date:20120413

On 13 Apr 2012, at 04:08, Stefan Schreiber  wrote:

> Steven Dive wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> IMHO I can't see how FOA isn't  clearly worth promoting along with up  to 
>> 3rd order G-format decodes for 5.1/7.1 setups for home users.  Basically, 
>> get UHJ and, while we are at it, superstereo into people's  homes, then get 
>> on with full 1st and higher orders.
>> 
>> Steve
> 
> 
> Steve, Anthony:
> 
> In which sense is UHJ and "superstereo" a viable alternative to 5.1 surround, 
> if 5.1 is clearly better than any 2-channel system can be?

Because it's NOT better. 99.9% of 5.1 mixes SUCK because they are pan-pot BS. 
0.1% maybe use Ambisonic panning to do the mix, and they may be great, provided 
your setup is matching exactly the setup for which it is pre-decoded, at which 
point it is barely better than UHJ, shedding some matrixing constraints, while 
adding issues of irregular speaker arrays. Chances are, a 5.1 surround mix is a 
4.0 in reality, using only 5.1 distribution.

Further, as I said, 90%+ of 5.1 installations are not suitable for music 
playback anyway, because of the fact that the speakers are neither full-range, 
nor even matching in tone coloration. Without excessive room EQ and speaker 
compensation, phase is all over the place, and any moving sound changes 
character as it goes from front speakers to side or rear speakers, because they 
are typically different and cheaper speaker models.

None of that matters for a bit of sci-fi whoosh or action flick shooting, it's 
however useless for music.
So as far as my experience goes, the assertion that 5.1 is better than UHJ 
Stereo or 4.0 1st order horizontal-only Ambisonics is plain wrong. 

> You should introduce something which exceeds the existing solutions, not 
> going back to something which fits into the "stereo distribution chain". We 
> already had this.

Because that's still the only thing we have, the stereo distribution chain. A 
new technology needs to get the foot into the door. Nobody is going to make a 
speculative investment costing massive amounts of money, for an unproven, 
no-demand system. The only way to get it in the door is through guerilla 
tactics.

Quality doesn't matter, convenience and simplicity do. Why do you think MP3 
trounced AAC, which in turn trounced CD sales, which again are leaps and bounds 
above DVD-Audio and SACD?

Only AFTER surround music is common can one address quality issues, just like 
only after online music was established, slowly the cries for better quality 
were raised, and the bit rates went up, and DRM was removed. According to your 
line reasoning, online music distribution cannot possibly be successful until 
it's lossless audio without DRM, but the reality was different. People bought 
lousy 128kbit/s compressed files encumbered with DRM, over better quality and 
DRM-free CDs, because it was SIMPLE and CONVENIENT.

UHJ is simple and convenient, because people can buy it as a regular stereo 
track like the rest of the music. No pop-up with a choice: stereo or surround 
version, no playlists where one has to make sure the stereo version ends up on 
the iPod, and the surround version is used for home playback. None of that. One 
file, one solution, stereo, portable, home, car, whatever. No confusion for 
consumers, distribution channel, radio capable, etc. THAT works.

> I have written that you could decode a 3rd order .AMB file on a 4 or 6 
> speaker home installation, for example ignoring the 2nd and 3rd order 
> components. 8 speakers would be even better, but less is still possible.

And I have said that none of that matters, because no musician in the world, 
except some esoteric avant guard musicians with a cumulative audience smaller 
than the number of members on this list is going to go through the cost and 
trouble of doing HOA productions.

