Beyond stereo?

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A good idea for a topic.  Is the future beyond stereo multi-channel either in its current implementations or future varieties with even more channels?  Is it binaural with the proliferation of headphone use and personal sound which doesn't include people having a listening room?  Is it some simulation software that can do genuine 3D of one sort or another?

 

My fear is it will end up like AVR receivers that have a dozen or more format variants yet none are much more effective than others. 

 

Or perhaps basic stereo with a few software enhancements will continue to be the overwhelmingly dominant musical distribution format. 

 

I have seen several people say new formats that are successful were never about better sound quality.  They were always successful due to decreased cost and increased convenience.  Any genuine improvements in sound quality were incidental. I would say the one sure time when that was not true is the switchover to stereo from mono.  Stereo added some important new dimensions that were qualitative as well as quantitative.  The change in quality was perceived by music purchasers.  Once you heard even okay stereo then mono just won't do.  Hasn't been the case for adding additional channels. 

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7 minutes ago, STC said:

 

 

I think it will be useful if you go through the technical papers in Ralph's website as he already answered them. No one is saying stereo is perfect. Ambiophonics XTC teaches you how  to extract what's already in stereo.  In there you can find AES papers, blind tests, XTC filter comparison and etc.

 

Brings to mind a question I had about the Aria3D demos.  Impressively 3D at times, but I rather doubted the position of the sound images with this process actually were the position of the sound source in the original recording. Is there some algorithm you could uncover to enlighten as to whether the 3D positions are related to actual positions of the original recording?

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Some other articles which are relevant to the topic.

 

http://www.desena.org/multichannel/Ambisonics_2_Int_Symp_2010.pdf

 

Describes and compares two versions of Johnston and Lam's perceptual sound field methods and Ambisonics.

 

http://www2.ensc.sfu.ca/~ljilja/cnl/guests/cvetkovic.pdf

 

A powerpoint presentation of related material.  The video of that presentation is embedded below.

 

 

 

Finally a paper from earlier this year.

 

http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/813317/13/hacihabiboglu_etal2017.pdf

 

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15 hours ago, semente said:

 

i don't think you read Ralph's quote.

 

Up until recently I used to live in front of this concert hall; you can see the single pair of mics is hanging from the canopy:

 

 

This setup was used for broadcasting live concerts by many radios all over Europe, and some still continue to do so.

It sounds a bit like...live.

 

I agree that in stereo recordings, all the ambiance would not be captured.

And unfortunately many record companies close- and multi-mic and those recordings will have even less ambience.

But if the stereo recording did not capture all the ambience then there is no way to play it back with or without convolution/processing.

 

Pentatone multi-mic'ed Sa Chen in that same hall.

I listened to her play the week they made the recording and I can't really say that I like what they did in my two-channel setup.

Have a look at Pentatone's mic setup:

 

 

 

This sounded as if everything was full left or full right over headphones.   Only when she speaks is there much of a center.

 

 

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8 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Is this Youtube a binaural recording?

 

 

I don't know.  I would say not from the sound of it.

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In the other MCH thread someone asked if they had an extra pair of speakers and amps what was a good path to get a MCH setup going.  Here was my reply to that:

 

Well somewhere you need a Dolby Digital surround decoder or DTS or better. 

 

If just for kicks and sticking your toe in the waters at this point, I would suggest hopping on the local Craigslist and finding a cheap AVR with digital input and pre-outputs.  One should be available now or soon for less than $100.  The newer the better, and better if it has HDMI.  Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, and Harman Kardon are usually good suspects among common brands. 

 

So use your current amps up front, and your extra amp in the rear.  Use the line level outputs of the AVR to feed the amps.  So the AVR becomes surround decoder and pre-amp.  Many (most?) will have among its options decoding for a 4 channel system. 

 

Now AVRs are unwieldy beasts with likely a dozen or more baffling formats supported.  All become almost their own little world to operate.  Eventually from the initial chaos you will settle on one or two or so methods of use, and all the other stuff will be ignored.  You want Dolby Digital surround as a minimum though.  DD is 5.1 channels of sound with each channel being compressed something like MP3.  It can share available bits across channels so it works a bit better than MP3. 

 

You could add a center channel maybe a conventional good box monitor speaker.   I suggest if the initial trial is encouraging at all you do get a center channel.  You could add a subwoofer or not. The center channel might be powered by the center channel amp in the AVR sufficiently to taste the waters of multi-channel. 

 

Obviously all this is a low buck approach since you have some of the more expensive bits just sitting there begging to be used.

 

The cleaner version.  Find an Audio Video pre-amp.  Use it as a multi-channel pre-amp.  Hook everything up and get a center channel.  Oddly, without amps and all the other stuff in a AVR, the AVP usually costs 3 times or more money.  The AVP is therefore not commonly seen on craigslist or at all. 

 

Another possibility, is getting a cheap recording USB audio interface with at least 6 or 8 channels.  Feed it digitally and use as a preamp.  I don't know right off hand of an easy convenient way to do the decoding for surround in the computer for most formats though it should be possible.  If you could do your surround decoding in the computer and feed the resulting MCH format out the audio interface you have it made pretty clean and simple.   Hopefully someone else will tell us the easy way to do that as I need to myself.

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Ajax then responded:

 

9 hours ago, Ajax said:

I just purchased a second hand Emotiva UMC-200 Preamp/Processor. These units are about 4 years old but have all the digital inputs and formats you will ever need. They sound great and are around US$400 used. Just add your existing power amps and speakers plus sub and centre speaker. Not expensive and a lot of fun.

Yes this is the next best step up from an AVR.  A friend has one and they are very good.  I would add the UMC-200 has some useful parametric EQ functions and works more simply than many AVRs. 

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2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

I bet those  demos sounded spectacular!

Yeah I would like to hear that demo especially over Soundlabs.  Quite the setup the Isomike. 

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21 hours ago, STC said:

One of the earliest video of Blumlein's stereo. 

 

https://youtu.be/QnbOocJ6e-I

 

 

Was this your intention.  The link you have goes to some injury attorney's video.