[LAU] more than 4 channels for listening? Really?

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 03/01/2010 02:38 AM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:

> In our last summer concert which I helped organize, and the winter
> concert a couple of weeks ago which I organized I played a couple of
> "oldies", 4 channel pieces by John Chowning using an 8 speaker ring and
> 4 virtual speakers rendered through 3rd order ambisonics.
>
> The highly subjective non-scientific impression is that it does sound
> better than just 4 speakers. If the decoder is properly calibrated then
> your 4 virtual speakers will be in the exact right position which helps.
> Plus the sources are "diffuse" as you imagine.
>
> The summer concert was done outdoors in the backyard of our building
> (ie: no real room to interfere with the spatialization cues) and some
> people claimed it was the best rendering of Turenas they had ever
> heard[*]

funny. i did a concert for the DEGEM last december, also with an 
ambisonic rig, and one of the pieces played happened to be... turenas :)

yes, it sounded excellent here, too. then folkmar hein (who had 
suggested the chowning piece) had me mix it to stereo, and then to mono, 
and it still sounded great... that doppler shift stuff is sooo robust!
but that piece gave me one particular headache: the phasiness artefacts 
were very apparent, to the point that we decided to apply random 
staggering to the delays (which i had measured to within a few cms, 
sigh!). that fixed it.

i'd love to try such a rig outdoors, i can imagine how nice it could be.

> -- Fernando
>
> [*] this may also have to do with the fact that we open the grounds at
> 7pm for picnic'ing and the concert starts at 8pm - with proper amounts
> of cheese, bread and wine by 8pm _everything_ sounds _much_ better :-).

ooh yes. i wonder what elysium could be had for the alcoholic equivalent 
of, say, 20 meters of monster cable ;-D