Apple, and maybe surround is just 
irrelevant. For them...


You are also not entitled to install some little program witten by 
yourself on  your   iPad. (You have to be protected against yourself, 
so to speak. But you might install it from their app-store... ;-) )



There's a reason why there's the old phrase Shoot the engineer, start 
production...



You are welcome...


Without a player like Apple jumping on it, Ambisonics is dead in the water, 
because frankly I'm rather uninterested in having to set up my listening 
environment for 20 minutes before I can play some obscure avant-garde musical 
experiment in

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


newme...@aol.com wrote:


Ronald:

 

Whiz-bang demos won't make any difference, but 
adoption by Apple's iTunes Store, or something like 
that would make a difference.
   



Very interesting!  Does iTunes currently support multi-channel audio  
(other than on purchased movies)?


As best I can tell, they do not.  Why would they in the future?

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY

 


Just read this now. (Came back from a journey.)

So and of course, the same main argument here...


Best,

Stefan
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:



The Ambisonic community keeps shooting itself in the foot, because they can't 
accept that OK is better than nothing, and that once OK is the accepted 
standard, one can then incrementally push for higher-order extensions to an 
already existing infrastructure. Instead, they want it all, and they want it 
right now, and as a result they are getting nothing ever.

Ronald
 



Eloquent, but clearly wrong.

(Apple also doesn't support any 5.1  music  on iTunes.)

Who is  they , by the way? The people who are working with HOA?!

Ciao,

Stefan
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:




The problem is: who still needs hardware? Unless it's incorporated into 
something like an Oppo DVD/BD player, which hooks up directly to a power amp, 
the hardware of choice is something like an AppleTV that gets its data stream 
from a computer server, i.e. iTunes. At least that's the scenario for the 
average techno-phile user without a huge budget. The luddites still have CD 
players, but they are going to die out just like the Vinyl and 8-Track are 
slowly sliding towards their graves.

 


-


the hardware of choice is something like an AppleTV that gets its data stream 
from a computer server, i.e. iTunes.



iTunes TV/film content will play on every TV, this is just an interface 
question.



The luddites still have CD players, but they are going to die out just like the 
Vinyl and 8-Track are slowly sliding towards their graves.



Vinyl doesn't seem to die nowadays, like it or not.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120104vinyl



CDs are as valid as iTunes downloads, in fact offering better-quality 
than iTunes (AAC) downloads, and you can rip the tracks to any format 
you want. (AAC, MP3)


CD sales have been quite stable in 2011.


Anyway:

Good night, and thanks for the  free  Apple promotion...

Stefan

P.S.:


The problem is: who still needs hardware?



...


the hardware of choice is something like an AppleTV



I am really confused, by now.   :-D


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

Again, it's FUD when people think Apple is needlessly proprietary. As 
a matter of fact, when it comes to standards Apple does more to push 
them than just about any other force in the market. Others push things 
like Flash,


 

Think again of Blu-Ray (movie) support on MacOS. Is there one? (BR 
drives are supported, only the films don't play...)


Apple is actually - according to my best knowledge - still a director 
company in the Blu Ray Disc Association.


BD licensing might be a bag of hurt or not, but there are existing 
solutions for Windows PCs. (Historically this is quite odd, as Microsoft 
had supported HD-DVD. If Microsoft can support Blu-Ray on Windows, Apple 
could on MacOS.)


I am also sure that Apple couldn't afford the high licensing fees, even 
if they probably would not pay at all...   :-D


The reason for this is - of course - that Apple chose not to support 
Blu-Ray, and to sell films (SD, HD) on the propietary iTunes store.


Apple is so clearly promoting propietary solutions that you have to be 
blind not to admit this. There are other examples. I am actually not 
complaining about, but let us keep the facts.



it's FUD when people think Apple is needlessly proprietary.


Oh yeah, they  have  to offer a closed and walled garden. Otherwise 
things would not work as PERFECT as Apple users expect...


Best,

Stefan Schreiber

P.S.: And they care since years for the best and safest working 
conditions at the Foxconn plants, and so on. (Even if evidence and 
independent reports tell otherwise. They got some pressure ecently, 
thanks to NYT and others, but the problems are actually quite old.)


But as long as loyal Apple customers buy into the stuff and every 
excuse, there is maybe not enough incentive to change policy.



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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-04 Thread Michael Chapman



 Unless of course they publish a file format for it

 Want a minimal and purposely highly (even overtly) extensible one? That
 I can design. In fact I've meant to do something like this from teenage
 up. :)

 Please do!


A group of us proposed a CAF based file format at Graz (in 2009)
http://mchapman.com/amb/reprints/AFF.pdf
It had a mixed response ;-)

It has though been taken forward and a further proposal was
made at the US Ambisonics symposium by Christian Nachbar (Graz)
and colleagues. (N3D instead of SN3D, being one major change.)

Time has brought greater agreement and stability.

As I wasn't at York, and as the Graz folks are on this List, I
won't give a reference as it would probably be out-of-date,
anyway.

So problem solved 

Michael



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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-04 Thread Aaron Heller

The 2011 paper by Nachbar, et al, ambiX - A Suggested Ambisonics
Format, specifies SN3D as the normalization scheme.  (see eqn 3 in
section 2.1, The normalization that seems most agreeable is SN3D...)

The papers are here
   http://ambisonics.iem.at/proceedings-of-the-ambisonics-symposium-2011

--
Aaron Heller (hel...@ai.sri.com)
Menlo Park, CA  US

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 1:48 AM, Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com wrote:


 Unless of course they publish a file format for it

 Want a minimal and purposely highly (even overtly) extensible one? That
 I can design. In fact I've meant to do something like this from teenage
 up. :)

 Please do!


 A group of us proposed a CAF based file format at Graz (in 2009)
 http://mchapman.com/amb/reprints/AFF.pdf
 It had a mixed response ;-)

 It has though been taken forward and a further proposal was
 made at the US Ambisonics symposium by Christian Nachbar (Graz)
 and colleagues. (N3D instead of SN3D, being one major change.)

 Time has brought greater agreement and stability.

 As I wasn't at York, and as the Graz folks are on this List, I
 won't give a reference as it would probably be out-of-date,
 anyway.

 So problem solved 

 Michael



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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-04 Thread Michael Chapman


Thanks the correction.

Yes, the move was N3D _to_ SN3D.

Three years on from the original proposal and one on from
the improvements, hopefully this is stable ( ... unless there
any seismic improvemnts at York ???).

Michael


 The 2011 paper by Nachbar, et al, ambiX - A Suggested Ambisonics
 Format, specifies SN3D as the normalization scheme.  (see eqn 3 in
 section 2.1, The normalization that seems most agreeable is SN3D...)

 The papers are here
http://ambisonics.iem.at/proceedings-of-the-ambisonics-symposium-2011

 --
 Aaron Heller (hel...@ai.sri.com)
 Menlo Park, CA  US

 On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 1:48 AM, Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com wrote:


 Unless of course they publish a file format for it

 Want a minimal and purposely highly (even overtly) extensible one?
 That
 I can design. In fact I've meant to do something like this from
 teenage
 up. :)

 Please do!


 A group of us proposed a CAF based file format at Graz (in 2009)
 http://mchapman.com/amb/reprints/AFF.pdf
 It had a mixed response ;-)

 It has though been taken forward and a further proposal was
 made at the US Ambisonics symposium by Christian Nachbar (Graz)
 and colleagues. (N3D instead of SN3D, being one major change.)

 Time has brought greater agreement and stability.

 As I wasn't at York, and as the Graz folks are on this List, I
 won't give a reference as it would probably be out-of-date,
 anyway.