The only Ambisonic productions you're going to see are the ones that Tony 
"Fatso" Miller (and similarly unknown people) can do in their basement studios 
for some garage band that scratched together $500 to finally get a 
"professional demo CD made". That sort of production is where the vast majority 
of music originates. Even if you go up three notches, do you really think the 
producer of Madonna's MDNA album has the slightest clue about HOA? You might be 
able to get such industry people to toy around with one extra channel and go 
from a LR or MS setup to a XYW setup, provided they can ship regular CDs that 
sell millions of copies. If they can mention in the liner notes, that as a 
special bonus it is surround encoded for playback on systems capable for that, 
then that's an added bonus, and that's ALL you're going to get until 100 
million people or more have Ambisonic setups at home and ask for more. It is 
exactly these things, where e.g. some hard core Madonna fan would want to
  hear the album "the way it was meant to be heard" that will get people to buy 
a decent 4.0 setup, and spread the word.

Nobody is going to have 6 or 8 speak

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music


On 13 Apr 2012, at 10:07, Jörn Nettingsmeier  
wrote:

> On 04/13/2012 03:49 AM, Robert Greene wrote:
>> 
>> While the mode of expression is even more emphatic
>> than my own, RCFA is to my mind right all up
>> and down the line. Talking about 3rd order is
>> just castles in the air. As a theoretical mathematician,
>> I spend most of my life building castles in the air.
>> But one ought to know that that is what they are!
> 
> you know, for every email you guys write about this tired old topic, i have 
> _set up_ and _calibrated_ a higher order ambisonic system, and believe me, 
> that's way more exciting.

Exciting in the same way as people spending massive amounts of money on speaker 
wire and listening to the same recording over and over to decide if the CD 
player sounds better with a magic brick on top, or without

> can you please stick your heads out the window eventually? it's 2012, 
> bandwidth is ridiculously cheap, storage even more so [1]. there is 
> absolutely no valid argument to be made against very high orders indeed for 
> production and archival. get it in your heads that there is a difference 
> between what the consumer uses and what the production format is. this is 
> what ambisonics is all about: scalability. you get to keep your meridians and 
> your four quad speakers, and everyone can just live happily ever after.

None of that matters:

- there are globally speaking between zero and none studios that even 
understand the concept of higher order ambisonics
- there are between zero and no artists who ask for their works to be produced 
in HOA
- there are between zero and none record labels that will pay the extra expense 
for a HOA production.

So who cares about bandwidth and storage? But even if these other issues were 
moot, bandwidth and storage remain at a premium, because my iPad holds only 
64GB, and the iPhone's music download over 3G or 4G has a rather hefty price 
tag.

The reality of music, in 2012, isn't a desktop computer with cheap hard drives 
attached to it, that's so 90s, its a wireless, low-power portable device with 
expensive SSD storage and expensive always-connected wireless networking.

So yes, even despite all the other cost factors and hurdles that speak against 
a system of the complexity of HOA, bandwidth and storage still matter, or 
should I say, matter again?

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread John Leonard

As my 'studio' is my spare room in our flat, I have decent set up where I can 
use the surround set-up, which Ronald will be pleased to know uses five matched 
loudspeakers, an LFE unit and has proper bass management, to listen for both 
work and pleasure. I play my SACD recordings on an inexpensive Pioneer unit 
that plays almost anything, has six separate outputs and is hooked up to a 
Metric Halo ULN-8. My wife has the same unit, used as a CD player, hooked up to 
a Yamaha receiver that has six separate inputs and outputs, although we don't 
have a surround system in the living-room. (Too full of 'cellos and 
house-plants)

A long time ago, I asked how many people on this list actually had any sort of 
surround systems, let alone properly set-up home-cinema 5.1 systems, in their 
homes and I think about three people said they did. I wonder how many there are 
now?

Regards,

John

On 13 Apr 2012, at 08:37, Paul Hodges wrote:

> Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list listen to 
> surround recordings on a surround system for simple pleasure, as opposed to 
> in the lab or as part of specific investigations of the process.

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread David Pickett


At 02:37 13/04/2012, Paul Hodges wrote:

Actually, I'd be interested to know how many people on this list 
listen to surround recordings on a surround system for simple 
pleasure, as opposed to in the lab or as part of specific 
investigations of the process.


