|
|
Post by Ward on Jun 25, 2024 13:22:41 GMT -6
Soyuz finally released their Ambisonic mic today, SNIP Thank you for sharing Anders, and for doing such a good job as always! |
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jun 25, 2024 15:53:13 GMT -6
I was hoping to try this with a session happening this week with another artist, but we just had to reschedule to next month. I was dying to try a live take singer/guitar in front of the AEA R88 and add in a little bit of the ambisonic mic. I went ahead and tried it myself. It's super raw, mostly the R88 panned in about 75% with a little of the ambisonic mic blended in panned out all the way. I only processed the master bus, just a little bit of a gentle roll of in the low end (the R88 is always "too much" under 50 hz when it's that close), I boosted the high end maybe 3 dB, compressed it 2-3 dB and threw a limiter on. That's it, fairly close to "faders up".
Really interesting thing is the phase response when mixing other mics with the ambisonic. Things play really nicely for the most part, but something weird always happens (but thankfully there's always been an easy fix so far). In this case, R88 vocal/acoustic sounded balanced and not lop sided, I panned around in the ambisonic decoder to center stuff since that mic was a little off to the side. When I blended in the ambisonic mic, the stereo image kind of shifted off to one side gradually. I had to get the sonic balance I liked between the two mics, then go into the ambisonic panner and re-pan and place everything while listening to combined mic signals. None of this is surprising, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on under the hood with the ambisonic mic, you just have to take it on a case by case basis and see if it works or not. I tried some stuff on piano this morning mixing close mics with the ambisonic, and everything played perfectly together.
|
|
|
|
Post by Tbone81 on Jun 25, 2024 16:19:49 GMT -6
Hey Amdersmv, what preamps are you using? How important is the gain matching between mic pres?
|
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jun 25, 2024 16:42:42 GMT -6
Hey Amdersmv, what preamps are you using? How important is the gain matching between mic pres? I still have a lot of experimenting to do on that front. For right now, I've just been using the clean preamps built into my UA Apollo interface. I can set those exactly the same from the Console App, so I've only been using those for the time being. At some point, I'll branch out to the API preamps built into by console and see if I'm noticing anything funky (I havn't run signal through them to check, but chances are there's a little bit of variance between them). Theoretically, matching the preamps as closely as possible it ideal to maintain the accurate image and phase relationship after transcoding. I can't really tell you yet how concerned you should be about variance and how much it would take to really throw things off and cause an issue. I've done my homework and educated myself on all this crazy ambisonics stuff. It's still new to me though, it's going to take experience to figure out some of that stuff. I'm definitely very curious to experiment more with the signal chain and try some weird/crazy ideas. What happens if I run just the front two mic channels through an analog compressor and start messing around with front/back levels and relationships? What about using some of the UAD Unison technology where I can match the exact same preamps and channel strip settings across all four channels with EQ and Compression going? The adventure continues.... |
|
|
|
Post by Tbone81 on Jun 25, 2024 16:59:26 GMT -6
Hey Amdersmv, what preamps are you using? How important is the gain matching between mic pres? I still have a lot of experimenting to do on that front. For right now, I've just been using the clean preamps built into my UA Apollo interface. I can set those exactly the same from the Console App, so I've only been using those for the time being. At some point, I'll branch out to the API preamps built into by console and see if I'm noticing anything funky (I havn't run signal through them to check, but chances are there's a little bit of variance between them). Theoretically, matching the preamps as closely as possible it ideal to maintain the accurate image and phase relationship after transcoding. I can't really tell you yet how concerned you should be about variance and how much it would take to really throw things off and cause an issue. I've done my homework and educated myself on all this crazy ambisonics stuff. It's still new to me though, it's going to take experience to figure out some of that stuff. I'm definitely very curious to experiment more with the signal chain and try some weird/crazy ideas. What happens if I run just the front two mic channels through an analog compressor and start messing around with front/back levels and relationships? What about using some of the UAD Unison technology where I can match the exact same preamps and channel strip settings across all four channels with EQ and Compression going? The adventure continues.... Yeah I’ve been wondering what happens if you just use two capsules…can you orient the mic to get ortf? That would be pretty rad. |