 So problem solved 

 Michael



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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread John Leonard

Ten days ago, I made an archive recording of Birmingham Opera's presentation of 
Jonathan Dove's new work, Life Is A Dream at a disused factory: the orchestra 
were in a fixed position, but the performers, including a 100-strong amateur 
chorus, and the audience, moved around the space. I was very restricted in how 
I managed to make this recording and I opted for a mix of fixed and moving M/S 
set-ups, spot and ambience miking, using both a mobile Soundfield SPS200 and a 
fixed, at the orchestra position, Core-Sound TetraMic. I'm currently listening 
through the recordings in order to make a definitive archive copy and when I 
listen to the sections of the orchestral performance in surround from the 
TetraMic, the results are thrilling. Similarly, the chorus sections recorded 
with the Soundfield in the huge space of the empty warehouse listened to in 
surround, are much more involving than when I drop down to a two channel mix. 

I've recorded Dove's work before, in Peterborough, where the performers and 
audience moved from the interior of the cathedral to a shopping mall via the 
town centre and at The Hackney Empire Theatre, where there were two choirs at 
opposite sides of the top balcony, an Oud ensemble in one of the high boxes, a 
steel band and a Salvation Army band at the opposites sides of the rear of the 
theatre, a jazz ensemble in one of the stage boxes and a conventional chamber 
orchestra in the pit. This is modern, accessible material that benefits hugely 
from the space in which it's performed and, although the final edit will be in 
stereo, I will also be supplying a surround version, just for the hell of it. I 
think that there's far more spatial music out there than you might think.

Regards,

John

 
On 3 Apr 2012, at 00:58, Marc Lavallée wrote:

 
 Two weeks ago, I saw a performance of Répons by Boulez. It was a
 canadian première, 30 years after its creation. The audience surrounded
 the orchestra, and six percussion instruments surrounded the audience,
 along with 6 speakers. It was happening in a very large room (an old
 boat factory), so there was an incredible mix of close and distant
 sounds. I saw many other concerts with instruments and sounds
 surrounding the audience, with music from John Cage, Terry Riley,
 Steve Reich, and even Schubert. It may not be common, but it does
 exist, so we should expect some more surround recordings in a not so
 distant future. One of the most interesting 5.0 recordings I heard is
 the Virtual Haydn project, that recreates the acoustic experience of
 small concert halls of the 18th century. 

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Dave Malham

Hi Robert,
   Umm - I was making exactly the opposite point - invented in the
16th century makes it, as far as music is concerned, a very new
concept. On the other hand,when talking about  acoustic _concert_
music, it's almost tautologous that they are frontally presented,
because the whole concept of a musical concert was invented at the
same time, probably as a way of making money (I haven't researched
that, it's just a guess) - it's much more difficult to make money from
an audience who can just walk away without embarrassing themselves -
and if you don't believe that (the fear of) embarrassment is not a
strong driver, just watch an inexperienced western audience at the end
of a Gamelan concert trying to get up the courage to actually leave
the concert _during_ the ending piece :-) . Actually, talking about
Gamelan, that's a case in point - in the West (and probably
increasingly in it's home countries) Gamelan is usually presented
frontally (even we usually do that) but this is _not_ correct
traditionally.

Dave

On 2 April 2012 16:34, Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote:

 It may be old but it is still all but universal
 in acoustic concert music.
 I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not.
 How many symphony concerts have you been to
 recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience.
 The other way around, sure.
 But I think this is just not true, that music
 with the musicians around the audience is common.
 Not in the statistical sense of percentage of
 concerts where it happens.
 Robert

 On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote:

 Right on - as I've said before, frontal  music is largely a development of
 16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now.

 By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at
 least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not
 _used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth
 and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169).

  Dave


 On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote:

 --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


 --
 These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
 /*/
 /* Dave Malham   http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
 /* Music Research Centre                                             */
 /* Department of Music    http://music.york.ac.uk/;                 */
 /* The University of York  Phone 01904 322448                        */
 /* Heslington              Fax   01904 322450                        */
 /* York YO10 5DD                                                     */
 /* UK                   'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'   */
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-- 

These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer

Dave Malham
Music Research Centre
Department of Music
The University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK
Phone 01904 322448
Fax     01904 322450
'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

On 2 Apr 2012, at 23:48, newme...@aol.com wrote:

 No whiz-bang demos will make any difference!  Ambisonics is what  people 
 are doing on this list and that's just as it should be -- PLAYING with  
 *sound* with our friends!

Whiz-bang demos won't make any difference, but adoption by Apple's iTunes 
Store, or something like that would make a difference. The players have 
changed, it's no longer Sony and Panasonic that need to be convinced that 
Ambisonics is relevant, but Apple, Apple, and Apple, since Google, Android and 
Microsoft are just copying what Apple does anyway.

Without a player like Apple jumping on it, Ambisonics is dead in the water, 
because frankly I'm rather uninterested in having to set up my listening 
environment for 20 minutes before I can play some obscure avant-garde musical 
experiment in surround sound. I rather have 50% of stuff produced in 
UHJ-Stereo-AppleLossless or something like that, warts and all, than have a 
handful productions that allow me to jerk off over the technical perfection 
provided I can afford a 16 speaker periphonic high-end setup. 

Frankly, I have ZERO interest in 2nd and higher-order Ambisonics, because 
anything beyond a 5.1/4.0 setup is impractical in any home listening 
environment for 90%+ of consumers, particularly if the speakers and amps are 
supposed to be of a quality that provide for the homogenous sound field that 
Ambisonics asks for. An 8.1 home setup with 6 cheesy cardboard surround effects 
speakers and two decent stereo front speakers isn't going to be enjoyable, and 
four nice speakers already cost more than most people can afford.

So unless there's a magical technology breakthrough that allows speaker prices 
to come down an order of magnitude, anything that requires more than 4-6 
high-quality speakers is just not feasible, because it pushes the system cost 
into a realm where only a handful of people can afford to play, which limits 
things to 1st-order B-, G- or UHJ-Format. And a handful of people is just not 
enough of an incentive for content providers to deal with the (imagined) 
complexities of Ambisonic production techniques, which is even worse, because 
the purists always scream about 1st order productions (which would still be 
somewhat manageable in complexity, and the four B-format channels are still 
someone intuitively comprehensible. Try to explain the meaning of the higher 
order Ambisonics channels to your average production engineer or some 
self-recording, self-publishing garage band...)

However, everytime someone tries to do something to get 1st order stuff adopted 
somewhere, a cacophony of opposition comes from a variety of circles saying 
that it's not good enough, that the spatial resolution isn't accurate enough, 
etc. (Nevermind that the one thing that made me an Ambisonics convert was 
playing back ca. 1997 a UHJ encoded Nimbus recording on a Meridian setup, and 
comparing that to stereo on the same system, which pretty much proves that 1st 
order is plenty good enough to start with, and certainly a rather noticeable 
improvement over stereo)

There was once a slim chance of getting Apple to move on Ambisonics, as both 
some fundamental interest by some of Apple's CoreAudio group and relentless 
lobbying by an unnamed list member in an unnamed Apple product beta test group 
produced a slight opening of maybe getting 1st order B-Format adopted, when all 
the perfectionist zealots on this list more or less undermined it all by 
screaming that anything below 2nd or 3rd order is worthless, at which point 
pretty much all interest at Apple evaporated. Some people still don't get that 
I rather have imperfect 1st order Ambisonics which is perfectly adequate at 
producing realistic sounding ambiance, than wait until 50 years after my death 
to have a perfect 5th order system adopted by whoever is then a dominant player 
in audio technology.

There's a reason why there's the old phrase Shoot the engineer, start 
production...

