I agree that height is an individualized pinna function. So you need a recording and reproduction system that produces a soundfield in the listening room where height sound actually comes from up above so everybody can enjoy it at once. But there is a difference between direct sound sources and hall ambience sound fields. I know of no music recordings of heavenly choirs or similar. Some movies have direct sound from above and virtual reality may be another area where there are discrete height objects. But for the vast majority of CDs, LPs, SACDs, MP3s, Internet Downloads, etc. there are no elevated instruments or voices. Where height is slightly important, is in concert hall ambience. For ambience in the horizontal plane you can just record a rear pair, shielded from the ceiling and front and use a binaural loudspeaker to deliver it with the key localization cues intact. For ambience height you want surround speakers driven by 3D hall impulses that are sorted by where the hall reverb is coming from. So you can have as much height ambience as you like if you can afford all the speakers. For 2.0 media that do not have an ambient rear pair you can use impulse responses to drive multiple surround speakers in the horizontal plane. But note that the human brain prefers hall ambience to come from the side, the rear, the ceiling, and the front in that order of preference. Ceiling ambience is mostly mono and thus of lesser interest to the brain so most listeners do not miss the height speakers when they are turned off if the horizontal plane ones are numerous.
Angelo Farina has provided us with such sets of 3D IRs. I, being a fanatic, listen to my collection of frontal 2.0 classical music media sounding with the rear quarter sphere of the Sydney Opera House via 24 surround speakers some six being elevated. A group of the La Scala IRs can be downloaded from the Ambiophonic website if you are really into this. Obviously, it would be easier if all front stage music was delivered in a 4.0 format where the rear pair represented just the rear horizontal circle of hall reverb so only two speakers would be needed to, as above, reproduce it with the hall reverb ILD, ITD and most of the pinna cues intact. For movies that do have elevated direct sound effects encoded, you can use the mono elevated speakers they specify, but still use binaural loudspeaker methods for all the sound in the horizontal plane. Finally, if you only listen to vocal soloists with a guitar, you don't need any of this, including stereophonics. -----Original Message----- From: Sursound [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Augustine Leudar Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2017 6:26 AM To: Surround Sound discussion group Subject: Re: [Sursound] 3D Browser disco Hi, Yes for horizontal localisation you may get away with ILDs and ITDs - but for height information the individual shape of the pinna is key and the system of migrating frequency peaks and notches caused by the direction dependant filterning caused by pinna shape . By filtering I mean the frequency peaks and notches which change in accordance with height, a filtering system that each individual brain has learnt, definitely work better with individuslised HRTFs.... Interpoliation between HRTF data sets is one option but there are others...... On 4 November 2017 at 00:54, Ralph Glasgal <glas...@ambiophonics.org> wrote: > It doesn't take a millionaire any longer. If you follow the rules of > binaural psychoacoustics you don't need to measure any HRTFs to have a > recording and loudspeaker reproduction system that delivers normal > binaural hearing cues to any reasonable standard and does not make use > of the stereophonic effect, or Ambisonic equations, but is a sort of > home-friendly Wavefield Synthesis. Like WFS the listening area is > much less restricted than that of a normal stereo system and since no > HRTFs or head tracking is involved multiple listeners can be accommodated. > > The first rule is that in any such chain, there must be one head > shadow but only one and it need not be the end listener's. By head > shadow in this rule we are just considering ITD and ILD in the > frequency range where these affect localization. Since we nod, > rotate, and lean and sound goes over, under, around the front, around > the rear, etc. the ITD and ILD are quite smeared and so the brain is > used to this and can adjust to an ITD, ILD head shadow not its own. > So it does not matter how the ITD and ILD are recorded or synthesized > as long as they are normal values for a frontal or rear stage object > and then are delivered unaltered to the ear canals. So no > personalized HRTFs so far or head tracking. > > The second rule operates in the higher frequency range where it is > only the pinnae that determine localization. The rule is that in any > recording and reproduction chain there must be one and only one set of > pinnae and that set must be that of the end listener. Since few mic > arrays have pinnae, including the Soundfield, there is seldom a > problem of having two sets of pinnae in a system. (can use most dummy > head mics without the outer ears.) So the only problem in having the > remaining part of a soundfield binaural, is in making sure that all > the sound sources come to the ear from a direction that is pinnae > proper. So for example central solo frontal sound should come from > the central front. All reflections or direct sound coming from the > rear should have directional components not only for the pinnae, but > also be delivered with binaural ILD and ITD values that are not then > allowed to be altered by the listener's head dimensions. > > It turns out that in the horizontal plain it is not too difficult to > provide what the pinnae need in directionality without making any HF > HRTF measurements. So I and my converts easily obtain solid full > circle localization of direct sound in the horizontal plane from > ordinary 4.0 recordings like SACDs, DTS 5.1, SQ, UHJ, Dolby Atmos, > Auro 3d, etc. using just four speakers and only a modest amount of > numerical processing. > Direct > elevated sound sources can be accommodated using similar rules but > that needs more research and real music recordings to test with. Hall > ambience height is easily accommodated as is all concert hall reverb, > also in a binaural friendly way. > > The rules are different for headphones or earphones, however. Lots of > AES and other papers on all this, including several on the Ambiophone > 3D mic array that anyone can copy and use to make better 4.0 > recordings of live sound. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Sursound [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of > Augustine Leudar > Sent: Friday, November 03, 2017 3:17 PM > To: Surround Sound discussion group > Subject: Re: [Sursound] 3D Browser disco > > great sound design but no cigar on the binaural front - thats really > not going to get solved until a quick and convenient way of measuring > HRTFs is designed - I have several in case any millionaires out there > are interested .... > > On 3 November 2017 at 18:36, Ralph Glasgal <glas...@ambiophonics.org> > wrote: > > > Have you tried https://cloud.aria3d.com Using a Chrome browser, > > Christos Tsakostas, a Greek audio researcher produces an up to 180 > > degrees wide stage in the horizontal plane starting with ordinary > > 5.1 or 2.0 recordings and you can play your own UHJ's this way. > > There is also no reason why this technique could not soon produce a > > full circle of direct sound using just four speakers from 4.0/5.1 > > media including Ambisonic media decoded to 4.0 which I have heard this way via DTS media. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Sursound mailing list > Sursound@music.vt.edu > https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe > here, edit account or options, view archives and so on. > -- Dr. Augustine Leudar Artistic Director Magik Door LTD Company Number : NI635217 Registered 63 Ballycoan rd, Belfast BT88LL -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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