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jun 25, 2024 17:20:27 GMT -6
I still have a lot of experimenting to do on that front. For right now, I've just been using the clean preamps built into my UA Apollo interface. I can set those exactly the same from the Console App, so I've only been using those for the time being. At some point, I'll branch out to the API preamps built into by console and see if I'm noticing anything funky (I havn't run signal through them to check, but chances are there's a little bit of variance between them). Theoretically, matching the preamps as closely as possible it ideal to maintain the accurate image and phase relationship after transcoding. I can't really tell you yet how concerned you should be about variance and how much it would take to really throw things off and cause an issue. I've done my homework and educated myself on all this crazy ambisonics stuff. It's still new to me though, it's going to take experience to figure out some of that stuff. I'm definitely very curious to experiment more with the signal chain and try some weird/crazy ideas. What happens if I run just the front two mic channels through an analog compressor and start messing around with front/back levels and relationships? What about using some of the UAD Unison technology where I can match the exact same preamps and channel strip settings across all four channels with EQ and Compression going? The adventure continues.... Yeah I’ve been wondering what happens if you just use two capsules…can you orient the mic to get ortf? That would be pretty rad. Ya, I actually tried that today on acoustic guitar. The mic angle looks super weird, but pretty easy to position capsule channels 1/2 and do ORTF. I suspect it might be a tad wider placement than “proper” ORTF, but it sounded nice and wide! You can obviously use one of them as a mono mic as well… |
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jun 26, 2024 6:41:28 GMT -6
Gain and processing to the raw A format channels absolutely have to be matched for correct B format encoding, but obviously you can blow it up however you want. Dedicated ambisonic preamps have single controls for gain, and standard procedure with digital control in portable recorders is to gang the gains in software if possible. Most (all?) capture files as 4 channel polywav too, which more and more DAW will play as quad files.
You won’t get anything truly controllable out of 2 channels, just 2 fixed position signals you can pan. In live broadcast mixes with an ambisonic at FOH, I’ve just panned all 4 wherever it worked to provide some audience amb, but there’s no controllable signal there without A->B->stereo processing, it’s just 4 pretty rando sounding signals. Honestly any standard stereo pair gives better imaging if you’re not diving into the processing steerability, and standard MS or dual MS is much more easily controlled on the fly.
|
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jun 26, 2024 8:09:03 GMT -6
Honestly any standard stereo pair gives better imaging if you’re not diving into the processing steerability, and standard MS or dual MS is much more easily controlled on the fly. I guess it would depend on what "better" means. I've tired a few different stereo mic setups next to the ambisonic mic to try to focus on and compare the stereo imaging. A stereo X/Y or Spaced pair of mics definitely feels "wider", but in a more extreme way. Especially with a spaced pair of mics, when compared to the ambisonic image it feels like there's some sort of stereo widener or M/S processing where the sides have been boosted. It feels extreme by comparison, almost like there's stuff coming from speaker Left and stuff coming from speaker Right and less information right in the center. That's how I feel about normal stereo now that I'm directly comparing it to the ambisonic imaging. The ambisonic imaging doesn't come across as being so extreme and wide, but I can pick up every little part of the imaging on some recording where there's a lot going on (the live bluegrass band I recorded is a good example of that). It's more like you have the source in front of you, lots of info coming from the center and not a lot of super "wide" info coming in usually. On some smaller instruments like acoustic guitar, they seem a lot more mono on the ambisonic mic until I hit the mono button on my console. The image shrinks substantially, and you realize how much space the ambisonic mic was adding around the source. I'm not going to say one is better than the other, I actually really appreciate how different the ambisonic and normal stereo ended up sounding in comparisons. It gives me a different sounding tool to utilize. If you need an acoustic guitar to sound big and spread out and stay out of the way of the vocal and other center information, a spaced stereo pair is still a solid choice. If you've got a really sparse arrangement and have something that you want to sound a bit bigger, more space but still localized, the ambisonic mic could be the one. But that's just, like, my opinion man. They are really different from each other. The funny thing with ambisonics is that it's flexible enough to be able to mimic some stereo mic'ing techniques like X/Y and Blumlein (but to your point, that's all in post). I've seen a few plugins where you can take an ambisonic signal down to a mono mic and change the pattern, or expand it out to two virtual mics that are in X/Y, and then shift the patterns on those to go to Blumlein. There's a bunch of cool things I havn't played around with yet... |
