Thread: Ambiophonics - An experiment and a How to using foobar2000.

The x-volver has to be loaded up like the instructions on their page. You pick the impulse file that matches your sampling rate and load it into x-vovler. X-volver will not reload this file during a full startup shutdown, you must use hibernation or suspend.

The Mosc experimental one does not need the impulse file. Download the Left Right track on his website and play that on repeat to determine the spacing between the speakers that gives you the widest width possible. For distances less than 2M it's going to be less. In my car, the L&R speakers are almost touching. There isn't really any adjustment with his plugin. For right now, I'm using Time delay to account for off-center seating-but this is not optimal solution yet but it's still pretty good.

If you follow his block diagram however and build it using Voxengo Delay and Flipper.dll (180 inverter), you can make it somewhat adjustable. 0.06ms-0.12ms, depending on the spacing.

Audiomulch allows you to use the RACE version and adjust it.

Experiment with this in the house before trying it in the car so you know how it should work.

This is speaker-binaural.

Use your imagination. If you have no center console or can construct a new center console that could work. Most people are too lazy or not adventurous to attempt something like this. The best cosmetic way would probably involve rebuilding or constructing an entire new dash.

I chose a different route.

Stereophonic requires a symmetrical listening position with speakers at +/-30deg. We fail miserably at this in the car almost every time.

Although ambiophonics requires a somewhat central position, it still has more uniform tonality than stereo-no matter where you sit. It comes close to the tonality of mono. There are possible ways to increase this listening position spot.

I have a concept for allowing off-center adjustments but until I put it together and test it out, I have to settle for time alignment.

I think it is best to experiment instead of writing it off even if it's inside your house. You should listen to a proper stereo setup as well and compare to how bad a car trying to achieve stereo is terrible in comparison. The car audio version of stereo is actually panned mono because almost none of the requirements are met.

Originally Posted by jiggad369

So basically, as long as the front two channels are close together, this method will work?

With the preset VST plugins, its going to have a certain spot where the stage is extremely wide. Your head diameter and speaker spacing equally play a part in how wide this will sound. It's all in the geometry and trig math. You have to use the Left-Right width test tracks provided.

What would happen to the High freq. response since you're off axis on both channels?

Once you start learning how our brain and hearing mechanisms locate high frequencies you will see. Stereo typically ruins high frequencies via comb filtering. Pay attention to the difference in high frequency content above 3Khz-even being off center it's worlds better than stereo could hope for. Mono excels in high frequency content, because that is how our hearing/brain can handle it.

What would happen to mid and sub bass? Since they're not in front of you?

If you go to the ambiophonics site and read the white paper on RACE-look at the block diagram of how the processing works. Also compare this to a physical barrier. Can it successfully block these longer wavelengths? There is some other research work done in another area that is a derivative of ambiophonics. It's called Optimal Source Distribution. Not much info is available on this, I have some papers but they do not go into really good depth on how to work with it. I get the general idea, just the application of it is lacking. It's all still very new stuff though. It could be protected by Marantz too and that might be part of the reason why its hard to find more info.

Once you get the VST stuff up an running and setup a demo room, it is best to experiment and learn what you can and can't do or what works or doesn't work. Sometimes things are best explored this way. www.diyaudio.com has a thread or two on this as well for some peopels thoughts on it.

Also, like what you have done, do we have to use more than 2 drivers on each side?

Small drivers are easier to place due to size, however they lack output. I choose to do arrays to account for this. With arrays comes a nice side effect of lower distortion since all the drivers share the acoustic load. Cheap drivers by themselves might suck, but an array of them might put higher priced, single driver units to shame. Of cource you would see benefits to using better designed drivers, but is the cost justifiable? Again, best to experince this first hand. Arrays deserve a whole other topic. If you want to know more I will point you to condensed cliff notes version. Amplified concerts have been using the concept of arrays for years and years.

I currently use a mATX board with an AMD AM2 45W processor. LE-1640 IIRC. It's plenty powerful enough and runs on a M2-ATX power supply. The motherboard, CPU and RAM cost me just a hair over $100.

I prefer brands ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte. Just had good luck with them. I'm sure if that board has the features you desire and you can easily buy it, then it should be fine. I'm still using my Audiotrak PCI soundcard that makes this whole VST stuff a breeze to work with.