Ronald


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Peter Lennox

I've always assumed that frontal, proscenium arch -type presentations came out 
of the logistics of clocking large numbers of musicians together - generally 
using a visual cue in the form of a conductor (also, individual musicians might 
feel a bit lonely if they can't hang out with their mates) - and this in turn 
helped reify the distinction between the music makers and the music listeners.
In other musical forms (music to have your dinner by, Telemann, lounge music, 
ambient, scallywags employed to amuse the medieval court , up there in the 
minstrels gallery, modern club music, wedding party celebration music, 
religious music [various cultures] etc etc) 'front' would have less, if any, 
relevance.
So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a specialised musical 
presentation.

So, then, saying 'stereo is all you need' is a bit like saying 'you don't need 
4 wheel drive' - true, but in circumscribed circumstances.

Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology 
University of Derby, UK
tel: 01332 593155
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk  


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Dave Malham
Sent: 03 April 2012 09:49
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Hi Robert,
   Umm - I was making exactly the opposite point - invented in the
16th century makes it, as far as music is concerned, a very new
concept. On the other hand,when talking about  acoustic _concert_
music, it's almost tautologous that they are frontally presented,
because the whole concept of a musical concert was invented at the
same time, probably as a way of making money (I haven't researched
that, it's just a guess) - it's much more difficult to make money from
an audience who can just walk away without embarrassing themselves -
and if you don't believe that (the fear of) embarrassment is not a
strong driver, just watch an inexperienced western audience at the end
of a Gamelan concert trying to get up the courage to actually leave
the concert _during_ the ending piece :-) . Actually, talking about
Gamelan, that's a case in point - in the West (and probably
increasingly in it's home countries) Gamelan is usually presented
frontally (even we usually do that) but this is _not_ correct
traditionally.

Dave

On 2 April 2012 16:34, Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote:

 It may be old but it is still all but universal
 in acoustic concert music.
 I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not.
 How many symphony concerts have you been to
 recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience.
 The other way around, sure.
 But I think this is just not true, that music
 with the musicians around the audience is common.
 Not in the statistical sense of percentage of
 concerts where it happens.
 Robert

 On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote:

 Right on - as I've said before, frontal  music is largely a development of
 16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now.

 By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at
 least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not
 _used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth
 and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169).

  Dave


 On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote:

 --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


 --
 These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
 /*/
 /* Dave Malham   http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
 /* Music Research Centre                                             */
 /* Department of Music    http://music.york.ac.uk/;                 */
 /* The University of York  Phone 01904 322448                        */
 /* Heslington              Fax   01904 322450                        */
 /* York YO10 5DD                                                     */
 /* UK                   'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'   */
 /*                    http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Newmedia

Ronald:
 
 Whiz-bang demos won't make any difference, but 
 adoption by Apple's iTunes Store, or something like 
 that would make a difference.
 
Very interesting!  Does iTunes currently support multi-channel audio  
(other than on purchased movies)?
 
As best I can tell, they do not.  Why would they in the future?
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


On 3 Apr 2012, at 16:52, newme...@aol.com wrote:

 Ronald:
 
 Whiz-bang demos won't make any difference, but 
 adoption by Apple's iTunes Store, or something like 
 that would make a difference.
 
 Very interesting!  Does iTunes currently support multi-channel audio  
 (other than on purchased movies)?
 
 As best I can tell, they do not.  Why would they in the future?

No, currently I don't think it's officially supported, although I'm not sure 
what happens if some standard audio file with multi-channel layout is dropped 
into iTunes and the default core-audio device happens to be a multi-channel 
audio interface.

However, there are enough of the basics in Mac OS X and related Apple products. 
e.g. Logic has B-format IR files for surround reverb, core-audio supports 
multi-channel and has a standard surround panner that uses Ambisonic theory to 
achieve its task, etc.

CAF is both an open file format, future proof and extensible, etc.

In short: there are enough of the ingredients and core audio plumbing floating 
around without 3rd party solutions in Apples OS X and application universe that 
if the right people were convinced, it would not be a massive undertaking to 
get the basics going, i.e. something like UHJ, G-Format and 1st order 
Horizontal-only-B-Format playback in iTunes/QuickTime and production in Logic. 
It's something that could easily be done within one or two of Apples typical 
product cycles, BUT they first would have been convinced that it's worth it, 
and that isn't ever going to happen as long as any time someone might enquire 
they are going to hear an earful from purists that 1st order isn't good enough 
and that anything below 3rd-order is beneath them.

After all, why would Apple do something that most people don't know, and that 
causes the natural proponents of the system to just bitch that what they do 
isn't good enough? For Apple that is just the equivalent of kicking the hornets 
nest, because they potentially confuse the average user, and then they get bad 
press on top, when anti-Apple circles start looking for material to smear Apple 
and they find plenty of people bitching about the crappy, insufficient 
implementation.

The Ambisonic community keeps shooting itself in the foot, because they can't 
accept that OK is better than nothing, and that once OK is the accepted 
standard, one can then incrementally push for higher-order extensions to an 
already existing infrastructure. Instead, they want it all, and they want it 
right now, and as a result they are getting nothing ever.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Newmedia

Peter:
 
 So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a specialized  musical 
presentation.

Correct!  This is the presentation that  comes along with perspective 
in Renaissance painting and the linearity of  printed books, etc.
 
It is a product, if you will, of the Gutenberg Galaxy -- which, in  turn, 
started to unravel in the 19th century, yielding electric music and  ending 
the classical period in composition.
 
This is, perhaps, why the Bell Labs experiments that yielded the 3-channel  
stereo (which they determined was the minimum needed to actually produce 
a  solid musical image, especially for an audience) was discussed in  the 
1934 Symposium on Auditory Perspective.
 
_http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf_ 
(http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf) 
 
So, on this account, you might expect that some music that preceded the  
imposition of this EYE-based conformity would exhibit more respect for the  
surround, just as you would expect that some music that followed the  
relaxing of this *environmental* constraint might also begin to explicitly  
investigate the *spherical* nature of sound.
 
That is, of course, exactly what seems to have happened!
 
None of which, however, changes the fact that in the electric era -- the  
first and only media environment which created MASS audiences -- music 
continued  to be largely an expression of the unconscious orientation for 
perspective  (i.e. linear, eye-based, frontal performances), which then 
became a 
very  conscious part of the commercialization of performances -- in our 
own  living-rooms.
 
It would have to wait for the further shift from *electric* to *digital*  
media environment for all of this -- both the linearity of Gutenberg and the  
chaos of modernity -- to begin to appear as arbitrary and merely 
historical  accidents.
 
Now, we are ready for Ambisonics (but not as a mass-market phenomenon) . .  
. as we all become MEDIEVAL (or, if you prefer, post-modern) once again!!
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
 
 
In a message dated 4/3/2012 10:44:35 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
p.len...@derby.ac.uk writes:

I've  always assumed that frontal, proscenium arch -type presentations came 
out of  the logistics of clocking large numbers of musicians together - 
generally  using a visual cue in the form of a conductor (also, individual 
musicians  might feel a bit lonely if they can't hang out with their mates) - 
and this in  turn helped reify the distinction between the music makers and 
the music  listeners.
In other musical forms (music to have your dinner by, Telemann,  lounge 
music, ambient, scallywags employed to amuse the medieval court , up  there in 
the minstrels gallery, modern club music, wedding party celebration  music, 
religious music [various cultures] etc etc) 'front' would have less, if  
any, relevance.
So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a  specialised musical 
presentation.

So, then, saying 'stereo is all you  need' is a bit like saying 'you don't 
need 4 wheel drive' - true, but in  circumscribed circumstances.

Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology  
University of Derby, UK
tel: 01332 593155
e:  p.len...@derby.ac.uk  


-Original Message-
From:  sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] 
On Behalf  Of Dave Malham
Sent: 03 April 2012 09:49
To: Surround Sound discussion  group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Hi  Robert,
Umm - I was making exactly the opposite point -  invented in the
16th century makes it, as far as music is concerned, a very  new
concept. On the other hand,when talking about  acoustic  _concert_
music, it's almost tautologous that they are frontally  presented,
because the whole concept of a musical concert was invented at  the
same time, probably as a way of making money (I haven't  researched
that, it's just a guess) - it's much more difficult to make  money from
an audience who can just walk away without embarrassing  themselves -
and if you don't believe that (the fear of) embarrassment is  not a
strong driver, just watch an inexperienced western audience at the  end
of a Gamelan concert trying to get up the courage to actually  leave
the concert _during_ the ending piece :-) . Actually, talking  about
Gamelan, that's a case in point - in the West (and  probably
increasingly in it's home countries) Gamelan is usually  presented
frontally (even we usually do that) but this is _not_  correct
traditionally.

Dave

On 2 April 2012  16:34, Robert Greene gre...@math.ucla.edu wrote:

 It  may be old but it is still all but universal
 in acoustic concert  music.
 I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not.
 How  many symphony concerts have you been to
 recently where the orchestra  surrounded the audience.
 The other way around, sure.
 But I  think this is just not true, that music
 with the musicians around the  audience is common.
 Not in the statistical sense of percentage  of
 concerts

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Marc Lavallée


I would fear an applelization of ambisonics. Apple could impose its
own ok format (probably as a CAF chunk specification) with patents
and lock-ins, because it's a common practice in the audio industry. Not
everything in this world needs to be mainstream (but that's just my
opinion).

Ronald C.F. Antony r...@cubiculum.com a écrit :

 
 On 3 Apr 2012, at 16:52, newme...@aol.com wrote:
 
  Ronald:
  
  Whiz-bang demos won't make any difference, but 
  adoption by Apple's iTunes Store, or something like 
  that would make a difference.
  
  Very interesting!  Does iTunes currently support multi-channel
  audio (other than on purchased movies)?
  
  As best I can tell, they do not.  Why would they in the future?
 
 No, currently I don't think it's officially supported, although I'm
 not sure what happens if some standard audio file with multi-channel
 layout is dropped into iTunes and the default core-audio device
 happens to be a multi-channel audio interface.
 
 However, there are enough of the basics in Mac OS X and related Apple
 products. e.g. Logic has B-format IR files for surround reverb,
 core-audio supports multi-channel and has a standard surround panner
 that uses Ambisonic theory to achieve its task, etc.
 
 CAF is both an open file format, future proof and extensible, etc.
 
 In short: there are enough of the ingredients and core audio plumbing
 floating around without 3rd party solutions in Apples OS X and
 application universe that if the right people were convinced, it
 would not be a massive undertaking to get the basics going, i.e.
 something like UHJ, G-Format and 1st order Horizontal-only-B-Format
 playback in iTunes/QuickTime and production in Logic. It's something
 that could easily be done within one or two of Apples typical product
 cycles, BUT they first would have been convinced that it's worth it,
 and that isn't ever going to happen as long as any time someone might
 enquire they are going to hear an earful from purists that 1st order
 isn't good enough and that anything below 3rd-order is beneath them.
 
 After all, why would Apple do something that most people don't know,
 and that causes the natural proponents of the system to just bitch
 that what they do isn't good enough? For Apple that is just the
 equivalent of kicking the hornets nest, because they potentially
 confuse the average user, and then they get bad press on top, when
 anti-Apple circles start looking for material to smear Apple and they
 find plenty of people bitching about the crappy, insufficient
 implementation.
 
 The Ambisonic community keeps shooting itself in the foot, because
 they can't accept that OK is better than nothing, and that once OK is
 the accepted standard, one can then incrementally push for
 higher-order extensions to an already existing infrastructure.
 Instead, they want it all, and they want it right now, and as a
 result they are getting nothing ever.
 
 Ronald
 ___
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 https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
 

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Robert Greene



I think this is reaching. Music started to be in one
place in front because people wanted to look at it.
I think it had sod all(in deference to the British origin
of Ambisonics0  to do with 
perspective drawing.


People have always looked at what interested them.
When they got really interested in music, music per se,
not music to accompany other activities(no one stares
at a dance band while they are dancing), they
wanted to look and so they put the music in one
spot and everyone looked at it.

All this recylced McLuhanism tends to be  a little off the mark.
It is as bad as  than evolutionary biology.
It is too easy to make this stuff up but 
there is no evidence that anything that is presented is true.


The ancient Greeks all looked one way at their theater, sitting
in a semicircle and looking at the stage. It is a
natural thing to do with a performance where the performance
is the center of attention and where there is a natural direction for the
performers to face(the Roman  gladiators performed in the round so to 
speak  because they did not always face the same way--the event itself had

no preferred direction).  But the ancient Greeks had no interest
in and damned little knowledge of perspective drawing(though the Romans 
did know about it-- the idea that it was invented in the Renaissance is 
wrong. Rediscovered, yes, invented for the first time, no).


Robert



On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote:


Peter:


So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a specialized  musical

presentation.

Correct!  This is the presentation that  comes along with perspective
in Renaissance painting and the linearity of  printed books, etc.

It is a product, if you will, of the Gutenberg Galaxy -- which, in  turn,
started to unravel in the 19th century, yielding electric music and  ending
the classical period in composition.

This is, perhaps, why the Bell Labs experiments that yielded the 3-channel
stereo (which they determined was the minimum needed to actually produce
a  solid musical image, especially for an audience) was discussed in  the
1934 Symposium on Auditory Perspective.

_http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf_
(http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf)

So, on this account, you might expect that some music that preceded the
imposition of this EYE-based conformity would exhibit more respect for the
surround, just as you would expect that some music that followed the
relaxing of this *environmental* constraint might also begin to explicitly
investigate the *spherical* nature of sound.

That is, of course, exactly what seems to have happened!

None of which, however, changes the fact that in the electric era -- the
first and only media environment which created MASS audiences -- music
continued  to be largely an expression of the unconscious orientation for
perspective  (i.e. linear, eye-based, frontal performances), which then 
became a
very  conscious part of the commercialization of performances -- in our
own  living-rooms.

It would have to wait for the further shift from *electric* to *digital*
media environment for all of this -- both the linearity of Gutenberg and the
chaos of modernity -- to begin to appear as arbitrary and merely
historical  accidents.

Now, we are ready for Ambisonics (but not as a mass-market phenomenon) . .
. as we all become MEDIEVAL (or, if you prefer, post-modern) once again!!

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY


In a message dated 4/3/2012 10:44:35 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
p.len...@derby.ac.uk writes:

I've  always assumed that frontal, proscenium arch -type presentations came
out of  the logistics of clocking large numbers of musicians together -
generally  using a visual cue in the form of a conductor (also, individual
musicians  might feel a bit lonely if they can't hang out with their mates) -
and this in  turn helped reify the distinction between the music makers and
the music  listeners.
In other musical forms (music to have your dinner by, Telemann,  lounge
music, ambient, scallywags employed to amuse the medieval court , up  there in
the minstrels gallery, modern club music, wedding party celebration  music,
religious music [various cultures] etc etc) 'front' would have less, if
any, relevance.
So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a  specialised musical
presentation.

So, then, saying 'stereo is all you  need' is a bit like saying 'you don't
need 4 wheel drive' - true, but in  circumscribed circumstances.

Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology
University of Derby, UK
tel: 01332 593155
e:  p.len...@derby.ac.uk


-Original Message-
From:  sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]
On Behalf  Of Dave Malham
Sent: 03 April 2012 09:49
To: Surround Sound discussion  group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Hi  Robert,
Umm - I was making exactly the opposite point -  invented in the
16th century makes it, as far as music is concerned, a very  new
concept

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Robert Greene



I agree. My appeal for material to listen to
was not intended as a call to get Apple to take
over. The blood curdles.
Robert

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, Marc Lavall?e wrote:



I would fear an applelization of ambisonics. Apple could impose its
own ok format (probably as a CAF chunk specification) with patents
and lock-ins, because it's a common practice in the audio industry. Not
everything in this world needs to be mainstream (but that's just my
opinion).

Ronald C.F. Antony r...@cubiculum.com a ?crit :



On 3 Apr 2012, at 16:52, newme...@aol.com wrote:

 Ronald:
 
 Whiz-bang demos won't make any difference, but 
 adoption by Apple's iTunes Store, or something like 
 that would make a difference.
 
 Very interesting!  Does iTunes currently support multi-channel

 audio (other than on purchased movies)?
 
 As best I can tell, they do not.  Why would they in the future?


No, currently I don't think it's officially supported, although I'm
not sure what happens if some standard audio file with multi-channel
layout is dropped into iTunes and the default core-audio device
happens to be a multi-channel audio interface.

However, there are enough of the basics in Mac OS X and related Apple
products. e.g. Logic has B-format IR files for surround reverb,
core-audio supports multi-channel and has a standard surround panner
that uses Ambisonic theory to achieve its task, etc.

CAF is both an open file format, future proof and extensible, etc.

In short: there are enough of the ingredients and core audio plumbing
floating around without 3rd party solutions in Apples OS X and
application universe that if the right people were convinced, it
would not be a massive undertaking to get the basics going, i.e.
something like UHJ, G-Format and 1st order Horizontal-only-B-Format
playback in iTunes/QuickTime and production in Logic. It's something
that could easily be done within one or two of Apples typical product
cycles, BUT they first would have been convinced that it's worth it,
and that isn't ever going to happen as long as any time someone might
enquire they are going to hear an earful from purists that 1st order
isn't good enough and that anything below 3rd-order is beneath them.

After all, why would Apple do something that most people don't know,
and that causes the natural proponents of the system to just bitch
that what they do isn't good enough? For Apple that is just the
equivalent of kicking the hornets nest, because they potentially
confuse the average user, and then they get bad press on top, when
anti-Apple circles start looking for material to smear Apple and they
find plenty of people bitching about the crappy, insufficient
implementation.

The Ambisonic community keeps shooting itself in the foot, because
they can't accept that OK is better than nothing, and that once OK is
the accepted standard, one can then incrementally push for
higher-order extensions to an already existing infrastructure.
Instead, they want it all, and they want it right now, and as a
result they are getting nothing ever.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

On 3 Apr 2012, at 18:03, Marc Lavallée m...@hacklava.net wrote:

 I would fear an applelization of ambisonics. Apple could impose its
 own ok format (probably as a CAF chunk specification) with patents
 and lock-ins, because it's a common practice in the audio industry. Not
 everything in this world needs to be mainstream (but that's just my
 opinion).

I think that's baseless FUD.

Apple has no history of pushing proprietary file formats, except for DRM.
So of course, some multi-channel Ambisonic music for sale in the iTunes Store 
would likely be in some sort of m4a container with some proprietary purchase 
information chunk, but what do you expect?

On the other hand, DRM free formats Apple has a long history of publishing and 
making available.
Apple focuses on where its PRODUCTS have a competitive advantage, and for THOSE 
THINGS patents the shit out of everything.

Underlying mainstream technologies, however, anything from HTML5, networking, 
the CoreOS, etc. are all based on open standards, published, and often even 
open source.
I see no reason why that would be different with Ambisonic audio.

Besides, I really don't care. Right now, the price of admission for a 
non-tinker setup is north of $40k for a Meridian setup. Comparatively speaking, 
I don't care if I'm forced to buy an AppleTV for $99 or an iPad or MacMini 
for $500 as price of admission.

There are plenty of patents already in the Ambisonic field, a few more won't 
hurt, and if a giant like Apple were to enter this market, chances are, they 
would be able (due to the volume of licensing), to coax the rest of the patent 
holders to throw all the patents into a pool, like was done for H.264, and 
license them under FRAND terms as standard essential patents. Everyone would 
win.

Ronald

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Rev Tony Newnham

Hi

What about Apple lossless compression, Quicktime - and so on?

Tony

 -Original Message-
 From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]
On
 Behalf Of Ronald C.F. Antony
 Sent: 03 April 2012 20:06
 To: Surround Sound discussion group
 Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
 
 
 Apple has no history of pushing proprietary file formats, except for DRM.


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Well, we don't need to get hyper-paranoid about it. Apple have defined 
channel IDs for WXYZ, which goes no further than make it possible to 
create a 1st-order CAF file. CAF is not closed, the spec is fully open 
and documented. It is supported in libsndfile (along with AMB), among 
other things. I might even add it to the CDP m/c toolkit, if anyone is 
still actually using it. There is no indication they have any  interest 
in providing an in-house codec for B-Format - which would nevertheless 
be a strong way to establish it in the mainstream'.


Those who want Ambisonics to become more widely established (aka 
mainstream) will need to talk to those who want it to remain a niche 
process for the cognoscenti. To do the former will by definition require 
some company or other to support it and present some de-facto standard 
implementation. If it is pitched on the basis that most of the speakers 
will just present subtle degree of ambience, which many listeners might 
not notice at all, any more than they do in the concert hall or rock 
venue, I suspect its commercial appeal will be negligible.


I suspect that if Dolby et al, rather than define a single 5.1 surround 
format, had proposed umpteen options, arbitrary speaker positions, 
multiple user options for encoding and decoding, etc, the format would 
very likely not have been taken up at all. Sometimes choice is a good 
thing, but sometimes it is not. Every decision an implementer has to 
take, every option they have either to adopt or disregard, will reduce 
their enthusiasm for the thing by 50%, progressively. 5.1 is a shoo-in 
as there is just the one thing to implement, which everyone will use. 
Even 7.1 is a problem as there are a whopping two alternative layouts 
around.


B-format has so many options and permutations available that the 
commercial enthusiasm factor will be down to 0.1% or less. So there is 
absolutely no danger at all of Apple locking in B-Format as it is all 
but un-lockable.  That jelly+tree thing again.


What you might get, on the other hand, is a hardware-based turnkey 
system aimed at a very specific market, such as IOSONO or Immsound, 
where they tell you only the absolute minimum information required to 
run the system, and it is probably closed beyond the possibility of 
opening.


Unless of course they publish a file format for it

Richard Dobson


On 03/04/2012 19:14, Robert Greene wrote:


I agree. My appeal for material to listen to
was not intended as a call to get Apple to take
over. The blood curdles.
Robert

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, Marc Lavall?e wrote:



I would fear an applelization of ambisonics. Apple could impose its
own ok format (probably as a CAF chunk specification) with patents
and lock-ins, because it's a common practice in the audio industry. Not
everything in this world needs to be mainstream (but that's just my
opinion).


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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


The Apple lossless codec was made open-source last year.

Richard Dobson


On 03/04/2012 20:26, Rev Tony Newnham wrote:

Hi

What about Apple lossless compression, Quicktime - and so on?

Tony


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]

On

Behalf Of Ronald C.F. Antony
Sent: 03 April 2012 20:06
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


Apple has no history of pushing proprietary file formats, except for DRM.



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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


On 3 Apr 2012, at 21:26, Rev Tony Newnham revtonynewn...@blueyonder.co.uk 
wrote:

 What about Apple lossless compression, Quicktime - and so on?
 
 Apple has no history of pushing proprietary file formats, except for DRM.

