On 29 Oct 2012, at 20:42, Stefan Schreiber <st...@mail.telepac.pt> wrote:
> Ronald, most if not all (classical) recordings where I am participating are > done in a way that they could be issued in 5.1 (or say 5.0) surround, namely > several Pentatone recordings, and even the more recent television/radio stuff. > > I would guess that every good orchestra recording is done in this way (which > means could be issued in "2.0"/stereo, 5.1 or other formats). Yes, that may be true, but the vast majority of these recordings is done in a way of the "one microphone per speaker" mentality, not in the "let's record a sound field" mentality. So while it may be surround, it's not Ambisonics, and it's the latter that I'm interested in, and not some hare-brained system like traditional 5.1 recording. The only interest I have in 5.1 is as a delivery format for G-format predecoded Ambisonics. But 5.1 outside of movies pretty much is dead in the water for music, a handful of boutique recordings aside, which really don't matter. What we need is a catalog in the 10s or 100s of thousands of recordings, and recordings with the artists the general public wants to hear, not a few boutique recordings that a few surround sound fanatics are interested in mostly due to the fact that they are surround recordings, not because they crave the music and artists who were recorded. These boutique recordings are more or less nothing but technology demonstrations, and thus are mostly only of technical interest. > My hint to Dolby Surround was ironic (as many guys on this list oppose > anything from Dolby), but you have to admit that there exist many (matrixed) > Dolby surround mixes for film use. (And also and very obviously discrete 5.1 > surround mixes, which are superior.) I don't oppose anything from Dolby, but I dislike the company because they have more than once sunk good technology because it didn't fit their specific business interests, and have thus been a major roadblock for progress. If they were to pick up the baton and would advocate the right changes, I'd be all for them. Likely that would only happen if they could hold a ton of key patents and charge everyone massive licensing fees for them; otherwise they don't seem to be interested. They rather go and invent an octagon "wheel", patent it and use their influence to peddle it, than use the round wheel they can't charge royalties for. > UHJ works, but it is also a matrixed format and arguably not a complete > surround format, because 2 cannels are not enough. (I would say 5.1 is > better, this doesn't seem to be an opinion.) > Secondly, the UHJ system should have some issues even in stereo, because of > the matrix. Of course, 5.1 (as G-format) would be better than UHJ, but 5.1 isn't widely used for music, while stereo is. So unless that changes, we can either ship RIGHT NOW UHJ into the stereo music channel, or we can bitch and whine that there is no surround recordings on the market, because there's no proper distribution channel for the format that would be ideal. My approach is: use what's available. If it's available, more and more people have an opportunity to discover what good surround sound that's more than an SFX button on a receiver can do, and with that demand can build up. The more demand, the bigger the catalog, the bigger the catalog, the more commercial interest to make things better, i.e. to eventually provide a better delivery format than a stereo container. That's what I mean with baby steps. Start with what's available now, instead of waiting for the glorious future that never comes, because people try to skip a few steps at the beginning. Also, UHJ opens the door for guerrilla tactics, i.e. sound engineers with a passion for surround can make UHJ mixes for people who ask for a stereo mix, because UHJ is stereo compatible. So surround mixes can slide into popular items without explicitly being asked for by the producers or artists. If they like the mix in stereo, they won't care/notice that it's actually UHJ. > Write to Apple that they should publish 5.1 (and < maybe > .AMB files etc.), > and forget about old compromises. No, because there's no interest in pushing something without perceived demand, particularly if it's something that's too complicated to explain to a non-technical audience in a sound bite. > (You can continue to "promote" UHJ, but I am sure this won't fly because you > say people ideally would have to record via soundfield mics. If you mix a UHJ > recording from spot mics, you also could mix to 5.1 ...) UHJ, 5.1 are delivery formats. What matters is the recording and mixing technique. If the 5.1 mix is done with an ambisonic panner, then the resulting product is G-Format, and thus acceptable. If it's done with pan-potting, it's an abomination, or if one's friendly, just an SFX, but certainly not proper surround sound. >> Frankly, who cares about the 3 dozen high-end surround recordings being made? >> > > This is exactly the attitude which is the road to nowhere. > > There are real progresses in surround sound/audio, a 3D Audio codec (codecs) > should be part of MPEG-H by 2013 or 2014. (At least cinema use, I gave > them my opinion that there should be more areas.) I'm not sure if you're so dense or what. The advances made at the technical front have ABSOLUTELY ZERO bearing on the market place. What matters isn't what's technically possible, what matters is what's available in the (virtual) store shelves. Object Oriented programming was available 1978/1980. It wasn't used until NeXT started pushing ObjC and SUN tried to rip it off unsuccessfully with Java (which barely qualifies because for several iterations of the