I read the digest, so this may be a repetition from someone else's post I'm yet
to see - if so I apologise.
Just as a point of clarification (I'm not picking on your post John, it's just
a convenient one to reply to from the digest), ambisonic recording does not
mean just a flashy way of saying stereo, it is true 3D capture of sound, width,
depth and height information. You get (from a first order microphone) XYZ
vector components and an overall pressure component (W).
If you want to know more, I'd recommend http://www.ambisonic.net/, the
wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics is not too bad, but
errors have been known to creep in from time to time. Some people complain that
ambisonics does not capture ITD information as it is a co-incident technique
(think MS in 3D), and while this is true, ITD information can be recreated in
the reconstructed soundfield, by inserting one Standard Head into it with ears
on either side. It should also be noted that ambisonic recording and playback
techniques have undergone significant psychoacoustic optimization over the
years.
As for playback, these days with free tools you can render from ambisonics to
standard stereo (or even mono if you wish), to a standard quad arrangement and
using only computer grade monitors you can still get a decent sense of
envelopment. I know of more than one pro sound effects group which record in
ambisonic mode and render in 5.1 or 7.1 etc for clients. I can easily imagine
that film studios would love the possibility of doing their audio production
once and delivering in any format from now and into the future. It's not so
hard to do these days, and I would encourage anyone to try it out, it's pretty
impressive stuff!
Cheers,
Paul
--- In "hartogj" <> wrote:
>
> Hi Umashankar,
> With my "really really real" remark, I was poking a little fun, but not at
> you, and not at your microphone array, but rather at marketing schemes in
> general. Like all the basic recorders out there using the adjective
> "professional." Of course "true three dimensional" is just a flashy way of
> implying it a capability of producing a stereo recording. Whether the use of
> "true" in that context is misleading or not will subjective to the individual
> users perspective.
>
> I highly respect your work, and I apologize for contributing to this
> discussion in a way that brought you some embarrassment.
>
> John Hartog
> http://rockscallop.org/
>
>
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