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jun 26, 2024 10:12:33 GMT -6
Honestly any standard stereo pair gives better imaging if you’re not diving into the processing steerability, and standard MS or dual MS is much more easily controlled on the fly. I guess it would depend on what "better" means. Sure. There's a wide body of commentary about pinpoint localization being more vague with 1st order 4 channel ambisonics, as compared to a pair of mics delivering the same pattern/angle. I tend to agree with that in my experience. The inventors are quite vocal about exacting gain matching and internal EQ correction to get the most accurate B format patterns to work with. I was just reading (from one of the orig designer/inventors, Richard Lee, known around the inter-tubes as Ricardo) as well that historically (last 45 years) most experienced ambisonic users end up using virtual mic patterns ranging from figure 8 to hypercardioid, but rarely cardioid to subcardioid, because "better", whatever that means! I find this interesting because I do sometimes end up cardioid or subcardioid, but as always it depends what you're doing with it and how you blend it. I'm usually ambient in a crowd at live multitrack captures, so sometimes it's doing odd things you wouldn't use by itself. In those cases the ambisonic is the space vibe, and not looking for accurate standalone representation. You might point it totally away from the PA, or have it point different directions at different times. Up close, I'm frequently multing it to make multiple virtual mics of varying pattern, essentially creating multitrack out of a single point source. Stereo, spot mics, blumlein pointed at the ceiling/floor for max ambience and minimum direct signal, you name it. The 80's production hit machine Stock Aitken Waterman were known for using an ambisonic mic heavily in their (stereo) productions, and I think maybe Talk Talk "Spirit of Eden" used one as well. You could really open up the possibilities and advantages if you were doing surround, or atmos, but few of us do. |
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jun 26, 2024 10:17:34 GMT -6
|
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jun 26, 2024 10:32:09 GMT -6
Really interesting thing is the phase response when mixing other mics with the ambisonic. Things play really nicely for the most part, but something weird always happens (but thankfully there's always been an easy fix so far). In this case, R88 vocal/acoustic sounded balanced and not lop sided, I panned around in the ambisonic decoder to center stuff since that mic was a little off to the side. When I blended in the ambisonic mic, the stereo image kind of shifted off to one side gradually. I had to get the sonic balance I liked between the two mics, then go into the ambisonic panner and re-pan and place everything while listening to combined mic signals. None of this is surprising so....related tangent. 6 mics for 2 pairs of stereo, to be combined. One of the alternatives to using an ambisonic approach, with similar considerations. This is a mid side array with AB omni's and a shotgun PAS (point at stack) spot mic. The MS part is a cardioid and a shotgun that can be blended to taste for M pattern between cardioid and shotgun, the AB omni give spaced timing cues and great bass. Most of that's pretty standard. The PAS shotgun experiment worked well, and to blend with the MS it had to be panned as pointed, it then sat perfectly in the MS image with no smearing. All the wacky stuff we get into with imaging in panning. Context here was essentially concert bootlegging, to be combined with a stereo FOH board feed. The MS and PAS capsules are all aligned in the vertical plane 60+ feet out in front of a PA, so there's no observable arrival differences to make comb filtering, as you'd more likely get when up close and personal. The MS and AB had to be mixed for maximum present sound in a very reverberant room, with minimized room slap, and the PAS gave that little bit extra on the vocals by focusing on a direct line to a PA speaker.  |
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jun 26, 2024 13:25:22 GMT -6
I've still got a lot to learn as far as what works and what doesn't when combining the ambisonic mic with other mics. On piano, I've not really had any issues so far combining a spaced pair of normal stereo mics (close and pointed down at the piano) with the ambisonic mic. Everything seems very phase happy and cooperative. With acoustic guitar where there's a spaced pair or mono mic pointed at the guitar and the ambisonic mic a foot or two behind it pointed at it, I get some phase problems. If I move the ambisonic mic as close as I can get it to the other microphones, phase issues go away and they play well together. Probably everything to do with angling the mics differently cutting down on phase issues.
