I've been following the "dissertation" thread. (We are one of the two
companies that build first-order Ambisonic microphones.)
First-order Ambisonics has/had lots of positives:
1. Needs only four source tracks for an essentially unlimited number of
playback formats
2. A set of good tools for studio and field recording was/is available
3. It offered/offers fine surround sound presentation, especially
realistic rendering of ambience, for many recordings. That makes a real
difference for live recordings (e.g., club performances), but not studio
recordings.
4. If offered/offers "good enough" surround sound presentation for more
complex spatial recordings
5. It encodes height at no cost. Whether you use the height information
is up to you.
And a few negatives:
1. No one could/can figure out a way to build a very profitable company
around its intellectual property. A profitable company is necessary to
promote/champion the idea.
2. Other companies had very powerful profit-related motives to oppose it
(e.g., Dolby).
3. Higher order Ambisonics, with its need for more source tracks, is
needed to meet the full surround sound agenda of large sweet spot and
detailed spatial location
4. Better is the enemy of good enough -- we Ambisonic boosters tend to
shoot ourselves in the foot, completely dismissing first-order in favor of
higher-order.
5. People understand "one source track per playback speaker" much more
easily than a decoding process.
6. Open systems are really difficult to standardize. Witness the
popularity of seriously unwieldy Linux-based Ambisonic solutions here in
this newsgroup.
And on the "OT: Spatial Music" thread:
Ronald Antony talked about the cost of good speakers being a barrier: " ...
and anything halfway acceptable is on a good sale at
least $250/speaker".
This has changed in the last ten years. Good speakers today are acceptably
inexpensive: around $75 to $175 per speaker channel. Have a look at:
Pioneer SP-BS41-LR ($149.99/pair) -
http://www.stereophile.com/content/pioneer-sp-bs41-lr-loudspeaker
Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 ($350/pair) -
http://www.stereophile.com/content/wharfedale-diamond-101-loudspeaker
NHT SuperZero 2.0 ($198/pair) -
http://www.stereophile.com/content/entry-level-10
Boston Acoustics A 25 ($299.98/pair) -
http://www.stereophile.com/content/boston-acoustics-25-loudspeaker
PSB Alpha B1 ($279/pair) -
http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/507psb/index.html
Infinity Primus P162 (or older P150 and P160, or newer P153 and P163)
loudspeaker ($298/pair) -
http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1007inf/index.html
All of them have been reviewed on Stereophile's web site. Most of the
reviews include a nice set of measurements.
Len Moskowitz (mosko...@core-sound.com)
Core Sound LLC
Home of TetraMic
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