Anyone here using Ambiophonics for their dedicated setup? After many
years of trying with physical barrier between the speakers to
implement ambio I am now using DSP method and very much pleased with
the sound.

It did let me down on a few albums but overall excellent recordimgs
especially live Jazz and classical music sounded very much closer to
being there. I am wondering why it hasn't caught up. I find that
serious music lovers are so reluctant to even experiment with it and
hardly any serious discussing about it in RAHE. I find a lot of
critism but hardly anyone ever attempted to listen in a proper setup
other than a few quick trials using PC which hardly a true
representation of what it could do in a proper room setup.

I have seen some contributors compared it to Carver's Holo amplifiers
and others but could not find any constructive critism of the weakness
of Ambiophonics except for the sitting arrangements.

Looking forward to hear your feedback on Ambiophonics from you guys.

news:k2idv801lb4@news1.newsguy.com...

The simplest explanation of why it hasn't caught on is that it requires
additional complexity beyond normal stereo listening. You have to purchase
the components (not heavily advertised) to convert the signals, and you have
to sit in the sweet spot to make it work. Not real suitable for sharing the
playback experience.

Gary Eickmeier

It is not exactly true that we need a separate component. I have tried with IPod and PC using their ambiophonics software or players with good results. Currently, the low cost component is about US120 and it is good enough for my SACD player without any perceivable loss of resolution.

I have to agree that the best performance is sitting at the sweet spot but then even stereo setup requires a sweet spot. As I was listening to Sheffields Test CD -Walkaround, I noticed that the centre was way off to the left. I never noticed this flaw in the stereo setup before.

If our purpose of High Fidelity is the ability to bring out the best from the recording then why are we ignoring the obvious improvement. We forego the the convenience of integrated amplifiers for separate power and preamplifiers for the sake of higher fidelity. We are chasing higher bit rate in false hope of being able to recreate the true essence of live music in our room. Yet, we show resistance to Ambio.

Most of us listen to music alone. So the sweet spot is still the same and doesnt matter. For those who listen in a group then maybe Ambio is not the answer.

Looking at myself, I was very reluctant to try Ambio at the beginning  for the same reasons as stated by Gary. Furthermore, I thought it would make me an outcast in the world of audiophiles for the different approach.

So what are we really after? Musical enjoyment or the unwritten rules as to how we should achieve them?

<snipped for brevity>

In article <abbma1F34g...@mid.individual.net>,

I tried Ambiophonics a number of years ago. It reminded me too much of
the matrix-style "quadraphonic sound of the 1970's . Even with "Steering
Logic" And later with Dolby "Pro Logic", I was never fond of it.

It's not a question of " do we want High-Fidelity" but rather a question
of does a surround process further that goal. In my opinion it does not.
Sitting in a "sweet spot" is not realistic and sound emanating from 4
(or 5) channels is also not realistic, at least, not to me. SACD was
available with  multiple channels and even that didn't do what *I*
wanted it to do - which is to say reproduce the ambience and sound of a
good hall and do it realistically.

It's hard enough to get two-channel stereo right (again IMHO) without
going of f on a tangent to try to reproduce the ambience of a hall. I
used to have a device from Philips that had built-in "hall algorithms"
it purported to take the two-channel stereo signal in and output
4-channels with the sound of a certain hall overlaid on it. Some of the
"halls" it supposedly mimicked  were Carnegie Hall in NYC, The
Concergetbouw in Amsterdam, Royal Albert Hall in London, Symphony Hall
in Boston etc. I Thought it did a much better job than any Quadraphonic
or Ambiphonic or other multi-channel recording I ever heard. And still,
it had a problem. The recordings, unless they were recorded on an
acoustically dead soundstage - the way movie soundtracks are generally
recorded ('Ben-Hur's' soundtrack sounded great when "played" in Carnegie
Hall!) merely added the algorithm ambience to that of the hall where the
recording was made. Sometimes that was pleasant, and sometimes it
wasn't. If the Philips box hadn't died, I'd likely still be using it!