I did figure out that when I do run into phase things, I can mute channel 1 of the ambisonic mic (after it's been converted to ambiX, so basically the mid signal of the ambisonic) and treat the ambisonic signal more like a "sides" signal and get some great, phase coherent results. I'm talking with Alejandro at Audio Brewers (who did the plugins for Souyz) and will start messing around with pattern manipulation things in post and try making different stereo and mono patterns with the ambisonic signal. I'm curious to hear how those "virtual" mic arrangements compare with a real stereo pair.
This is starting to become a really deep rabbit hole...
|
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jun 26, 2024 14:40:25 GMT -6
yeah, the old 3:1 rule and all it's dirty tricks.
Channel 1 = W = omni, used to create differing virtual pair patterns, leaving the 3 virtual figure 8's (front/rear, L/R, up/down)
I eventually get tired and don't mess with It anymore, but it's endless choices!
|
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jun 29, 2024 9:26:56 GMT -6
I’ve been experimenting more with Atmos in headphones and implementing some of the rendering systems with head tracking. It kind of blows my mind how many different ways you can decode and manipulate an ambisonic signal in that world. There’s a lot of potential for using an ambisonic mic just as support for close mics. Placing a close mono mic kind of center, then spreading out the ambisonic mic to all the sides and just turning it up slightly, really adds space. If you do it right, you can’t even really tell the ambisonic mic is in the mix until you mute it and all of a sudden, you realize you’re wearing headphones again.
Even in the static, Dolby Binaural renderer without head tracking, I’m finally starting to get some results where I’m “kind” of hearing things behind and above me. It’s really easy to overdo it though…
|
|
|
|
Post by stevenlmorgan on Jun 29, 2024 10:09:26 GMT -6
Would you mind posting a picture showing placement of a close mic plus an ambisonic mic as support, along with an audio example? I’ve been experimenting more with Atmos in headphones and implementing some of the rendering systems with head tracking. It kind of blows my mind how many different ways you can decode and manipulate an ambisonic signal in that world. There’s a lot of potential for using an ambisonic mic just as support for close mics. Placing a close mono mic kind of center, then spreading out the ambisonic mic to all the sides and just turning it up slightly, really adds space. If you do it right, you can’t even really tell the ambisonic mic is in the mix until you mute it and all of a sudden, you realize you’re wearing headphones again. Even in the static, Dolby Binaural renderer without head tracking, I’m finally starting to get some results where I’m “kind” of hearing things behind and above me. It’s really easy to overdo it though… |
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jun 29, 2024 10:26:28 GMT -6
Would you mind posting a picture showing placement of a close mic plus an ambisonic mic as support, along with an audio example? I’ve been experimenting more with Atmos in headphones and implementing some of the rendering systems with head tracking. It kind of blows my mind how many different ways you can decode and manipulate an ambisonic signal in that world. There’s a lot of potential for using an ambisonic mic just as support for close mics. Placing a close mono mic kind of center, then spreading out the ambisonic mic to all the sides and just turning it up slightly, really adds space. If you do it right, you can’t even really tell the ambisonic mic is in the mix until you mute it and all of a sudden, you realize you’re wearing headphones again. Even in the static, Dolby Binaural renderer without head tracking, I’m finally starting to get some results where I’m “kind” of hearing things behind and above me. It’s really easy to overdo it though… I’ll probably end up doing a more thorough video or something on it eventually. If you look a few posts up, I did a video of me playing/singing in front of my AEA R88 with the ambisonic mic as support. I was going to post this next week, but I did a quick comparison of Soyuz new 011 small cap mic with the 013 FET and use two channels from the ambisonic mic to do that. If you go towards the end of the video, I’ve got an example of the 011’s close to the piano and the ambisonic mic above my head as support. I was probably too subtle blending in the ambisonic mic, but it worked out really well. |
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jul 10, 2024 16:19:42 GMT -6
If you have not seen it yet, Audio Brewers has done some updates and added head tracking capabilities to their ambisonic plugins. This is really awesome for a bunch of reasons, I'm going to do a video on how to set it up with the Waves NX Head Tracker hardware.
