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 problem. Had Dolby licensed FOA/UHJ, then maybe instead of AC3 and 5.1/7.1 we might have 2nd and 3rd order Ambisonics by now, but that's a different story. > Seems that Apple also figured that out. That I know to be a wrong assessment, but due to NDAs I can't say more than that. > 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. I bet that at least 50% of them didn't have a proper setup. I listened to the same material twice in the same show room, and once it was great, and once it sucked. I asked the sales person what's wrong the second time, and he didn't know. Finally the head honcho came in, noticed the same as I noticed, and concluded that someone must have set up the system incorrectly while playing with the system. If I hadn't known how it's supposed to sound, I would have left the show room, and never even looked back on Ambisonics. As a matter of fact, I have yet to find someone who heard a proper setup who isn't impressed by what it adds to the experience when compared to regular stereo playback. The only people I've heard bitch about it are those who are trying to sell their own equipment that's not Ambisonics capable. They of course find any flaw in the book, but these are also the same people trying to sell $1000 speaker cables, or who are making a big deal about minimal power amp distortions, while totally forgetting that the transducers themselves distort the signal one or two orders of magnitude more... Snake-oil salespeople... > Case closed. Yep, just differently than you think. > Mark Stahlman > Brooklyn NY _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
