Robert - You are certainly correct in that the general public has never heard of Ambisonics. But then they haven't heard the names of many of the technologies that fuel the entertainment devices that they purchase, either.
> Is there really any commercially available Ambisonic material? About all I can think of are the recordings from Nimbus records. But there were a few hundred Ambisonics recordings downloadable from ambisonia, which is now sadly inactive. < Is anyone actually sellng higher order Ambisonic products? Just a few. There is the Blue Ripple decoder: http://www.blueripplesound.com/products The Harpex decoder: http://harpex.net/ The "Eigenmike", which is effectively a 4th or 5th-order soundfield microphone http://www.mhacoustics.com/mh_acoustics/Eigenmike_microphone_array.html The Visisonics microphone array: www.visisonics.com Some of the above is a bit like space-age technology that trickled down from NASA research into daily life. > suppose I wanted to hear say a decoded version of UHJ recordings <>? Not as easily as one might wish. Perhaps the easiest way would be to download the Blue Ripple transcoder to convert it to B-format, and then play the resulting file in any of several players. There is considerable academic interest. Yes, I know, that's not the same as commercial interest but it is a sign of activity. Back in the 70s when Ambisonics was first appearing there were between 1 and 4 AES publications a year on the subject. The rate of publications has ramped up, especially since 1990, and in 2010 there were 60 publications via the AES. Ambisonics is really a very active area of audio research. ----- Original Message ---- From: Robert Greene <gre...@math.ucla.edu> To: Surround Sound discussion group <sursound@music.vt.edu> Sent: Fri, March 30, 2012 7:35:10 PM Subject: Re: [Sursound] Can anyone help with my dissertation please? I am curious about this concept of revival of Ambisonics in the past ten years. Is there really any commercially available Ambisonic material? Is anyone actually selling higher order Ambisonic products? I realize that of course anything at all can be implemented on computers. But suppose I wanted to hear say a decoded version of UHJ recordings of the past? (I can do this--I have a processor--but I mean for a person outside the field). Could you do this by just pushing a few buttons? Is anyone out in the real world actually hearing any Ambisonic material at all, people outside the group of people interested in it in a serious quasi professional (or really professional) way? My impression is that the general public, even the audio public, has never heard of it, even now. I think the revivial of interest is mostly just among people like the people here. Am I missing something? Robert On Fri, 30 Mar 2012, Fons Adriaensen wrote: > On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 12:52:22PM -0700, Robert Greene wrote: > >> Surround in music has never been a hit in any form and it still >> is not. Moreover most music is not really enhanced by it in the minds of >> most people. Orchestral music benefits enormously--most of what you hear >> in an orchestra concert is all around you--but most people do not listen >> to that kind of music. And canned artificial music , well, surround of >> any kind hardly matters. > > Correct. And if you want to use Ambisonics for anything beyond > listening to classical music, e.g. to compete with 5.1 for movie > sound, you need higher order. Which was near impossible or at least > horribly complicated and expensive with analog technology. > The revival of the past ten years or so is largely the result of > higher order becoming possible in practice, along with an interest > from telecom companies rather than music producers. > > Ciao, > > -- > FA > > A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. > It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris > and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow) > > _______________________________________________ > Sursound mailing list > Sursound@music.vt.edu > https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound > _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
