I received a message back from Jan-Mark Batke, to the effect they will
pass my comments on to the patent authorities. It is classified at this
stage as a "disclosure". The four inventors are members of Technicolor,
and the new system is briefly featured here:
http://community.calrec.com/?p=8268
It does seem expressly targetted at cinema applications, so it remains
to be seen how relevant it may be for musicians etc.
I have (at last) updated by description page for AMB**, and have indeed
added a link to the UA description.
Now the attention in previous posts was very much on the phrase "most
sophisticated format", which was guaranteed to wind people up; whereas
the key word is really "available". The UA format is not really
available to ~composers~ to use. The description is very much one for
prospective developers - acquiring wavpack, and one way or another
implementing all those equations (and apparently creating a WAVE file
with a large number of silent channels!). The clue is for example in the
observation on that website that no player is currently available; and
when someone comments positively on a piece of yours, you are obliged to
suggest they decode the file themselves, but "Unfortunately, getting the
software to decode ambisonic stuff is kinda annoyingly painful...".
In short, for any file format to be deemed "available" there ~must~ be
some associated application or set of applications that can be used to
create, process and render a file. This means also that there must be no
political or cultural platform aversions - to be "available" the format
must have support not merely in Linux but, arguably much more
importantly, in Windows and OS X. Users really do not need, or want, to
deal with mathematics or complex configuration steps drenched in jargon.
Reasonable defaults must be available, so a composer can launch an app,
pan a sound as intuitively as possible, and write the file. And then
automatically play it back. And send it to a friend who can also
automatically play it back.
To me this is obvious, which is why the publication of the AMB format
(1999/2000) coincided with its incorporation in the CDP Multi-Channel
Toolkit, which many people have used subsequently to make and publish
AMB files.
So until this situation materially changes, while AMB is clearly not the
most sophisticated file format ~published~ it may still be the most
sophisticated one ~available~. Whatever objections people here may have
to AMB (and clearly they are legion), the one thing the Toolkit programs
can justifiably claim is that they are not "annoyingly painful" to use.
The only challenge, indeed, that they represent to the user is the basic
ability to use a command line. I get a nice trickle of emails from
people thanking me for their availability; sadly not so many of then go
the extra mile and click my Paypal button :-(. So updates and extensions
will be infrequent at best. So for those new file formats to become
"available" is is down to those who can afford the time; university
departments, etc.
Richard Dobson
**http://dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/researchdev/wave-ex/bformat.html
On 25/10/2012 01:16, etienne deleflie wrote:
So is this, in fact, the ultimate file format that folk on this list have
been arguing for (and over) for so long?
I dont know about "ultimate" formats ... but one existing format is
Universal Ambisonic (UA). It is documented Here:
http://soundofspace.com/static/make_ua_file
And there is lots of material in this format available on
http://soundofspace.com
This format is my attempt to *conclude* on the many discussions we had
here and on other lists. I don't pretend that it is better than other
formats ... nor that it satisfies everyone's needs (even though it
tries pretty hard).
The point is ... other ambisonic formats exist ... and UA is one of them!
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