I try to do this; but it is not always easy.  The most friendly media 
are DVD-A and SACD which have a good enough bit rate.  These I can 
play and enjoy. Playing wavefiles, which is what I would like to do, 
while relatively easy for two-channel stereo, is for me a PITA for 
ambisonics.  Someone suggested using an Oppo BDP-95 for this, but 
then I heard that it will only play one wavefile and stop, thus one 
wavefile per track (movement) is a pain: even an LP will play four 
movements of a Mozart symphony without stopping.


David

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Folks:
 
Q:  WHY would the average *music* listener want  surround sound?
 
A:  They won't and, since this has already been tried (including with  some 
of the best known artists of all times), no one in the MUSIC business will  
*ever* try it again.
 
Case closed.
 
MOVIE-watchers wanted surround in their living-rooms because they got it in 
 the theaters.  So they got it.
 
GAME-players, if they are fanatical enough (which means very few of them),  
can use it also.  So they got it.
 
VR/Telepresence users (which is a small fraction of those predicted when VR 
 was a "bubble" in early 90s) can use it.  So they got it.
 
Enthusiasts with complicated computer-rigs, lots of speakers and lots of  
space (like me), can play with it all day long.  So we got it.
 
But MUSIC listeners . . . fuggetaboutit!!  (And nothing said on this  list 
will change any of this.  Case closed.)
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

On 13 Apr 2012, at 13:57, John Leonard  wrote:

> A long time ago, I asked how many people on this list actually had any sort 
> of surround systems, let alone properly set-up home-cinema 5.1 systems, in 
> their homes and I think about three people said they did. I wonder how many 
> there are now?

I have a ULN8, as well, and a 2882 and a couple of ULN2, and they are all great 
in their own way, but that's not anywhere close to what a typical user might 
have.

In the living room, I have an ancient Onkyo 808, which produces pleasant 
surround sound from UHJ encoded stereo, super stereo from regular recordings. 
The only problem it has, is the same issues all sorts of early digital gear 
have (clocking, "digital" sound, etc.).
So I have the choice of listening to stereo that's clean sounding (e.g. ULN2 to 
an NAD stereo power amp) or listening to surround that's perfectly acceptable, 
except for sound quality issues that have nothing to do with UHJ or 1st order, 
and which are there even if I use the rig for stereo playback.

I have four budget, but high-quality bookshelf speakers paired with a Sunfire 
TruSubwoofer.

By and large, except for the early digital sound quality issues that modern 
gear could easily do away with, this is utterly enjoyable and perfectly 
adequate setup for a living room, and in any case much better than running 
stereo on the same gear; which to me proves that for little extra the 
musicality and realism of the listening experience can be increased by using 
super stereo and UHJ Ambisonic playback. 

Two more speakers and a four instead of two channel amp is all that's really 
required, the rest, this day and age, is software.

I have no doubt that a properly calibrated 6 or 8 speaker setup with HOA would 
sound even better, but there is no material to speak of available in such a 
format, and the costs are simply prohibitive for regular users, which makes 
this whole idea a pipe dream.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

On 13 Apr 2012, at 15:31, newme...@aol.com wrote:

> Folks:
> 
> Q:  WHY would the average *music* listener want  surround sound?
> 
> A:  They won't and, since this has already been tried (including with  some 
> of the best known artists of all times), no one in the MUSIC business will  
> *ever* try it again.
> 
> Case closed.

Wrong. They would want it, if they ever heard it. The only surround that has 
been somewhat promoted for music were some high-profile remixes of legacy 
recordings (be they classical music or things like Pink Floyd), and all based 
on high-end stuff like SACD, DVD-Audio, or worse, some DVD-Video with music 
programming.

Most of that was mixed in traditional pan-potting manner, most of the time 
played back on typical 5.1 systems which generally are not set up properly and 
use several different speaker models (usually three types: one for the center, 
two for the left/right front, and a third for the surround/rear speakers; 7.1 
systems usually add one more speaker type, because the side surround speakers 
are usually yet another speaker model).

