On Wed, Jul 03, 2013 at 01:15:58PM -0400, Daniel Courville wrote: > Two instances of Harpex-B, each one on a separate output bus, > in shotgun mode, each decoding to eight shotguns, using the > "Cube" preset as a starting point.
Mmmmm.... Readers of this list will know me as one of those who, whenever Ambisonic file formats etc. are discussed, will spoil the fun by stating that there's no life below third order or so. And of course I'm still of that opinion - if you want a system able to emulate whatever speaker layout and working over an extended listening area things start to work at third order. But that doesn't mean that first order doesn't work. It can work incredibly well in good conditions. Ten days ago I spent an extended weekend at the music conservatory of Pesaro (Italy), where David Monacchi (who is a teacher at the conservatory) has built an electronic music studio featuring a 3rd order periphonic Ambisonic system using 21 speakers. The room has had extensive acoustical treament, the only remaining problems are some low frequency room modes (bass traps are being installed to deal with those). I got involved for specifying the ambisonic speaker layout and decoder. David has also made field recordings (Ambisonic, stereo and bin- aural) in primary forests in various places around he globe. These are absolutely fascinating - I you were at the first AMB convention in Graz you will remember his presentation. I had already made a third order Ambdec preset for this room. But since we had little real third order material to test with, we spent a lot of time listening to David's field recordings and to some others he made recently using an ST450. David was using several instances of Harpex to render those. This worked, but neither of us were really satisfied with the results. So I created a first order Ambdec preset using a subset (12) of the available speakers. The results were astonishing. Suddenly there was depth, perspective, involvement, and an uncanny sense of realism. It took both of us half a minute or so to adapt to it - something that has been reported before. But after that short time it was really a completely different experience. In short: the Ambisonic magic only works when things are done right. Using virtual shotgun mics pointing at some arbitrary collection of speakers (or even a near optimal one as in this case) may produce some effect, but it doesn't even come close to what can be achieved. And in fact it has little or nothing to do with real Ambisonic reproduction. 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 [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