language it missed key elements of a real OOP language), and despite NeXT, and even despite OS X, OOP languages became only truly mainstream with later iterations of the Java language and with the success of iOS devices and the resulting surge in ObjC programming. (And even ppl now use OOP languages, a lot of the code written is bad, and thus doesn't count as OOP.) So we're talking about a 30 year delay, and that's with technology that's not even targeted at end users, but at a highly technical audience one would expect to flock to a superior technology. Consumers will not ask for technical things, they will ask for a repeat of an experience they had sometime and thought was great. That's how I got introduced to Ambisonics: heard a UHJ Nimbus recording on a Meridian system. Needless to say it was the intolerably bad UHJ with the intolerably horrible 1st order Ambisonics without hight, which is so bad that according to some it should be buried and never ever talked about again. Except it was so bad I never wanted to go back to Stereo again. So I want others to have similarly horrible experiences, such that they, too, don't want stereo anymore, either. UHJ is good enough for a start, a binaural decoder could easily become part of iOS and Android devices by means of a custom playback app. Instant surround sound access for the masses. >> I wasn't at the concert, and 99.99% of listeners weren't there either, and >> nobody knows or cares if the first violin was indeed 2 feet to the left of >> where we think it is. >> > > But that is not the point or "sense" of surround. Reveals several wrong > assumptions from your part. (A surround recording can sound way more > realistic than any stereo recording. The question of "exact localization" > within the recording is for musicians - I am one - probably not the most > important issue. It is still utmost important to have a credible soundstage > at all, because it helps to separate instruments/voices.) You make my point. UHJ, at least for "traditional" music that's stage oriented, provides a credible sound stage and realistic ambience. Could it be better, by ditching the matrixing, by going to HOA, etc.? Of course! But that's not the point. The point is, that the infrastructure for UHJ-stereo distribution is here RIGHT NOW, while for anything else it may be there at some indefinite point in the future, provided there is perceived consumer demand for it. >> Surround sound will not progress as long as the people involved refuse to be >> part of a process that on the commercial side takes baby steps, and instead >> insist on "certain minimal standards" that constitute too big of a leap of >> ever being considered by commercial interests, both in the music industry >> and in consumer electronics. > > As said: 5.1 is completely etablished. Yes, for movies. > And nowadays you could distribute a file which offers a surround and stereo > version combined, provided your beloved iCompany would offer any surround > recordings at all. It's not just a matter of the iCompany, it's also a matter of Amazon, Google, M$, Sony, Pandora, etc. None of them do it, and that's the point: they won't, because music listening is portable devices, car radios, etc. all of which is stereo oriented. UHJ fits in with that, it's stereo compatible, but it can introduce surround through the backdoor. UHJ flags could be included in the ID3 tag, even with a magic cookie in the Comment field, if no other option exists, and custom playback apps could be placed in the various app stores for free. It's a solution that doesn't require vendor cooperation. Once the downloads of these apps start picking up, and more of the catalog is UHJ encoded, and people start asking for more, then making a pitch for > (In this sense, I don't see any real compatibility problems. You can > distibute UHJ and hope that some people by the decoders/software > loudspeakers. Or you distribute a combine surround/stereo file, which is not > such an issue at all. And even if not, a surround recording/filecan be > downmixed to 2.0. In fact, POA could be downmixed to UHJ stereo...) Of course, but given that we're not even getting lossless compression for stereo, what do you think the chances are we're getting 2+5.1 channel audio files? Think of the bandwidth requirements etc. when you're talking billions of downloads... ...not going to happen unless there's actually tangible consumer demand. > Just a few hints from a person supposedly "refusing to take part", and > actually I am even not insulted by your rhetorical attempts. In a certain > way I do a lot more than Apple, because they do exactly nothing in this field > even if they easily could. If they don't distribute surround sound, it din't > have anything to do with a stereo compatible format like UHJ which is > supposedly surround in two channels and backward-compatible. You can have a > combined surround/stereo version in other and better ways, as easily shown > above. ;-) Again, you mix up what's technically possible and what's feasible in the marketplace. Neither you nor I make the decisions that create the commercial reality. So we can either accept what is the reality right now, and see how we can get what we want (Ambisonic surround sound) through the back-door right now, or we can wait for some magical moment in the future when the marketplace has caught up with our requirements for multi-channel audio distribution. I prefer the first of these options, because it will hasten, even if only slightly, the arrival of the second of these two, and it will give me something to listen to in the interim. Ronald _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
