No I haven’t read The Order of Things. But I’ll add it to my list. I’m writing up at the PhD at the moment … trying to avoid reading any new material! I’m sure you know the deal. There’s an element of ‘cleverness’ in this painting … I’d call it ‘technical cleverness’ … about how perspective has been mapped. There’s no doubt that a majority of digital art is dominated by a ‘technically clever’ mindset (often as the expense of any expressive resonance). I’ll be interested to read how Foucault’s interprets it.

Yes it seems I had a ‘brain fart’. The source file is Ambisonic and the pre-processed file is for an Ambiophonic ‘PanAmbio’ arrangement of speakers.

The speaker geometry I am using for this is a narrow rectangle, 30cm. across (between speaker centres) and about 2.5 metres between the front and rear pair.

Additional information to Raph’s http://www.ambiophonics.org/ can be found here:
http://wwwnew.isvr.soton.ac.uk/FDAG/vap/html/sd.html
http://ambisonic.info/info/ricardo/ambiophonics.html
http://www.filmaker.com/papers.htm
http://www.princeton.edu/3D3A/

My present filters are more optimised for intensity stereo than the pure X-talk cancelling filters described, which are aimed more towards recordings using some sort of microphone which includes a real, or simulated head shadow effect, and interaural delay, This should make them well suited to Ambisonic recordings. How it it is that it seems to reproduce height is a bit of a mystery, but I have some crackpot theories to work on..

David.

Do you mean ‘ambisonic’ instead of ‘ambiophonic’ in the second paragraph above … I’m confused (I’m not familiar with ambiophonics at all).

I can take the blame for both soundofspace.com and the UA format … both are my work. I know it is all under-documented. I’m a one-man-band and open-source support keeps failing me.

I think you are right about the difference between ambisonically recorded vs encoded sounds. Whilst the maths for encoding point sources of sound ambisonically appears quite simple, actually encoding the behaviour of sound in space is very complex (and requires pretty good knowledge of psychoacoustics).

You are right that I haven’t tried it….. but …. yes OK … I will try it on the iPhone app.

It took me most of a day searching the mass of Ambiophonic ‘stuff’, and trying various audio editors, to discover in the small print the simple fact that renaming a file from .amb to ,wav enables it to be read into AudioMulch and that c:/wvunpack.exe y:/jhroy_rain-over-the-tent.ua will make the four channel wav file y:/jhroy_rain-over-the-tent.wav

It does not seem that anyone has tried, or is likely to try, an alternative way of decoding Ambiophonic files

http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-49067.html
“I have recently made an Ambisonic to Pan-Ambiophonic-thingy decoder. I hope you can try this Pre-processed files as you are probably one of few people set up to do so.
Stereo-dipole – front channel 1.2 , rear channel.5,6, Channel 3.4 empty.
Source file from here:
http://soundofspace.com/ambisonic_files/58
My dual Ambiophonic file here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7MX2W3FR
AmbiFusion-DW-jhroy_hot-air-balloons.aac
You should hear 3D ie. including height. ”

Ambisonic recordings are just fine, but the idea that the maths supports the idea that one can recreate the soundfield, at even for a small blob of space, by making standing waves and interference patterns , is either wishful thinking, or somewhat dishonest. The process is irreversible, IMO.

David.