So things like "Dark Side of the Moon" in surround just doesn't count, there 
have been no credible efforts to bring surround sound to music. That will also 
not happen as long as the costs of separate mixes and SKUs make it prohibitive, 
which is exactly the problem UHJ addresses: there are no separate mixes, there 
are no separate products, there are almost no additional costs. For binaural 
decoding it's just different software on the playback system, for 4.0 it's a 
moderate incremental investment, and as far as the production side goes, it's 
just a small extra cost for a slightly more complex production chain.

In other words, it's a small risk, and a nice little marketing gimmick, and 
that makes it feasible. Any sort of "real" surround sound for music requires 
too much investment up front making the stakes too high in an industry that 
still has trouble adjusting to the pace at which technology evolves, and 
therefore that sort of surround sound indeed will not happen, case closed.

The question is: is anyone, are we as a community, trying to get a foot in the 
door, and are we willing to start out with modest steps in order to pursue 
what's a realistic goal for the near and mid-term future, or are we sticking to 
high end demands that raise the barrier of entry so high that no player in this 
industry will even consider surmounting it.

A concerted effort at lobbing certain companies and industry players has a 
chance of succeeding if the demands are modest enough and the costs involved 
are small. But such efforts will never go anywhere if one's own ranks start 
stabbing every effort in the back by contending that what's feasible 
economically is not good enough because it violates some artistic, academic, 
mathematical or technological desire for perfection.

Ronald
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

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.

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.

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.

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.

The reason why Ambisonics hasn't succeeded -- after all this time -- for
MUSIC is that it's not *good* enough to make a difference.

That's why the HOA "debates" happened. Smart people with well-trained
ears KNOW that FOA isn't good enough.

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. Seems that Apple also figured that out.

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.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music



I was not objecting to high order for production.
But it is never going to fly in playback terms.
Everyone takes for granted (I assume) that
people can and often do things to make recordings
that do not happen at the playback end.
(How many consumers know Protools?)
That was hardly the point.

What seems to have emerged from this long discussion
is that Ambisonics is really not going to be much use
as a consumer format--or perhaps more precisely, that
rather few people here are interested in making it
of much use as a consumer format.

I think this is a shame, because I was under the
impression(and still am) that it makes for rather
nice playback.

Robert

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, J?rn Nettingsmeier wrote:


On 04/13/2012 03:49 AM, Robert Greene wrote:


While the mode of expression is even more emphatic
than my own, RCFA is to my mind right all up
and down the line. Talking about 3rd order is
just castles in the air. As a theoretical mathematician,
I spend most of my life building castles in the air.
But one ought to know that that is what they are!


you know, for every email you guys write about this tired old topic, i have 
_set up_ and _calibrated_ a higher order ambisonic system, and believe me, 
that's way more exciting.


can you please stick your heads out the window eventually? it's 2012, 
bandwidth is ridiculously cheap, storage even more so [1]. there is 
absolutely no valid argument to be made against very high orders indeed for 
production and archival. get it in your heads that there is a difference 
between what the consumer uses and what the production format is. this is 
what ambisonics is all about: scalability. you get to keep your meridians and 
your four quad speakers, and everyone can just live happily ever after.


[1] the only thing that's probably even cheaper is opinions.
--
J?rn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister f?r Veranstaltungstechnik (B?hne/Studio)
Tonmeister VDT

http://stackingdwarves.net

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

I disagree with this. I suppose for some things like
pop vocals that do not have a natural acoustic venue
surrounding them, surround is not helpful.
But for large scaled acoustic music like orchestral
music(which of course some people here would
dismiss as a niche market) it really does help
generate a better facsimile of the real experience.
The problem is that practically none of the commercial
material available does it right.
But anyone who knows anything about acoustics
knows that the concert experience of orchestral
music has a very large amount of diffuse field sound
involved--in energy terms, there is more diffuse field
than direct arrival at most audience locations, quite
a lot more. The precidence effect to some extent
conceals this fact from people who listen superficially.
But the reality is that stereo presentation of orchestral
music is very much wrong. It can be pleasing, even beautiful,
but it is always wrong.

