On 05/02/2011 12:09 AM, Richard Dobson wrote: > On 01/05/2011 20:29, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: >> .. >> >> the point is: if you want to produce in tenth order and have the means >> to do it, your customer can still enjoy it on his/her 2nd order rig. > > Fine. I agree. But what exactly is a '2nd order rig'? Some number of > speakers, or the combination of source, decoding and layout?
actually, that was just an off-hand remark. i might as well have said "first-order", the point is it's downwards compatible to whatever your consumer has at home, down to mono if necessary. in theory, five speakers are sufficient for second-order horizontal, although six are a lot better (and as BLaH have shown, six also outperform the square for native first-order material). > All I am asking is, what the smallest "acceptable" entry-level setup is. > It used to be first-order horizontal, and four speakers, or 1st-order > peri and 8 speakers. Clearly that is no longer acceptable - but what the > new entry-level is is still less than clear to me. From the above it > would appear to be 2nd-order source played over whatever the smallest > acceptable 'second-order rig' is defined to be. what is all this talk about "smallest acceptable"? if you want to enjoy music with half a speaker, be my guest. if you are able to enjoy first-order horizontal on four speakers, that's great. but when you want to drag somebody away from 5.1 (kicking, screaming and cursing), they have certain expectations that first-order ambisonics cannot, ever, meet. at the same time, alas, they will be totally insensitive to the subtle beauty of first-order's strengths. >> the bus width restriction is actually a bogus argument, which is only >> true in practice because that's how avid and friends milk their >> customers. heck, going from a 16ch bus width limit to 32ch should not >> ever include more than a recompile on decently written software. >> > > Depends to what extent it requires GUI features. At the moment the > typical DAW draws all sorts of stuff for each channel of the main bus. > Without the need to draw flashy graphics, I totally agree. We can do it > in Csound already. 95% of the cost of any GUI application is the > graphics. I am still wondering what a full native HOA DAW (with height > and full automation) would look like. not native, but here's a very simple one that has been shoehorned into a third-order workstation: http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/11_3/nettingsmeier_ambisonics.html scroll down a bit to see the the screenshots. the maker of this program does not know much about ambisonics. he was just wise enough to refrain from arbitrary bus width restrictions and to allow modular panners. >> how can localisation and separation be distinct? > > > I think the two words are too useful to be treated as exact synonyms - > that would mean one of them is simply wasted. So I would say the former > is absolute - this or that degree azimuth. The latter is relative - A is > 20deg to the right of B (or even, 2M behind B). If that's not a useful > distinction, OK. no, works for me. but then localisation precision _is_ separation. localisation accuracy is maybe of secondary importance. > All I can say is, my memories are different - I saw/heard very accurate > localisation and separation in a live Electric Phoenix gig at the > Arnolfini, Bristol, maybe 20 years ago as I mentioned before - the > amplified voice was localised so that you heard each voice ~exactly~ at > the position the singer was in. They were some 40 feet away, so very > much less than 20 degrees, and I was sat a long way left of centre, in > raked seating. The effect was somewhat jaw-dropping; and as far as I am > aware, that was all first-order analog panning, engineered by John > Whiting. Of course, it was an auditorium-sized space. Dave Malham may > know what order he was actually using as he probably designed the > decoder - if it was HOA I will fully and gladly acknowledge my > misunderstanding. I have no memory at all of the number or location of > the loudspeakers. > > Sadly I live at the opposite end of the country from all the UK > Ambisonic centres of excellence, so my prospects for hearing the state > of the art and being duly persuaded thereof are presently fairly remote. i'm pretty sure that the effect you heard was not due to the performance of first-order ambisonics, but rather * because you had visual cues (the reinforcement system may have created a sense of striking "nearness", and your visual system filled in the localisation), and * because you're an ambi fanboy. that's not meant in any derogatory sense. i've been flabbergasted time and again how people could be totally unimpressed by first-oeder ambisonic systems that to me were between "pretty good" and "totally awesome". it's still a conjecture, and i haven't tried to confirm it experimentally, but i'm convinced that lower-order ambisonic listening takes training - when your brain has learned to discard all the bogus cues, the curtain opens. that could explain why many people are perfectly content with their own FOA systems, and also why they have so few friends to share their passion. go to third order, and the sounds are just there, even for the uninitiated. the gold standard in localisation is the single speaker source, as exemplified by a center source in 5.1. this is what we have to deliver in order to be taken seriously. it makes me cry, but exactly nobody out there in this big bad world gives a f&#* about uniform panning, isotropy and unnoticeable speakers (i.e. the stuff that we can do really well). what people want is to feel like single speakers are shouting abuse at them, and our way to world domination is to deliver that first, and then gently show them why their current frame of reference is defined by the shortcomings of the system leading the market, not by any actual necessity or aesthetic choice. >> that is utter nonsense. the most important selling point of ambisonics >> is precisely that it decouples the transmission format from the speaker >> layout. >> > > I know that. I make that very point myself often enough! But your own > words appear to conflate decoding order and speaker rig together. There > is your input HOA order, and the sufficient speaker rig which plays > whatever you decode into it. Either way, your "2nd-order rig" is a > nominal combination standard that in practice combines the order of the > decoding and the speaker layout into some single named entity. As I > said, I am just asking for the lowest acceptable "rig". Just in case I > can by some miracle get a grant to buy the kit without the proposal > being shot down by referees. But in the absence of cheap and willing > roadies, the fewer speakers the better! in production, use HOA. in reproduction, use as many speakers as you can afford, up to a limit determined by the order of the source material: 1st OA: no more than six 2nd OA: six or eight 3rd OA: eight, twelve if necessary it's now an established fact that too many speakers degrade the result for any given order. > I will reluctantly accept that > FOA is no longer enough; that must be kind of disappointing though for > all those who posted FOA tracks to Ambisonia. it's not. given that there is no HOA microphone on the radar yet that's fit for music, those recordings are still the purist's standard, much like 2-track stereo productions are. -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister (VDT) http://stackingdwarves.net _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