Apple Lossless is fully published: 

http://alac.macosforge.org/

It's reason to exist is that Apple made an engineering choice: that less 
compute cycles during playback (i.e. battery life on portable devices) is more 
important than fast compression (which is done only once) or the ultimate in 
compression ratio (storage gets cheaper, but devices and batteries shrink, so 
battery life is always going to be a challenge).

Again, it's FUD when people think Apple is needlessly proprietary. As a matter 
of fact, when it comes to standards Apple does more to push them than just 
about any other force in the market. Others push things like Flash, 


 Quicktime

Quicktime was way ahead of its time and actually is the foundation of MPEG4, 
which has a container format directly based on Quicktime. With the arrival of 
MP4 Apple pretty much only uses that format, and retains the older versions 
only for backwards compatibility. All the stuff you find in the iTunes store 
are now MP4 based, i.e. m4v and m4a, whereby only the DRM is proprietary at the 
request of the content providers. The container format itself is open and 
anyone can create and read m4v/m4a files as long as they don't try to use the 
FairPlay DRM, which is kind of obvious, because if everyone could decode the 
DRM, there wouldn't be a need for DRM in the first place.

 and so on?

Can't answer that part of the question, because it's not specified in any 
meaningful way.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

On 3 Apr 2012, at 22:15, Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

 The Apple lossless codec was made open-source last year.


Some people might as: why was it not published earlier?

To that I'd answer:

- legal issues: a company like Apple has huge potential legal liabilities. 
Before they release something like that into the wild, they make sure there are 
no relevant patents or other legal issues that could result in massive 
liabilities for publishing the code

- engineering issues: Apple will not publish code they don't deem sufficiently 
mature and well documented. Sometimes release cycles mandate less than perfect 
code to get things out the door. You're just not going to publish lousy, quick 
 dirty code. You clean it up, document it, and when it's stable and reasonably 
bug free, that's the point when you can publish it.

- demand: putting something out there requires a minimum amount of effort, 
support and infrastructure. There's no point in publishing code and incurring 
all that overhead if there's no demand.

Only if there are enough requests for something to be public, there are no 
legal obstacles, the code is mature enough, and it's not considered a 
proprietary key competitive advantage over other platforms, things can and will 
be published.

Anyway, we're not here to discuss Apple. I only mentioned Apple because in the 
past there was once a small chance that they might have picked it up, but it 
was largely ruined by the purists demands which sent the people from Apple who 
were lurking on this list to assess the potential running away. Not likely that 
they'll come back anytime soon...

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread Sampo Syreeni


On 2012-04-03, Richard Dobson wrote:

Well, we don't need to get hyper-paranoid about it. Apple have defined 
channel IDs for WXYZ, which goes no further than make it possible to 
create a 1st-order CAF file.


Agreed. And whatever ambisonic related patents there are for first 
order, they will have run out by now.



CAF is not closed, the spec is fully open and documented.


On the other hand, Apple hasn't placed any of its coding related 
software patents into the open domain, here, and CAF is rather new. Most 
of the technology could be challenged because it's a derivative of EA 
IFF and then Microsoft RIFF (WAV) derived (even EBU's 64-bit WAV 
derivative is part of the open, prior art).


But at the same time, Apple put in some streaming related indexing into 
CAF which is new and not as easily contested. As a pirate and someone 
who criticises those kinds of patents, I don't think they should have 
been granted. But at the same tiem, I know they have *been* granted, and 
I know they are likely to stick even if challenged. (The relevant parts 
are the ones which hint a real time media server about how to deliver 
RTP-streams. If you filter them out, you're probably safe until Apple 
decides to sue you on the trivialities and proven art which should have 
been safe already.)



It is supported in libsndfile (along with AMB), among other things.


I haven't been following Eric's work as closely as I should have been. 
Of the two lists I'm on, he's mostly spoken on musicdsp, and not here.


Eric, could you tell us a little bit about the patent status of the CAF 
implementation within libsndfile? And while we're at it, what would be 
tha chance of getting some newer, purely open source format into the 
library, if coded by an outside agency? Just in case?


There is no indication they have any interest in providing an in-house 
codec for B-Format - which would nevertheless be a strong way to 
establish it in the mainstream'.


As usual, I can't be relied upon for anything. But I've narrowed down a 
certain spherical harmonics toolset as something which could be utilized 
for further ambisonic work, without worrying about the order, 
library-wise. It comes with a numerical stability proof right upto order 
2800, which is to say quite enough. Unfortunately it's written in 
Fortran, but then it compiles with GCC, using portable libraries like 
FFTW, LAPACK and BLAS, which we'd need in any case.


If I ever get around to finishing the Motherlode, I'm thinking SHTools ( 
http://shtools.ipgp.fr/ ) and some example code against it would be a 
terrific addition in the practical, computational front. I mean, 
obviously having all of the knowledge isn't enough to spread ambisonic 
around. We do need open API's, libraries, idiot-libraries and all that.


If you want people to adopt it, you must first make it idiot-proof.

Those who want Ambisonics to become more widely established (aka 
mainstream) will need to talk to those who want it to remain a niche 
process for the cognoscenti.


The latter part is zilch. None of us who have learnt what the technology 
is about wants it to remain on the sidelines. Sure, it's nice to talk 
about it within a little circuit, but none of us, and I repeat *none*, 
want to have to cobble up ad hoc circuits to listen to the sound, none 
of us have ever purposefully hindered its mainstream adoption, and then 
*all* of us really just wonder, why-didn't-it-or-how-to-make-it catch 
fire for real.


No kidding. Ask anybody on-list. While some patent hassles do remain, 
those have *never* been about overt exploitation of the basic 
technology. They, too, even as I hate the thing, have been about making 
a living while developing and promoting the system further.


(Mind you, in my time on the list, I've never *ever* met as many helpful 
and altruistic folks as here. Even with the development of the first 
stages of the Motherlode. A number of folks have gone to the length of 
scanning countless boxes of carefully preserved physical documents. That 
sort of sustained effort doesn't come from profit-mindedness, but from 
pure love of the elegance of the sound architecture.)


To do the former will by definition require some company or other to 
support it and present some de-facto standard implementation.


Today, it might or it might not require that. Nowadays there is the open 
source circuit as well, you know. It isn't only about a limited number 
of companies or bureaucratically shelved out government subsidies -- 
like the National Research and Development Council quango which already 
burnt the tech once. Now we have other options besides.


If it is pitched on the basis that most of the speakers will just 
present subtle degree of ambience, which many listeners might not 
notice at all, any more than they do in the concert hall or rock 
venue, I suspect its commercial appeal will be negligible.


Have you ever heard what pantophonic ambisonic, decoded from two 
channels to four

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

On 04/04/2012 00:13, Sampo Syreeni wrote:

On 2012-04-03, Richard Dobson wrote:

Well, we don't need to get hyper-paranoid about it. Apple have defined
channel IDs for WXYZ, which goes no further than make it possible to
create a 1st-order CAF file.

Agreed. And whatever ambisonic related patents there are for first
order, they will have run out by now.

CAF is not closed, the spec is fully open and documented.

On the other hand, Apple hasn't placed any of its coding related
software patents into the open domain, here, and CAF is rather new. Most
of the technology could be challenged because it's a derivative of EA
IFF and then Microsoft RIFF (WAV) derived (even EBU's 64-bit WAV
derivative is part of the open, prior art).

?? what patents? You are tilting at windmills. CAF is a file format
(more precisely a container format), a standard to be followed, not a
device (much less an algorithm) that can be patented. Did you think
WAVE was somehow patented? Or XML for that matter? OK, if you put
something such as an mp3 stream inside a file, then technically you need
a licence to encode/decode it; but there can be no patent attached to a
file format per se.

See here for all you need to know about CAF (including how to implement
it on other platforms). And note it is extensible in just the same way
WAVEX is:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MusicAudio/Reference/CAFSpec/CAF_intro/CAF_intro.html

You can download it as a pdf. You will find no reference to a patent
anywhere.