Surround can be right, or closer to right. But it usually is not,
actually, as it is currently practiced.

In most cases, you would be better off to take a stereo
recording and make it into surround yourself.

Quite disappointing situation, actually.
But then people in contemporary High End audio do not
seem to want to think about how music actually works in concert.
It is not that the information is not available. I wrote
this
http://www.regonaudio.com/Records%20and%20Reality.html
more than twenty-five years ago in The Absolute Sound.
But not very many people seemed to understand the essential
message--that a LOT of what you hear in concert ie
diffuse field reverberation.
People should have been trying to figure out how
to generate that effect at home all along, but they
mostly were not. And they still are not. They are
worrying about other things entirely.

Robert

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, 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.

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.

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.

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.

The reason why Ambisonics hasn't succeeded -- after all this time -- for
MUSIC is that it's not *good* enough to make a difference.

That's why the HOA "debates" happened. Smart people with well-trained
ears KNOW that FOA isn't good enough.

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.

Case closed.

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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread umashankar mantravadi


folks i just looked out of my window and it is 1975! Wireless World gave up 
waiting for the third part of MAG's article and started publishing somebody 
called Ivor Catt, who wanted to fight Maxwell in single combat. umashankar

i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar
 > Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:40:31 -0700
> From: gre...@math.ucla.edu
> To: sursound@music.vt.edu
> Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
> 
> 
> I disagree with this. I suppose for some things like
> pop vocals that do not have a natural acoustic venue
> surrounding them, surround is not helpful.
> But for large scaled acoustic music like orchestral
> music(which of course some people here would
> dismiss as a niche market) it really does help
> generate a better facsimile of the real experience.
> The problem is that practically none of the commercial
> material available does it right.
> But anyone who knows anything about acoustics
> knows that the concert experience of orchestral
> music has a very large amount of diffuse field sound
> involved--in energy terms, there is more diffuse field
> than direct arrival at most audience locations, quite
> a lot more. The precidence effect to some extent
> conceals this fact from people who listen superficially.
> But the reality is that stereo presentation of orchestral
> music is very much wrong. It can be pleasing, even beautiful,
> but it is always wrong.
> 
> Surround can be right, or closer to right. But it usually is not, 
> actually, as it is currently practiced.
> 
> In most cases, you would be better off to take a stereo
> recording and make it into surround yourself.
> 
> Quite disappointing situation, actually.
> But then people in contemporary High End audio do not
> seem to want to think about how music actually works in concert.
> It is not that the information is not available. I wrote
> this
>   http://www.regonaudio.com/Records%20and%20Reality.html
> more than twenty-five years ago in The Absolute Sound.
> But not very many people seemed to understand the essential
> message--that a LOT of what you hear in concert ie
> diffuse field reverberation.
> People should have been trying to figure out how
> to generate that effect at home all along, but they
> mostly were not. And they still are not. They are
> worrying about other things entirely.
> 
> Robert
> 
> On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, 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.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > The reason why Ambisonics hasn't succeeded -- after all this  time -- for
> > MUSIC is that it's not *good* enough to make a  difference.
> >
> >
> > That's why the HOA "debates" happened.  Smart people with well-trained
> > ears KNOW that FOA isn't good enough.
> >
> >
> > 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.  Seems that Apple also figured that out.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Case closed.
> >
> > Mark Stahlman
> > Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

2012-04-13 Thread Andrew Horsburgh

My clients, students and those who have Ambisonics produced appropriately would 
disagree on your opinion.
I'd also wager that Funktion One, Imogen Heap and Lou Reed would all argue that 
Ambisonics (even first order) works perfectly well for produced modern music.

But that's just their opinion, too.

Andrew J. Horsburgh, Researcher
andrew.horsbu...@uws.ac.uk

Ambisonic & Spatial Audio Research Group
University of the West of Scotland, www.uws.ac.uk

From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf 
Of newme...@aol.com [newme...@aol.com]
Sent: 13 April 2012 16:09
To: sursound@music.vt.edu
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

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.