Don't misunderstand me here, I think Dolby or DTS sound for films is
excellent, it's just music that I don't think is well served by most of
the surround recording formats that I've heard.

It is always difficult to launch a new technology.  Going to Ambiophonics is like switching from black and white photography to color.  Many regard black and white photography as an art form and so it is with 60 degree stereo.  The other problem is that none of the mainstream magazines like Stereophile are explaining how to use Amnbiophonics.  When stereo first appeared in the fifties all the magazines had articles on how to set up the speakers, mount cartridges, run wires, get multiples tuners, check speaker polarity, etc.  Finally, if all one listens to are solo guitars or a guitar with a vocalist, one does not need Ambiophonics or stereo and indeed should listen using one speaker so as to avoid the combing, ITD,ILD, and pinna direction finding pattern distortions of the stereo loudspeaker arrangement.

The listening area limitation is a bit of an urban myth.  In stereo if you move forward you get a hole in the middle.  If you move back you get mono.  In Ambio if you move very far forward you get normal stereo, if you move back nothing much happens.  So I often have five listeners at once at my demos.  In stereo if you move to the side you pretty much hear just one channel. (That is one main reason why they needed the center speaker in 5.1 video.)  In Ambio if you move to the side you hear both channels clearly (great mono without combing) and this is true almost anywhere in the room.  With four speaker Ambiophonics you get a great feeling of space anywhere between the front and rear speaker pairs and in movies you still have front to rear localization.  Finally with the new personal hi-fi speakers like the Soundmatters foxl each viewer of a movie can have their own wireless speaker and sit anywhere they can see the screen. A common subwoofer supplies the bass for all.  (Imax used this trick years ago.)

Ralph Glasgal    

In response to Audio Empire,

In two channel Ambiophonics, no reprocessing takes place when we use a physical barrier. RACE software has now replaced the barrier. Let's ignore RACE and confine to the physical barrier. It definitely brings out realistic or better ambience in stereo recordings.  Drums sound natural with better transient something which I never managed to get with stereo.

May I know how you implemented Ambiophonics when you tried years ago? I too tried and failed for so many years because I did not bring the speakers close enough to be within the recommended 20 to 30 degrees. Now, after a better understanding with speakers within 21 degrees I can say it is an experience that stereo system cannot match.

In article <abp16gF5tl...@mid.individual.net>,

I find that most recordings are not made correctly. That's why they
don't sound right. Two channel  Ambisonics uses a microphone setup that
is fairly close to a coincident pair, except that it is made up of a
series of mikes arranged in a "spherical" configuration consisting of 3
figure-of-eight microphones and an omnidirectional microphone. By
matrix-mixing these four mikes, many different pickup patterns are
possible. A special Ambisonics mike used to be available with it's own
matrixing controller called a "soundfield" mike. But I don't know if
that's still true. The two channel Ambisonics can be approximated by
using  a pair of figure-of-eight mikes in an X-Y configuration.

I had a UHJ decoder by the British firm Bothroyd-Stuart back in the late
1970's and I have a number of UHJ encoded records from record companies
like Nimbus and Unicorn (I still listen to a Unicor UHJ recording of
"The Film Music of Dmitri Tiomkin" which I enjoy for it's natural (but
somewhat distant) perspective.  

I think I was unimpressed because (1) I was using my "quadraphonic
sound" speaker arrangement, and (2) the UHJ decoder was a simple matrix
decoder with no steering logic, so separation was minimal.

Ambiophonics is not Ambisonics. In Ambiophonics, you use the existing stereo recordings.

I have similarly confused with Ambisonics and Ambiophonics.

In article <abr9slFluh...@mid.individual.net>,

Yes, I noticed that after I saw my response in print. But then, it was
too late to call the article back. 8^)

We are talking apples and oranges it seems. I have NO experience with
Ambiophonics and, indeed have never heard of it (I figured it was
another way of saying ambisonics, like the difference between
quadr*A*phonic and quadr*I*phonic). I have heard of (and used) any
number of schemes for retrieving ambience from existing recordings and I
have used a Philips DSP-based device to actually ADD complex delay and
reverb characteristics of specific venues onto recordings played through
it, but I don't know what relationship (if any) any of this would have
to Ambiophonics. Please forgive my faux pas!