I've also been messing around with the Audio Brewers ab Imager Plugin (https://www.audiobrewers.com/plugins/p/ab-imager) and wish I would have gotten it from the beginning. Aside from all the amazing ways you can manipulate the ambisonic signal, you can always upscale the 4 channel First Order Ambisonic signal into higher order ambisonic signals. It does make a difference in a lot of instances.
The COOLEST thing to me about the plugin is when you go down into the "Spatial Control" section, you have a visualization of all the different polar patterns. You've got Omni, Left-Right for the Sides, Figure 8 for Front-Back, and your Top-Bottom. If you click on any of those patterns, you can turn them on and off to mute/solo them.
Essentially, if you turn off all the other patterns but the Omni one, you're left with the Ambisonic mic decoded down to a single mono Omni signal. If you mute everything but the Front-Back, you've got the mic down to mono in a Figure 8 pattern. If you have the Omni and Front-Back options on together, you can go to the top right of the plugin and turn the Omni control all the way down, and gradually add it back in with the Figure 8 signal to start to blend the mic into a cardioid pattern.
Even if you don't care about the Ambisonic aspects of this mic, you can turn it into a mono signal and manipulate the polar pattern in post however you want. You can even set this up as M/S and add width to it if you don't want to keep it in mono. There's not a way to do it "yet", but I'm going to try and talk Audio Brewers and Soyuz into doing a similar plugin that makes it easier to manipulate the patterns as a "stereo pair" of mics inside a single plugin. It would be cool to easily take it from a virtual pair of mics in X/Y and start to blend them both to Figure 8 and go to Blumlein.
There's SO many cool ways to use this mic outside of Ambisonics. If you ever wanted a multi pattern 013, you can do that...
|
|
|
|
Post by stevenlmorgan on Jul 11, 2024 14:06:56 GMT -6
I would buy the mic with these capabilities if the capabilities could also be monitored in real time. I need the artist, and I, to be able to hear what is being recorded. If you have not seen it yet, Audio Brewers has done some updates and added head tracking capabilities to their ambisonic plugins. This is really awesome for a bunch of reasons, I'm going to do a video on how to set it up with the Waves NX Head Tracker hardware. I've also been messing around with the Audio Brewers ab Imager Plugin (https://www.audiobrewers.com/plugins/p/ab-imager) and wish I would have gotten it from the beginning. Aside from all the amazing ways you can manipulate the ambisonic signal, you can always upscale the 4 channel First Order Ambisonic signal into higher order ambisonic signals. It does make a difference in a lot of instances. The COOLEST thing to me about the plugin is when you go down into the "Spatial Control" section, you have a visualization of all the different polar patterns. You've got Omni, Left-Right for the Sides, Figure 8 for Front-Back, and your Top-Bottom. If you click on any of those patterns, you can turn them on and off to mute/solo them. Essentially, if you turn off all the other patterns but the Omni one, you're left with the Ambisonic mic decoded down to a single mono Omni signal. If you mute everything but the Front-Back, you've got the mic down to mono in a Figure 8 pattern. If you have the Omni and Front-Back options on together, you can go to the top right of the plugin and turn the Omni control all the way down, and gradually add it back in with the Figure 8 signal to start to blend the mic into a cardioid pattern. Even if you don't care about the Ambisonic aspects of this mic, you can turn it into a mono signal and manipulate the polar pattern in post however you want. You can even set this up as M/S and add width to it if you don't want to keep it in mono. There's not a way to do it "yet", but I'm going to try and talk Audio Brewers and Soyuz into doing a similar plugin that makes it easier to manipulate the patterns as a "stereo pair" of mics inside a single plugin. It would be cool to easily take it from a virtual pair of mics in X/Y and start to blend them both to Figure 8 and go to Blumlein. There's SO many cool ways to use this mic outside of Ambisonics. If you ever wanted a multi pattern 013, you can do that... |
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jul 11, 2024 14:25:23 GMT -6
