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 surround sound.
But would you spend the 20 minutes if Apple tells you to do so?
Best,
Stefan Schreiber
P.S.: But don't shoot the engineers from the Core Audio group, as you/we
still might need them... =-O
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