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.

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.

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.

The reason why Ambisonics hasn't succeeded -- after all this  time -- for
MUSIC is that it's not *good* enough to make a  difference.


That's why the HOA "debates" happened.  Smart people with well-trained
ears KNOW that FOA isn't good enough.


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.  Seems that Apple also figured that out.

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.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

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

Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music



I think that the idea that surround is not good enough
for music , good enough to matter, really does
not make sense. This is more or less like restricting
the idea of music to what works well enough in stereo
to be all right. But that is not all music, and indeed
for example it does not include orchestral music.

Of course we have all experienced this kind of "reasoning"
in practice. When I had electrostatics with limited bass
and dynamics, I hardly ever listened to big orchestral
music(in recorded form). It did not work well with that
system so I just listened to other stuff(even though
I really like big orchestra music). When all there
were were turntables and before I got a Nakamichi
disc centering turntable, piano music was a 
problem(on account of off centered records). Once

 I got a Nakamichi (and digital came along), piano
music became a joy again, instead of a watery imitation.
And so I listened to more of it.

What has happened to the audio industry in my view is
that for more than fifty years, they have dealt almost
exclusively with stereo. So people have evolved in their
tastes to suit the medium. They listen only to music
that works in stereo, and even when they do listen
to things like orchestral music that obviously do not
really work right in stereo, they have become adjusted to completely
unrealistic presentations of "the music" (which really
means only the notes and some of the dynamics since most
of the rest is pretty screwed up). They have come to accept
stereo on its own merits and have simply given up on
its sounding real.

Of course this happened with mono. People accepted it, completely
unrealistic though it is.

Then stereo showed up and all of a sudden mono seemed sort of 
Nowheresville.


Surround could have had the same effect for music. It could have raised 
one's expectations of realism and made some kinds of music sound nearly 
right in a big way.  But for various 
reasons, it did not happen. For one thing, the pop music industry had 
moved
into a realm where people no longer cared about the acoustics of the 
venue. "Music" became something that was not anchored in acoustic reality 
with a real venue.


But a lot of music is so anchored. And for that , surround done
right is still valuable.

But done right is the operative phrase.

Robert
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Folks:

ALL reproduced music is a "special effect" -- if you wish to hear a
performance, as it was actually played, go to the performance.

MONO is a special effect.

STEREO is a special effect.

SURROUND is a special effect.

MP3 is a special effect.

None of them is a live performance.

And, no amount of money spent by "audiophiles" can change that. Neither
can a few extremely well-executed recordings. It will always be a special
effect and everyone knows it.

Starting In the 1960s, the *stereo* special effect beat out the *mono*
special effect for the reproduction of music. A lot of people *made* a lot of
money as a new mass-market was generated, culminating in the CD (followed
by MP3 etc.)

Beginning in the 1990s, the music industry tried to promote the *surround*
(i.e. 5.1 style) special effect -- driven by the installed base of home
theaters and DVD players, along with a preceived need to recapture the
revenues being lost in CD sales (due to the MP3 special effect).

They *spent* a lot of money, tried various technologies, and they failed.
The "consumer" did not believe that it was "good enough" (i.e. compared to
the stereo special effect) to make the switch. No one is going to try
that again.

Furthermore, as music reproduction shifted to MP3-based online delivery and
ear-bud reproduction (i.e. another version of the stereo special effect)
-- the idea of pretending that all this isn't a *special effect* by trying
to get "absolute sound" in your living-room just seemed more ridiculous than
ever.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY

P.S. By the 1990s, the "ground" of our experience had shifted from the
acoustic/electric to the tactile/digital and we were "freed" to do whatever we
wanted with sound. People playing with Ambisonics was the result. But
our personal interests no longer intersect with the now obsolete efforts to
generate mass-markets around new sonic special effects. Lou Reed can play
around all he wants. It will not create a new mass-market for a new special
effect.
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Being doctrinaire is really not a substitute for thinking.
Of course no reproduced music at home is going to be
identical to live experience. No one suggested
it was. But one could get closer.