I would buy the mic with these capabilities if the capabilities could also be monitored in real time. I need the artist, and I, to be able to hear what is being recorded. If you have not seen it yet, Audio Brewers has done some updates and added head tracking capabilities to their ambisonic plugins. This is really awesome for a bunch of reasons, I'm going to do a video on how to set it up with the Waves NX Head Tracker hardware. I've also been messing around with the Audio Brewers ab Imager Plugin (https://www.audiobrewers.com/plugins/p/ab-imager) and wish I would have gotten it from the beginning. Aside from all the amazing ways you can manipulate the ambisonic signal, you can always upscale the 4 channel First Order Ambisonic signal into higher order ambisonic signals. It does make a difference in a lot of instances. The COOLEST thing to me about the plugin is when you go down into the "Spatial Control" section, you have a visualization of all the different polar patterns. You've got Omni, Left-Right for the Sides, Figure 8 for Front-Back, and your Top-Bottom. If you click on any of those patterns, you can turn them on and off to mute/solo them. Essentially, if you turn off all the other patterns but the Omni one, you're left with the Ambisonic mic decoded down to a single mono Omni signal. If you mute everything but the Front-Back, you've got the mic down to mono in a Figure 8 pattern. If you have the Omni and Front-Back options on together, you can go to the top right of the plugin and turn the Omni control all the way down, and gradually add it back in with the Figure 8 signal to start to blend the mic into a cardioid pattern. Even if you don't care about the Ambisonic aspects of this mic, you can turn it into a mono signal and manipulate the polar pattern in post however you want. You can even set this up as M/S and add width to it if you don't want to keep it in mono. There's not a way to do it "yet", but I'm going to try and talk Audio Brewers and Soyuz into doing a similar plugin that makes it easier to manipulate the patterns as a "stereo pair" of mics inside a single plugin. It would be cool to easily take it from a virtual pair of mics in X/Y and start to blend them both to Figure 8 and go to Blumlein. There's SO many cool ways to use this mic outside of Ambisonics. If you ever wanted a multi pattern 013, you can do that... You'll have to talk to Alejandro about doing it with Kontakt libraries and stuff like he's doing in the video. As far as monitoring the ambisonic mic in real time, the transcoder plugin (that you put first in the chain that takes the signal to Ambix and does the math for that specific mic) has a "Monitor" option that has no latency at the expense of dumbing down the decoding quality slightly. I don't know what interface or DAW you're using, but you should be able to set the transcoder to "Monitor" and send that right to the artist so they have an ambisonic signal decoded to stereo in their headphones. It's tougher for me to set that up because I have a UA Apollo and do all my monitoring from the UAD Console app. The Apollo doesn't have great latency numbers when I try to set this up in ProTools, but that's just a downside of that interface. Anyone else should be able to monitor the track right out of their DAW without any issues. |
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jul 11, 2024 14:36:39 GMT -6
There's not a way to do it "yet", but I'm going to try and talk Audio Brewers and Soyuz into doing a similar plugin that makes it easier to manipulate the patterns as a "stereo pair" of mics inside a single plugin. It would be cool to easily take it from a virtual pair of mics in X/Y and start to blend them both to Figure 8 and go to Blumlein. I must be missing something on this point; that's what all the other ambisonic plugs do, as I read what you're saying. |
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jul 11, 2024 14:45:11 GMT -6
There's not a way to do it "yet", but I'm going to try and talk Audio Brewers and Soyuz into doing a similar plugin that makes it easier to manipulate the patterns as a "stereo pair" of mics inside a single plugin. It would be cool to easily take it from a virtual pair of mics in X/Y and start to blend them both to Figure 8 and go to Blumlein. I must be missing something on this point; that's what all the other ambisonic plugs do, as I read what you're saying. I'm able to do it with the Audio Brewers ab Imager plugin, Alejandro added some options that make it easier to isolate and manipulate the patterns. It's a little harder to get it to work as a "virtual" pair of mics, I have to do some extra steps to pull off something like Blumlein with it. I'm actually working on a video right now to show how you can do all of this with the Audio Brewers ab Imager plugin. It's not specifically what Alejandro designed that plugin to do, but it's "do-able"  . I still want to see Audio Brewers make a plugin specifically for taking the mic down to mono and a virtual stereo pair, as opposed to manipulating it down to those as an Ambisonic signal. It would just be a more intuitive layout with a few other features... I've tried a few other companies plugins that did a similar thing and I have to say, not all ambisonic decoders are created equal. In all my tests and messing around in the last year with this stuff, the Audio Brewers plugins sound worlds better than anything else I've tried that creates/decodes and manipulates ambisonic signals. I pretty much flunked every math class I took in high school and college, so I'm not going to attempt to tell you why. I'm a cave man, I hit button, Audio Brewers sound better... |
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jul 11, 2024 15:40:14 GMT -6
Subtract W, it’s Blumlein with up/down control in a traditional ambisonic encoder. Turn off Z too, also Blumlein in horizontal only mode, so you gotta get the angle right. That’s all with the usual default of 90 degree virtual angle.
