On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 03:50:19PM +0100, Richard Dobson wrote: > On 30/04/2011 01:12, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote: > >> I sometimes wish these people could be locked away in a closet and >> released only after 1st order Ambisonics is sufficiently accepted by >> the audio community at large and the consumer electronics and >> computer software makers. Maybe we might get somewhere that way. >> > > I remember arguing much the same point ten years ago (or eleven - AMB > was announced at ICMC in 2000)
and had existed for some 25 years before that... > and got precisely nowhere. Should that be a surprise ? If as a composer you are used to just placing a speaker in the right place when you want a particular sound to come from a certain direction in a concert, would you be impressed by the performance of first order Ambisonics ? It just fails miserably in such an application. The only thing it could be used for is to reproduce something designed for it, accepting the limits. > preoccupation on this list has always been the pursuit of "the best > possible", defined as mm-perfect localization over a more or less large > area, with cost and number of speakers no object. While for mere users > the attraction of a format is clearly in inverse proportion to the > number of speakers required, and to the the number of decisions they > have to make before pressing "play". Those discussions about the > ultimate HOA file format (4th-order or better, no doubt) are, I imagine, > still ongoing. Worse than useless to anyone still pondering whether to > go up to a "full" 5.1 system. The simple fact is that 1st order AMB has no chance against 5.1. For the applications that are wanted by the mass consumer market, 5.1 actually works and delivers better results than 1st order AMB ever could. > And of course there is absolutely no mileage whatsoever in any research > application dealing with first-order. Any such application would, I have > no doubt, be likely shot down in flames by those asked to referee the > proposal. I even have such a project in mind - periphonic sonification > of LHC collision data. There are reasons enough why such a project would > get short shrift from the powers that be, but one of them would > certainly be "should be using at least third-order". Compared to the cost of the LHC and the data obtained from it, a third order system would be cheap. Very cheap. Would you force scientists to look at their data using VGA graphics when they can have 40" screens driven by sophisticated 3D graphics libraries ? > So I fear the battle for Ambisonics has already been lost; it remains a > niche interest for a few researchers and individuals with the time, > money and space to indulge it. Or snobs as the OP called them. And yes, I'd agree that the battle to get 1st order into the consumer world has been lost. It was lost at least ten years ago. I'm not going to sit in a corner and make myself unhappy because of that. Ciao, -- FA _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
