Richard G Elen wrote:
This is another version of the "lobby the record companies to adopt xxx technology" argument, which never worked in the past. What is needed IMO is a system that can USE EXISTING DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS UNCHANGED, and sneak in the back door. You would download a file in the normal way as a purchase from iTunes or Classics Online or wherever. It would be larger than a stereo file of the same material. But while it played back as a conventional stereo file on a regular player, if you had a more advanced player, it would reveal Ambisonic surround. Think of mp3Pro for example, where the additional cleverness is used to increase the quality on an advanced player, while delivering standard mp3 quality on a standard mp3 player.
Good point: bundle within the file!
This was always actually one of the benefits of UHJ - with no special decoder you got superb stereo, but you could decode that to get decent surround (actually, in the light of modern digital decoders, more decent than some of us, including me, thought), and by adding one or two more channels you could decode full planar or with-height surround and the same amount of data as the original B-Format. It does seem possible to me that we could embed the additional channels of 3- or 4-channel UHJ in a file that looks and feels like a conventional stereo file, but the stereo part is 2-channel UHJ and the additional channels are encoded, hidden in the file, and are only recovered by a suitable player, decoder or file converter.
No problem at all, I would say. Nice to see you back, by the way! Stefan _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
