Why is "3D" audio so expensive compared to video

[john dozier]

Let me start by saying that I enjoy a rich "3D" audio experience (soundstage width and depth)but I have had to spend a substantial sum of money to achieve this "3D" effect. I now see phones with 3D video record and playback for around $200. It would seem that audio, being a less complex and lower bandwith waveform, would cost less to reproduce with full spatial information, yet this is not the case, with an audio system capable of resolving the spatial information costing many thousands of dollars. Is it just that few people are interested in this kind of resolution? I would appreciate other views on this topic. Kindest regards

 

[funkle]

I think that people, even though they may not realize it, are much more sensitive to audio than video irregularities. For instance, when watching a video (like a higher quality web stream for instance), you can tolerate occasional video dropouts or stutter, but if the audio was stuttering, it would be intolerable.

 

Maybe we just know that recorded video, even if the best possible 3D, is not even close to reality, so we tolerate a lot of flaws, knowing that we are looking through the glass into something our brain immediately knows is not reality. But audio, on the other hand is very close to reality, close enough that we could believe it is reality if our eyes were closed. So the bar is set much higher since we basically expect reality.

 

[john dozier]

I suspect that your observations are correct. There is also the problem of energy transformations. 3D video is still all electronic in nature, while audio has mechanical to electrical transducers on both the production and reproduction ends. These mechanical to electrical transformations are much more difficult to achieve with any kind of accuracy, thus much more expensive.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I was recently discussing something similar with a recording engineer. When you think about how long (centuries) people have had to perfect sound reproduction it's amazing that we are still so far away from reproducing the sound of live music.

 

 

 

[Paul R]

We have had several thousand years to perfect live music making, but only started on recorded sound about 120 years ago.

 

The question might be, with such a short time to work on sound reproduction, isn't it amazing how good it is?

 

 

[jbufka2]

I had a Carver C9 Sonic Hologram Generator years ago and with the right material it sounded awesome and very 3D. The stand-alone C9 was about $200 or so at the time if I recall, maybe a little more I guess. There's a track on Roger Water's 'Amused To Death' album where a team of horse move left to right across the soundstage to open a song. With the Sonic Hologram engaged the damn horses appear to start fifteen feet behind my left wall and end fifteen beyond the right, yes, beyond the physical walls. There were some other titles that were just as amazing, like Queen's song 'Flash', the whole self titled Yes album was good, and a few others. It worked best with certain mixers more than others. Problem was you had to move your speakers out into the room and place them unusually close together and sit directly in the middle, not a foot either way. The effect wasn't as good on most the my music and on some just plain wrong. So I ended up getting rid of the Carver but for a few tracks and albums the effect was simply AMAZING!