Hi
I wasn't going to post this on the list, I actually did sent it to Cara
directly.
But as the thread took off, here it is. Let's mourn together.
I warmly agree with Mark Stahlman about the fact that one point recording -
two speaker reproduction is a very European and especially British-German
concept. Using a lot of microphones, channels and speakers has always been
the American way. (And Japanese... 22.2...)
My five eurocents worth:
- Ambisonics was developed by music enthusiasts and mathematicians.
It wasn't developed by any company that has a development department.
- Ambisonics developed at a time when Quadraphonics was dying away
in the USA, at the end of the 1970's. Quadraphony didn't sell and
manufacturers lost their interest to gear and recordings. After all,
quadraphonics
didn't work either. (And remember the meaning of the Oil Crisis to world
economy.)
- Ambisonics was early, it could have survived if it had come at the same
time with digital media. Analog carriers weren't too handy for
multichannel audio.
- Two channel media needed matrixing. UHJ was developed, but there were
no decoders available for the consumers. There were only a couple of small
manufacturers that made decoders, for example Minim Ltd.
- When UHJ was used in recordings, very often it wasn't mentioned in the
record sleeve or cover at all. UHJ was also considered "phasey" and because
of that some record companies forbade their engineers to use UHJ.
- In Britain the BBC didn't allow UHJ encoding being mentioned in the
programme
details. This was because a government broadcaster must not favour a single
manufacturer.
- Very few record companies started using UHJ.
- Chicken and egg syndrome: No Music - No Equipment
- Dolby Surround was a market leader in encoded video and film sound.
Dolby decoders didn't decode UHJ or vice versa. People didn't know what
different encoding systems were and how they should have been used.
(The public had already been confused earlier about Quad, SQ, QS, CD4...)
- Dolby wasn't interested in implementing a foreign invention into their
products. NIH. Maybe Ambisonics wasn't good enough for picture audio.
(It wasn't, Dolby Surround is much more robust for that.)
- There weren't any major manufacturers who would have started making
domestic equipment for Ambisonics. The only real attempts were made by
Nimbus when they were discussing with some Japanese manufacturers.
Mitsubishi made a demo series of a preamp and Onkyo put a digital version
of the Minim AD-7 into their top-of the range Tuner-amplifier.
Discussions with
other manufacturers never lead to real products.
- The developers didn't have a marketing background. The NRDC tried to
market the consept on a license basis, but as far as I know, didn't
spend too
much energy on the thing. The business was moved over to BTG after that,
which didn't get much more sone than the NRDC had done. Both authorities
are large and Ambisonics was a tiny factor within agriculture, industy etc.
- Both professional and domestic equipment has been priced very high, except
the Minim decoders. The Soundfield microphone didn't attract sound
engineers
because it was so expensive.
- Sound engineers find it hard to use the B-Format in normal production.
Some have difficulties in understanding how B-Format works.
- Even if sound engineers did use the Soundfield, they used it as a
stereo mic.
- ProTools is a recording studio standard workstation. ProTools was designed
with stereo in mind and in the beginning it wasn't capable of handling
multichannel audio. Thus there were no multichannel plugins either.
In a professional recording studio productivity is a major thing and you
cannot
spend time by playing with different toy softwares and bounce signals
between
different programs. That is why ProTools and stereo was used in 99,9% of
productions.
Eero
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