Richard Dobson
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-03 Thread David Pickett


At 08:49 03/04/2012, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:

Frankly, I have ZERO interest in 2nd and higher-order Ambisonics,
because anything beyond a 5.1/4.0 setup is impractical in any home
listening environment for 90%+ of consumers, particularly if the
speakers and amps are supposed to be of a quality that provide for the
homogenous sound field that Ambisonics asks for. An 8.1 home setup
with 6 cheesy cardboard surround effects speakers and two decent
stereo front speakers isn't going to be enjoyable, and four nice
speakers already cost more than most people can afford.

I have to agree with this.  I have five smallish but decent B  W 
speakers (4 off DM603-S3 and the equivalent center unit) and that 
cost $2,500, which seems to me to be enough.  Add the cost of a 
decent multichannel power amplifier and DVD/SACD player and that's 
another $1,500.  Stitching it all together I use an RME FF800, which 
is admittedly slight overkill, but it allows me to play wav files 
from a laptop in surround.  Total investment for what I regard as a 
fairly modest home system is over $6,000.  Not peanuts, even today!


David

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


On 04/04/2012 00:13, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
..


So why *not* do it, since it's really, really good even on the minimum
four speakers?



Good question. The answer is always given that first order is not good 
enough. The perfect really is the enemy of the good, or the better. You 
could call it order creep.


..



Unless of course they publish a file format for it


Want a minimal and purposely highly (even overtly) extensible one? That
I can design. In fact I've meant to do something like this from teenage
up. :)


Please do!

My one (ho ho) mistake with AMB (published 2000) was that is it not 
extensible (I asked on this list, repeatedly, for what people needed, no 
response at all); only supports up to third-order. I naively thought 
that would be enough. I kept it a bit too simple by not adding a version 
field.  And of course for HOA with 24/96 etc it needs a 64bit file 
format (such as CAF) anyway. Somewhere, people have been (apparently) 
designing the ultimate handle-everything file format (maybe even using 
CAF), but as far as I am aware it has not been finalised and published 
as a formal spec. There was talk of using FLAC, ogg, etc. Everyone 
argued incessantly about channel naming (people are fed up with WXYZUV 
etc), ordering, normalization regimes (e.g. getting rid of the 
traditional 3db scaling on W), embedding decoding coefficients (or was 
it encoding?)  inside the header, all manner of stuff. So I have to wish 
you good luck...


Richard Dobson

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


On 04/04/2012 00:54, Marc Lavallée wrote:


The CAF format is not patented, but there are patented file formats
like GIF, ASF or PDF.



Ah yes, I suppose those are the exceptions that prove the rule.
The general issue arises when a file format pretends to be a container 
format but in fact specifically enshrines patented DRM, compression or 
other encryption algorithms (e.g GIF because of LZW compression, loads 
of such things in the monster that was/is ASF). PDF (having moved 
through a rather large number of versions) is now effectively free and 
open (now an ISO standard), available on Linux etc.


Richard Dobson

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


On 4 Apr 2012, at 01:13, Sampo Syreeni de...@iki.fi wrote:

 Eric, could you tell us a little bit about the patent status of the CAF 
 implementation within libsndfile? And while we're at it, what would be tha 
 chance of getting some newer, purely open source format into the library, if 
 coded by an outside agency? Just in case?

CAF is purely open source, it's 64-bit, it's extensible, it's taggable, and it 
has provisions such that if your CAF-writing program (e.g. DAW) crashes, you 
still have a valid/recoverable file until the point in time when the program 
crashes (which is not the case with most other file formats).

So why create more file formats, we have already too many. If not CAF, then use 
an MP4 container format, just not yet another format, we've got plenty crappy 
ones already. Rather use something that has already existing infrastructure.

 If it is pitched on the basis that most of the speakers will just present 
 subtle degree of ambience, which many listeners might not notice at all, any 
 more than they do in the concert hall or rock venue, I suspect its 
 commercial appeal will be negligible.
 
 Have you ever heard what pantophonic ambisonic, decoded from two channels to 
 four speakers, can do? Eero Aro was once kind enough to show me that, and it 
 was downright eerie. Even as the very, very limited BHJ version. The setup 
 was nowhere near perfect, the playback came from analog tape, and so on... 
 Yet stuff seemed to come from the sides and behind me. It stayed there as 
 well, when I turned my head.

Exactly my point, that's why I'm pissed when the n-th order snobism kills 
everything from UHJ to G-Format to planar-only B-format.
I wished anything beyond that would, for at leas the next decade be clearly 
marked academic research only, and stay out of the way when it comes to 
practical applications (except when used as an internal intermediate format 
within processing modules).

There's a good chance that within the next year or two, Amazon and Apple will 
start selling lossless encoded audio. In Stereo. That means UHJ will be an 
option. So there. UHJ is all we need, it's good enough for a start. Once people 
know UHJ, then you can tell them that using a third channel to get to 
horizontal-only B-format it gets even better. Once that's established in the 
mainstream you can start talking about Z-axis and higher orders. Not before. 
Step-by-step.

All commercially relevant music is sold essentially stereo only. That means the 
only thing that's relevant for the near and mid-term is UJH, with binaural and 
5.1 (4.0) decoding. Plus maybe 5.1 G-Format for music videos on DVD or surround 
capable video downloads. Period.

 Of course it wouldn't have. The difference is that now every piece of real 
 audio hardware has a signal processor inside it. Now, every piece of hardware 
 *and* software can easily, effortlessly and cheaply adapt to the ambisonic 
 viewpoint. First order, it's no more than 20-30 lines of code.
 
 So why *not* do it, since it's really, really good even on the minimum four 
 speakers?
 
 We can do both of those better than the folks who do them now, discretely. I 
 can promise you that even at first order. No kidding either. :)
 
 Why don't the commercial manufacturers do what the early ambisonic decoder 
 makers did, and limit the choices to just two: aspect ratio of the 
 (rectangular) rig, and its mean diameter? I mean, it works spectacularly well 
 regardless of the number of speakers, it's intuitive, and it can be easily 
 generalized to non-ambisonic modes of playback as well.
 
 This ain't rocket surgery, you know.

That's the realistic attitude I'm missing for the most part around here

 So there is absolutely no danger at all of Apple locking in B-Format as it 
 is all but un-lockable.
 
 Not much, but there is some: if theirs is the only widely spread format which 
 carries B-format, and its ancillary online features are held behind a patent 
 wall, then de facto B-format's only viable distribution channel could be 
 owned by Apple. That'd be a real shame.

Not really. Compare to what we have now. Imagine a hypothetical Apple patent 
wall that gets Ambisonic B-Format limited to the iTunes music store. That's 
hundreds of millions of users!
And what do we have now? A few thousands of enthusiasts and academics.
I eat the patent pill to get the tech spread and the content creators on board. 
The patents expire in less time than has already been wasted and resulted in 
Ambisonics going nowhere.

 Thus, where is our open sourced hardware for ambisonic? We used to have 
 something like that in the analogue age. Where is the counterpart of that for 
 the DSP age? :)


The problem is: who still needs hardware? Unless it's incorporated into 
something like an Oppo DVD/BD player, which hooks up directly to a power amp, 
the hardware of choice is something like an AppleTV that gets its data stream 
from a computer server, i.e. iTunes. At least that's the

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-02 Thread Dave Malham

Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of 16th century Western
civilisation and is not universal, even now.

By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at least some evidence that
separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not _used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati
of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169).

