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Soundfield/Ambisonics delivery workflow


Mobilemike

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20 minutes ago, soundmanjohn said:

And, joy of joys, Len Moskowitz has announced the OctoMic - a second order Ambisonic mic with eight capsules (the ninth channel is deriveded in software) which will make life even more complicated, but the audio will be better with a larger sweet-spot and better localisation. I'll be getting mine in the spring of next year, along with an SD MixPre-10.

 

Probably with second order and upper (3, 4....), we need new connections such as Dante with POE for do our life easier (Also we need new recorders with Dante, Ravenna or AES67)

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  • 3 months later...
On ‎10‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 6:27 PM, Bash said:

Be aware that on a Zoom F8, with the latest software, you can record A format on 4 tracks, and B format on the other 4. Likewise on the Sonosax SX-R4+ (it is coming very, very, soon). The B format conversion occurs within the machine at the time of recording. just saying.......

 

Laters..... sb

The Zoom F8 firmware upgrade to 4.x is indeed a great simplifier in the field. IIRC it is basically the Sennheiser Ambeo plugin integrated. The reason this might matter is that my experiments with Surroundzone2 and the Ambeo plugin using the Ambeo mic as well as a Calrec Soundfield MK4 reveal possible compatibility issues, and I'm not talking channel order (WXYZ vs WYZX) or normalization. The Calrec steers beautifully with the Souroundzone2, the Ambeo mic recording decoded to Ambix and steered within the Ambeo plugin will also sound good but decoded to FuMa and then steered in surroundzone2 will sound somewhat phasey, maybe due to different correction filtering compensating for a different 4 capsule array dimensions (Ambeo-mic capsules are way smaller than Calrec). So the F8 decoding to B-Format will probably work best for the Ambeo mic. others not so much.

I'd stick with recording and delivering both the proper B-format (ask) and the raw A format if possible.

I would like to hear more about how you guys get the videographers to commit to 0 degrees.

 

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  • 10 months later...

Is anyone deploying ambisonics field recording techniques, within Observational Documentaries?  What has been your experience of ambisonics in this genre?

 

Part of my interest revolves around the post capabilities of retro 'steering' of a mic's 'focus', as per graphic below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics#/media/File:Virtual_Microphone_Animation.gif

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I think you'll find the creation of virtual microphones less impressive in use than it may seem as a concept.  While it potentially could replace having to physically pan a mic, the ambisonics mic still has to be very close to the source to get the desired sound quality, and the whole process will add a lot of time and work in post to automate when the mic should be virtually "pointed" where.  This extra work comes with little to no benefit imo.

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Hi and thanks for your thoughts on this.  My thought was going on from the Reaper capability to post-pan other mono sources (eg radio mics) within a 360 audio 'sound space'.  So in an Observational Documentary genre (a 'live', unscripted 'event'), would effectively a post-steerable 360 omni pick-up mic (eg Ambeo) used as a conventional mono boom, contribute to a post-event where sound focus decisions could be designed in to the ambisonic sound mix? I used to used M&S in the field within ObsDocs in an 'enhanced mono' mode where I would boom eg a scene of 4 people, without prior radio mic'ing (not easy in ObsDocs!) using the p/up characteristics (cardioid and Fig8) of the M&S mic to record 'on mic' coverage of all 4 people - impossible using a conventional mono mic.  What thoughts?

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