Guess i have to investigate the native plug a bit more to understand.
|
|
|
|
Post by andersmv on Jul 12, 2024 7:12:47 GMT -6
Subtract W, it’s Blumlein with up/down control in a traditional ambisonic encoder. Turn off Z too, also Blumlein in horizontal only mode, so you gotta get the angle right. That’s all with the usual default of 90 degree virtual angle. Guess i have to investigate the native plug a bit more to understand. Here you go, pretty easy to dump the mic down to mono and change the patterns with the Audio Brewers ab Imager. A little more difficult to pull it off trying to make a "virtual pair"of microphones in the array, but totally doable. I had to figure out a workaround to pull of Blumlein, at that point I'm trying to get the plugin to do stuff it wasn't really intended to do. The real beauty of the ab Imager is manipulating the signal as a full ambisonic signal. especially when you get down to decoding to Atmos, it's pretty crazy what all you can do... |
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Jul 12, 2024 15:55:39 GMT -6
Thanks. I mostly see what's up now.
Note that up/down is also a figure 8, and WXYZ in of themselves are also virtual encoded patterns, used as starting points for further manipulation. There's equalization going on each of the virtual B format patterns, I recall omni has some bass reduction and the others some boost, though I could have that backwards. Omni is I think -3 relative to others to compensate for the higher output of the four capsules.
I like the resizing of polar patterns as one POV in this plug, giving an idea of the virtual blends. This plug is doing the same thing the others do, but showing it in a totally different and confusing way in that it's not showing the fully encoded polar patterns. It's essentially showing the "in-between" stage which other programs don't show.
I wonder what the upscaling to higher order ambisonic trick might be. I don't see how that can really give better spatial definition, you really need the additional capsules to pull that off.
On Blumlein, keep in mind MS with two figure 8 is the same outcome as Blumlein. If you're using 2 real 8's you can argue frequency with regards to on-axis makes the two a little different, here it's exactly the same because they are both virtual already. I tend to get Blumlein from MS 8's in many cases because the on-axis treble is pointed at the center, and you can vary width with less artifacts than you can with traditional 45 degree 8's, where the treble image starts to cancel and dull as they are panned toward each other.
Looking at all the patterns shown in the Wes Dooley AES paper about MS is helpful in understanding what the blends create virtually. Pretty sure it's on the AEA site.
I am curious about Harpex-X, which many in the past have said gives the best sounding processing, but it's pricey and I don't have that much need. Also claims to do some kind of upsampling to higher order virtual patterns. The Rode Soundfield plug has an option to make the virtual patterns be second order, which is sometimes useful, I recall the pattern range there is cardioid to short shotgun-ish, whereas the first order patterns are traditional omni through cardioid to 8. I had used the older SurroundZone2 plug, but haven't tried it recently.
Final note on ambisonic usage - I stuck mine at instrument level in a classical guitar orchestra recently, which had close mics, an electric bass amp in the room, and overhead Blumlein and spaced AB omni pairs. Because coverage was so great already, the ambisonic proved best as a pair somewhere between hypercardioid and figure 8, pointed up at the ceiling for ambience, cancelling as much direct sound as possible. Who knew I'd dial that in?!?!
|
|
|
|
Post by nobtwiddler on Jul 12, 2024 18:58:29 GMT -6
I dunno,
Although not totally ambisonic, cause it doesn't offer the height option,
I just plug in my Josephson C700s.
Captures everything I need, and affords options in post, with no hassle, and I'm done!
|
|
. I still want to see Audio Brewers make a plugin specifically for taking the mic down to mono and a virtual stereo pair, as opposed to manipulating it down to those as an Ambisonic signal. It would just be a more intuitive layout with a few other features...