I too realized that I posted the wrong draft. :)) . With respect, many just presumed that Ambiophonics is just another DSP scheme.

Unlike all the other schemes that you have mentioned, Ambiophonics is available for free of charge to the public. It is not adding or taking away anything from the recordings and it got nothing to do with the recording. The best demo I could think of is The Sheffield/ XLO test CD's "Walkaround". It reveals the position of Doug Sax and the ambiance better and accurate that a normal Stereo will never be able to match.

My curiosity is not about whether Ambiophonics is better or not but the reluctance of audiophile to try it out. As I have observed, those in non audiophile category embrace Ambiophonics as closer to realism but hardcore audiophiles do not adopt them despite clearly awed with it. They continue to tweak their system and rush back for another demo and then go back to more tweaking and adjustments until they gave up.

This prompted me to ask if we are after high fidelity or something else. (Pls see the first post). The more I look into this I notice that it is not music but  some sort of obsession with their system and format.Like a vinylphile will never accept anything digital despite some digital are better recorded than vinyl.

But I realize that the same thing with room treatment. Many prefer to change cables or amplifiers to tame the bass rather than a simple room treatment or just replacing the speaker to a smaller bass shy one.

To those interested, please see here. http://www.ambiophonics.org/Demos.html

Ambio is a neat trick, as long as we can get rid of the mattress up to your
forehead, but again, it confuses stereo with binaural. Binaural is a process
wherein the idea is to get the two channels piped to your ears separately,
with no crosstalk. It is intended to be recorded with a binaural head placed
in a typical listening position during recording, so that it can hear the
music and the complete acoustical surroundings from that spot. On playback,
you should in some way isolate the two channels from each other and play
back on headphones or on loudspeaker binaural in a deadened room.

Loudspeaker binaural is the preferred method because you can turn your head
without the whole orchestra turning with it, and you will always have a
little room acoustic to anchor the sources and prevent the In Head
Localization (IHL) effect.

Stereo recordings do not translate to binaural well because eliminating the
crosstalk will widen the presentation (perspective) to nearly 180°, which is
wider than normal and wider than the producer intended. A neat trick, but
not what everyone wants. I can widen the soundstage artificially in my
surround sound system by imploying one of the modes in the receiver that mix
the front channels with the rear.

All that plus in Ambio you are pretty much stuck in the sweet spot, and with
the speakers moved closer together (to regain the center) the problem gets
magnified.

I prefer surround sound and image modeling, employing reflected sound to
deepen and widen the apparent frontal soundstage naturally.

Gary Eickmeier

In article <absqnaF2fj...@mid.individual.net>,

What we're talking about here is that there are a number of different
kinds of Audiophiles. One group is music oriented (small group) One is
about new equipment (Toys - probably the largest group) and the third
group is interested in both (and there are probably subsets of these
three main groups (like those interested in multi-channel sound and
those focused on getting 2-channel stereo "right" (according to
whichever of the main groups to whom they belong).

Me, I'm in a subset of the largest group. My interest in the music is,
of course the driving factor, but I my subset believes that the reason
why good two-channel stereo is so hard to come by is because commercial
recordings are made by people who have a totally different set of goals
than do audiophile listeners. Therefore I endeavor to make my own
recordings. I think that I can make much better recordings of the types
of music I like than can a commercial record company. Whether I actually
can or not, is up to interpretation. Some might think so, some might
not. On the equipment front, I obviously like to play with new toys. I
have to admit that this is possibly even one of the main reasons that I
enjoy recording. Listening is passive, recording is active and it lets
me play with cool toys while doing so.

Now that I know what Ambiophonics is, I'll certainly investigate it
further (if for mo other reason than to satisfy my curiosity about how
it differs from other forms of ambience retrieval.