One of the things that is emerging here is(dare I say so) that Ambisonics for music at home is just not such a good idea. Attractive though it is mathematically--and it is very much that-- it is really impractical for home music.
Perhaps it is worthwhile to think for a moment about why. My view: Music of the ordinary sort is in front. Of course there are exceptions but everything from the Vienna Philharmonic to Earl Scruggs, may be rest in peace, is performs in front of the audience, with the audience looking forward. Now Ambisonics because of the emphasis on homogeneity makes itself do a lot of work for little purpose. Moreover, it pretty much ignores the fact that perception of location to the side is not amplitude driven as is frontal perception as in Blumlein stereo. This does not work on the sides. So one ends up needing quite high order to make just music in front really sound right. For music purposes, something more convincing can be done with a smaller number of channels and speakers than higher order Ambisonics calls for. One really needs some early reflections at the side and some ambience that is about it. No one really care much if one can reproduce a bird tweeting 117 degrees left from directly in front. I really like the mathematics, but I think from this viewpoint maybe that Ambisonics did not take off for music is really not so hard to understand and was maybe not even a miscarriage of justice. The failure of one point or quasi one point stereo (*Blumlein or ORTF) in the USA was a big error. But maybe the failure of Ambisonics for music as a practical matter at home was not. That said, I do wish that there were at least a few SACDs that showed Ambisonics at its best for playback on five channels. Just so one had a demo! How can it be that no one has run such a thing up? Second, the SOudnbfield mike really does seem to me to be exceptionally low in coloration. I wish it were more widely used just for (one point) stereo. Third, it is really too bad that the one place where Ambisonics could help out in commonplace daily life--namely, in how to mix stereo to three (or more) frontal channels, that there is not a cheap easy simple standalone unit to do just that. Instead people (E.g. J. Bongiorno) are marketing devices which as far as I can tell do this in a simplistic and wrong way while the real answer is practically unavailable., Such a device cheap would be a real service to the world of audio. But like almost everything else in the Ambisonics world, it hardly exists. Unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money on Meridian, it really does not exist as a product at all, unless I am missing something, If I am, please let me know. Robert _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
