RedGTiVR6

So let me see if I understand this better. It's reminding me of the new Bose gimmick...with the 3 front speakers that should give lifelike surround sound in ANY room.

basically, it's a theory based on placing speakers closer together than you would in a stereophonic set-up and then you rely on an ambiophonics processor to manipulate the sound.

So, instead of having your L and R speakers out at the points of the triangle creating your stage width while you try and firm up your center image, you would have your L and R speakers much closer together creating your center image and you would have to create your boundaries...quite the opposite of stereophonic sound reproduction. Not sure that made any sense, sitting here talking with my husband it made sense...lol

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RedGTiVR6

FYI - An interesting read: http://www.stereotimes.com/comm0899.shtml

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durwood

You nailed it! It's different when you first listen to it and I don;t expect anyone to just say screw stereo, but it sure makes you think. The more you listen you will decide if you like it or not and if you are like me will flip back and forth to compare the two. If you like listening to headphones, but don't like the "sound is trapped in your head" feel, this externalizes it and you don't get that feeling.

Stereo vs Ambiphonics = "They-are-here" vs "you-are-there"

Ambiophonics strives to take stereo, ambisonics (binaural)/surround sound, mono and combine them for the best of everything. Depending on how far you take it with adding ambient speakers will determine if you increase the stage width from 120 to 180 to a full 360, but this is on a circular flat plane. www.filmaker.com is experimenting with improving this to a full half sphere around our heads for complete surround sound down via ambiophonics, not dolby although SACD and DVD-A would be perfect mediums to take it past 2 channel.

Then there is the even newer concepts of VBAP. Not much info on that one, but I think it takes it even one step further. Abmolech probably knows more about that then I do, but I'm trying to understand that as well.

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jiggad369

Any updates on this?

durwood

There was an update to the Choueiri impulse file. It's now called BACCH. There is some addition or change to the bandpass filtering going on I think. The link is screwed up on their website but the file is there. Try this link.

www.ambiophonics.org/files/Choueiri/BACCH4096v3_46rmC2x2.wav

There will be a new RACE version coming out as well it appears.

Also of interest, a musicians (Howard Moscovitz) take on it is located here.

http://www.electro-music.com/forum/forum-164.html

He works closely with Robin Miller and came up with his own experimental VST for it. Keep in mind that this is all experimental stuff and if something doesn't sound right, don't write it off just yet. How long how people been trying to sqeeze whatever they can out of Stereophonic? 70 years?

I'm using it in my car right now for several months. This is one of those things I would love to gush about, but I think it is best for others to experiment on their own and form their own ideas.

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jiggad369

SO you basically just insert this in the VST chain and forget about it? How would I know what is the optimal setting?

durwood

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.

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jiggad369

Yeah, I will def. play around with it.

But one question. Would you mind showing me some pics of your speaker setup in your car. I know this will only work with 20 degree separation but how would that be achievable in a car??

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durwood

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.

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jiggad369

Wow, nice design! But wouldn't you be sitting in the driver seat and be off axis? Because I thought in order to do it right, the speakers have to be right in front of you in a 20 degree config?

durwood

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.

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jiggad369

The more you go on, the more I'm learning. lol. Thank you sir!

So basically, as long as the front two channels are close together, this method will work? What would happen to the High freq. response since you're off axis on both channels?

What would happen to mid and sub bass? Since they're not in front of you? The only solution I see is using fullrange drivers uptop but still how would you treat the bass frequencies?

Also, like what you have done, do we have to use more than 2 drivers on each side? This would mean that a lot of cost would go into drivers if we're dealing with buying 6 or 8 of them unless you go with HI-Vi or Tangband drivers.

P.S.

Durwood,

I really need your help with something else very important also, if you have time. I bought a VIA 1.5ghz board last year which I wanted to use for this whole project. I plan on using a Audiomulch, RS-MET X-over, KarmaFX EQ, and Voxengo Delay as my processing config. I'm concerned that this might or might not be supported by the board. I tried running a 3 and a 4-way setup using all of this on my laptop (T1350 @ 1.83 ghz) along with RR outputting through Winamp and the cpu was running at 100% but nothing seemed slowed down. I don't know why all of these VST host programs pre occupy the entire CPU power but Audiomulch didn't seem to run as slow as VSTHost or Console (hence the reason why I'm choosing it). I guess it just reserving space to process the VST programs? My question is, do you think the VIA 1.5 will support it or should I opt for something like the following, which is cheaper and more cpu power?

http://www.evertek.com/viewpart.asp?auto=33246&cat=35
http://www.evertek.com/viewpart.asp?auto=41007&cat=35

or a C2D mATX board with 1.6-2.0 C2D CPU? Maybe something like this?...

http://www.intel.com/Products/Deskto...O-overview.htm

durwood

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.


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.


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.


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.

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jiggad369

I will try to test it out as much has I can. I'm just trying to understand it, first. lol. I'm still not sure how to make it work.

As for the Carpc, I already bought the following board. I'm just not sure which CPU would work with that board AND a M2-ATX. I don't want to spend any more money on parts.

http://www.intel.com/Products/Deskto...O-overview.htm

The reason why I went with this board was because Intel is reliable and the board is made of high quality parts. PLUS it has firewire which means more options for ASIO hardware.

jiggad369

Hey Durwood,

Any developments in this?

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