Well, most of Ambisonics is in the public domain now, so what we mean by
a "commercial future" is not what we might once have hoped it would be.
A future *in* commercial products? Certainly, now and in the future. A
commercial future as itself? Probably not.
Today the technology is probably more widespread and widely used than it
has ever been before, in both commercial and non-commercial projects and
products, but it's inside things and behind things, it's not in the
foreground. It's not a mass distribution format, because there have
always been far more powerful forces controlling what those are, and
after a bad start we've never got past the chicken-and-egg of both
having content out there and decoders to play it on. There's the vague
possibility of a computer-based player or format but to fly it would
need wide agreement within the Ambisonic community and simplicity. But
Ambisonics can be a production format: you can make B-Format recordings,
for example, and then transcode them to whatever surround configuration
is flavour of the month as required, and no record company agreement is
required.
Thus most of all, to me, Ambisonics is, and can be, a production tool -
or set thereof, which is rather what I have always considered it to be.
I was never enamoured of the idea of trying to get record companies to
endorse the technology, we never had the commercial muscle of a Dolby to
do that - and anyway look how (un)successful surround audio formats have
been with record company involvement. I was always more interested in
getting engineers and producers to use Ambisonics in the studio as
outboard gear and tools, and had a certain amount of success in that
area. I think we were also bogged down by people thinking that
Ambisonics was just a special microphone - and however wonderful the
Soundfield mic is, it has application in a tiny fraction of commercial
recordings for anything other than ambience under the mix. That is
probably no longer the issue it was.
Ambisonics can be something you use in the studio or wherever, and few
people know it's in use - any more than they know what brand of reverb
unit is being used. Currently that use is limited in mainstream music
because there is no series of plug-ins for Pro Tools. But even if there
was, the fact is that audio-only surround music has not taken off
seriously to date and it's hard to know if it ever will: in the
mainstream, surround is used with images, not on its own. However the
technology can be exceptionally useful in multimedia applications, such
as movie soundtracks, gaming and other areas, both in the environment
itself and for soundtracks and audio content.
Of course there are plenty of areas where Ambisonics is, can and will be
used as itself, and I see these primarily as artistic areas: art
installations, theatrical work, audio environments etc; possibly theme
parks and other commercial audio environments... not mainstream but very
interesting, exciting and effective.
--Richard E
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