And it is just silly to say "go to the performance".
The music played , even in major cities,
is a very small fraction of what one might like to hear.

It makes no sense to say "case closed" all the time.
And monotonous repetition of buzz words like "special effect"
contributes nothing to anything.

Things like this are never closed. Who would have predicted
in 1975 the current state of things? (IBM famously
said that computers would never become popular home
appliances, to take a particularly egregious instance
of "case closed" being completely wrong.)

Things change all the time. Furthermore it is silly
to say that surround failed because of its not
being musically interesting. The first try failed
(SQ, Quad etc) because it really does not work
well to try to put multiple channels on an LP.
The second round failed at least in part because
the industry shot the effort in the foot by failing
to agree on a single format. DVD versus SACD ruined
everything at that point.

But who is to say that it will never come back? Lots
of people have 5.1 home theater setups. They could
play music on them. It could sound good. It could
all happen easily enough especially since data distribution
is getting so easy.

It would be nice if Ambisonics were positioned to participate
if this does happen.
c
Robert

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote:

Folks:

D> ALL reproduced music is a "special effect" -- if you wish to hear a

performance, as it was actually played, go to the performance.

MONO is a special effect.

STEREO is a special effect.

SURROUND is a special effect.

MP3 is a special effect.

None of them is a live performance.

And, no amount of money spent by "audiophiles" can change that. Neither
can a few extremely well-executed recordings. It will always be a special
effect and everyone knows it.

Case closed.

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY

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[Sursound] Job opening in 3D-audio research & development

2012-04-13 Thread D. Sen


*Call for post-doctoral candidates for research positions in 3D-audio

*

The Audio R&D team at Qualcomm (based in San Diego, California) is 
looking for candidates for several positions involving a number of 
ongoing projects in the domain of 3D-audio research and applications.


The audio team is involved in various projects which involve soundfield 
acquisition through microphone arrays, subsequent analysis and 
soundfield synthesis through loudspeaker arrays.



We are searching for candidates for post-doctoral candidates with 
experience in Higher-Order-Ambisonics and/or Wavefield Synthesis.


A familiarity with audio coding techniques is a plus. A working 
knowledge of Matlab is a must.


Applicants should be highly motivated, independent, and able to work 
well in a group.


Applications with an attached resume should be sent  to : 
d...@qualcomm.com <mailto:brian.k...@limsi.fr>



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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music

Robert:
 
> Who would have predicted in 1975 the current state of things? 
 
Many did exactly that.  In particular, the reality of technology  
increasing the productivity of manufacturing such that labor-arbitrage would  
come to 
dominate global trade and that the "post-industrial" economies would not  
understand how to cope with these new circumstances, was widely  appreciated.
 
> IBM famously said that computers would never become popular 
> home appliances, to take a particularly egregious instance
> of  "case closed" being completely wrong.

Sorry, that is not what  happened.  In fact, right around 1975, a fellow at 
IBM named Gary Chen (who  I knew well) predicted to IBM's senior management 
that there was a *very* large  market opportunity at the $5K (and below) 
price-point (based on a Paretto curve  of demand vs. price/performance), which 
began the effort that led to the IBM PC  -- based on the "same" Microsoft 
and Intel technology that still dominates the  500M unit market for the PC 
today.
 
The fact that so many people in the "hi-fi" industry have been wrong in  
their "predictions" doesn't mean that predictions can't be made --  just that 
they aren't very good at it.
 
Obviously no one should take my own predictions with anything more than a  
LARGE grain-of-salt -- even if (or maybe because) I might be one of the few 
on  this list who has made a 40-year career out of predicting these things 
--  however, I can only hope that I have at least stimulated some thinking 
and  perhaps even a little entertainment!
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
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Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music