At NAB this year Soundfield announced the SPS200. It basically a light small and cheap version of the big daddy Soundfield, which comes in a few flavours. I can’t wait to check this mic out and have a listen to it. I’ve used the larger Soundfield on a bunch of different projects over the last few years and I have to say that it’s one of my favourites, not only because it sounds great, but also because you’re getting a B-format recording as well.
Just checking around the web on this mic led me back to re-reading some of the great articles that are found on (or near) the ambisonic.net page. This is a general all round top page with links to tons of stuff on surround and ambisonics. The scalability of b-format recordings is one thing that I really like. To be able to take a recording and reproduce it on systems with 1 thru to 16 speakers is totally awesome. Once we can get over our obsession with having to have screens with our surround sound systems, it seems that ambisonics is the way ahead for immersive sound.
What isn’t widely know is that you can do B Format recordings, minus the Z channel ‘rather’ easily with an omni and a pair of fig 8s (In fact Josephson make a microphone that does just this, the 700s). This is handy because you dont need such specialist equipment, and the loss of Z is only a real hinderance to those who use periphonics. And, really, that ain’t many people.
Most of the writing i have seen about ambisonics, and any surround or stereo recording technique, bases the descritions upon microphones that conform to mathmatically ideal 1st order pickup patterns (omni, fig8, cardoid, et al). Of course, such microphones don’t exist. Thought I haven’t seen anything published about it, I am intersted to know how much these irregularities effect system performance (in terms of frequency dependant lobing). I am inclined to suspect that with more involved matrix decoding, and Fs dependant processing, these issues will be more significant than in conventional stereo pickups.
Misser M. Gerzon is brillant.
I thought you were pretty geeky, but then when you pulled out the term ‘periphonics’, I knew you were indeed the übergeek. Phil, what are they and how much do they cost by the dozen?
You sir, can type with umlauts. Geek.
Periphonics, and periphony, is that which relates to the vertical spatialisation of Sound. See Stockhausen, K. ‘Gesang der Jungling’, or ‘The 22.2 Multichannel Sound System and Its Application’ by Kimio Hamasaki, Koichiro Hiyama, and Reiko Okumura. 1995. AES Convention Paper 6406.