Dave

On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote:

--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

--
These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
/*/
/* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
/* Music Research Centre */
/* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */
/* The University of York Phone 01904 322448*/
/* Heslington Fax 01904 322450*/
/* York YO10 5DD */
/* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */
/*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */
/*/

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

It may be old but it is still all but universal
in acoustic concert music.
I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not.
How many symphony concerts have you been to
recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience.
The other way around, sure.
But I think this is just not true, that music
with the musicians around the audience is common.
Not in the statistical sense of percentage of
concerts where it happens.
Robert

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote:

Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of
16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now.

By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at least
some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not _used at St
Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality in
Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169).

Dave

On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote:

--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

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-02 Thread Josh Parmenter

The orchestra may not be around the audience, but the ambience around the
audience counts for quite a bit. If we heard a flat, frontal only image in
concert, I would guess that even people without any surround sound exposure
would find this acceptable. Just because a body isn't behind you, it doesn't
mean there isn't sound coming from behind you.
Best,
Josh

On Apr 2, 2012, at 8:34 AM, Robert Greene wrote:

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote:

Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of
16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now.

By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at
least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not
_used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth
and Reality in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169).

Dave

On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote:
--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

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**
/* Joshua D. Parmenter
http://www.realizedsound.net/josh/

“Every composer – at all times and in all cases – gives his own interpretation
of how modern society is structured: whether actively or passively, consciously
or unconsciously, he makes choices in this regard. He may be conservative or he
may subject himself to continual renewal; or he may strive for a revolutionary,
historical or social palingenesis. - Luigi Nono
*/

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

THis is of course exactly what I said! That surround is good
for ambience. That was my whole point in fact--that
if ambience is what you want and of course for concert
music it is what you want, then Ambisonics with its
emphasis on homogeneity is going to a lot of trouble
for something that can be done more simply.
I am pretty sure everyone understands that an anechoic
orchestra sounds odd indeed!
The question is how to get ambience effectively in practical
terms.

Robert

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Josh Parmenter wrote:

On Apr 2, 2012, at 8:34 AM, Robert Greene wrote:

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote:

Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development of 16th
century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now.

By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at least some
evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not _used at St Mark's (see
Bryant, D. The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality in Early Music
History, Cambridge 1981, p169).

Dave

On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote:

--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

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**
/* Joshua D. Parmenter
http://www.realizedsound.net/josh/

?Every composer ? at all times and in all cases ? gives his own interpretation of
how modern society is structured: whether actively or passively, consciously or
unconsciously, he makes choices in this regard. He may be conservative or he may
subject himself to continual renewal; or he may strive for a revolutionary,
historical or social palingenesis. - Luigi Nono
*/

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-02 Thread Richard Dobson


On 02/04/2012 16:34, Robert Greene wrote:


It may be old but it is still all but universal
in acoustic concert music.


Maybe; but acoustic concert music is not the universe. But I can well 
see that the prevailing assumption on this list is that Ambisonics is 
only relevant to the reproduction of traditional music formats and 
idioms (yawn). Implication - composers trying to compose new sounds 
which do surround the audience should look elsewhere - or perhaps not 
bother at all? The spectacle of seeing people on this list for ever 
trying to promote this new system in terms of existing music, when 
stereo is actually good enough for that material already, is more than a 
little disconcerting.


If it of any interest whatsoever to this list: last year Trevor Wishart 
completed a new 8-channel surround work  Encounters in the Republic of 
Heaven. Reviews to date collectively suggest this work is very likely 
(a) a masterpiece and (b) universally accessible, e.g.:


http://www.thebubble.org.uk/music/encounters-during-the-republic-of-heaven

Needless to say he wrote a number of new software tools for CDP to 
manage his audio routing. Now, I ~could~ quietly suggest that he might 
consider a mix for 5.1 delivery using B-Format (currently all that is 
available to buy is a stereo mixdown), but if everyone sticks rigidly to 
the notion that music only exists in front, I see no point in trying.


So, what ~is~ the point of this list, exactly?

Richard Dobson

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music



Part of the point must surely be to reach the public
eventually?  Or is that somehow sort of declasse?
Robert

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Richard Dobson wrote:


On 02/04/2012 16:34, Robert Greene wrote:


It may be old but it is still all but universal
in acoustic concert music.


Maybe; but acoustic concert music is not the universe. But I can well see 
that the prevailing assumption on this list is that Ambisonics is only 
relevant to the reproduction of traditional music formats and idioms (yawn). 
Implication - composers trying to compose new sounds which do surround the 
audience should look elsewhere - or perhaps not bother at all? The spectacle 
of seeing people on this list for ever trying to promote this new system in 
terms of existing music, when stereo is actually good enough for that 
material already, is more than a little disconcerting.


If it of any interest whatsoever to this list: last year Trevor Wishart 
completed a new 8-channel surround work  Encounters in the Republic of 
Heaven. Reviews to date collectively suggest this work is very likely (a) a 
masterpiece and (b) universally accessible, e.g.:


http://www.thebubble.org.uk/music/encounters-during-the-republic-of-heaven

Needless to say he wrote a number of new software tools for CDP to manage his 
audio routing. Now, I ~could~ quietly suggest that he might consider a mix 
for 5.1 delivery using B-Format (currently all that is available to buy is a 
stereo mixdown), but if everyone sticks rigidly to the notion that music only 
exists in front, I see no point in trying.


So, what ~is~ the point of this list, exactly?

Richard Dobson

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music



Incidentally, I may come across as interested
only in classical music(true) but popular
music is the same way. Anyone watch the Country Music
awards show(you cannot get more grass roots popular than that).
See a lot of country music singers doing antiphonal calling
from all over the auditorium? Or did you see a bunch of
people on stage in front? I did not watch myself,
but if there were a lot of the former I would be amazed.

Spatial music has a place in the world, just as does
12 tone row music and aleatoric music and a lot of other
things that came and went(12 tone did pretty well for itself
for a while, but times change). But most music is still
in front. And it is likely to stay there.

Whatever one thinks of how things ought to be, if a
system is ever going to enter the mainstream , it
needs to be offering something that lots of people want.
Stereo took off because it sounded enough better
that people did not mind the doubling up of everything.

Personally I think that some sort of surround is worthwhile,
because one likes feeling immersed, if only in ambience.
Ambisonics is probably the best way to do this. Or maybe
not. But my point is that the general public is not given
a chance to find out!

And offbeat recordings of peculiar music that not very
many people will ever hear is not how one is going to reach the
public.

Wny don't Ambisonics people do show demos?

Robert

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-02 Thread Newmedia

Richard:

So, what ~is~ the point of this list, exactly?

To discuss the opportunity to PLAY with *sound* with our friends in a
DIGITAL world!

Mass-markets (i.e. programming large numbers of people who you will
never know) come from a different era -- the electric media era *before*
computers came to dominate our environment.

The LIST only exists because of *computers* and so does current Ambisonics
practice. We are *digital* now and no longer *analog/electrical* , , ,

We are not in KANSAS anymore (for those not familiar with Americanisms,
this means that we live in a completely different world now from the 1920s or
1950s)!

We are so poorly equipped to understand these sorts of changes in our
environment and the impact that they have on us, that some people actually
believe that Facebook has an audience of 800 million people.

It doesn't. I has many, many thousands of SMALL groups (typically of
dozens to around a hundred people each), which overlap and extend in a myriad
of ways.

There is no MASS audience on Facebook -- which is why it will ultimately
fail as an advertising-driven investment for many who make the mistake of
not just speculating on its rise-and-fall.

Expecting that Ambisonics would participate in a MASS *media* phenomenon
when the world is aggressively moving *away* from ANY activities of this sort
is to fundamentally misunderstand the times in which we live.

The failure isn't in the Ambisonics people or in the technology --
what is happening is entirely appropriate for our times.

Small *is* BEAUTIFUL . . . so we might as well admit it and enjoy
ourselves! g

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music