Richard G Elen wrote:
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.
That's why I brought up the topic of Mpeg-H, which is some real-world
effort to improve on 5.1.
http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-h
(3rd part)
Don't be shocked if Ambisonics won't be part of the chosen codec(s)
list. In any case, I did my best to recommend Ambisonics to be included
as much as possible. (Not just on the encoder-input side, also as codec.
Considering the significance of a "light" codec such say FOA for mobile
devices/headphones...)
Dolby and Auro-3D are obviously participating in this process. I got
into contact with some people involved. Because there was very little
support even from the Ambisonics community to promote Ambisonics, I have
serious doubts that Ambisonics - in some form - will be included as some
optional solution.
In any case, the Ambisonics community is free to define some own
standards. I thought it might be helpful to define some Ambsionics
standard up to 4th order, because of the channel count and some bitrate
restrictions. (I think .AMB is currently defined just up to 3rd order.
It could be helpful to define something like .AMB+, up to 4th order,
even better up to 6th order.)
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.
If we find some convincing ways to reproduce surround via headphones, a
market could easily be developped. Other people might want to listen to
(future) surround recordings via 6, "many" or zillions (WFS)
loudspeakers at home. This never will be a mass market, but if
(configuration independent) surround recordings can be done and
distributed via defined formats, people could chose how they would
listen to these recordings.
On current headphones, neither stereo nor 5.1 sound really convincing.
Therefore, the headphone companies and - some day - maybe even Apple
etc. should look for ways to defeat the in-head and listening-fatigue
effects on current devices. It is actually stunning that so few
companies have tried to improve the listening experience on headphones.
(Smyth Research, Beyer, some VR equipment, and who else?)
Head-tracking is currently getting really cheap, and could easily be
included into such products. (This is not what I or somebody else <
believe >, it is a fact.)
Best,
Stefan
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