My Ambiophonics Setup

[STC]

@Mr.Boat( sorry the quote function is not working ).

I don't understand what your are trying to say. Are you referring to Ambiophonics.org? I may have misunderstood you since English is not my first language. It is not even my second language

Anyway, don take my word for it. Experience it yourself. If you have friends at NJ Audio Society than you can tag along for a demo.

Here is one comment from the NJAS member. You can check it at their website.
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Thank you so much, Ralph, for your open invitation into your beautiful home and for paying attention to me, taking me through the listening experience, yesterday, Saturday, 05/21/2016, allowing me to experience your Ambiophonic Virtual Sonic Reality system. Even though the members of the NJ Audio Society spoke amazingly of your revolutionary sound system, I was not prepared for what I had experienced in your unique listening room. It was no doubt the listening experience of my life.

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You can also hear the concept here but the setting is not at its best via Youtube. It should give you a general idea.

The DSP is free. Although, those with DSD files may prefer Xeviro player for a small fee there are also there free players but I have not tried them.

 

[STC]

After about one year, made further changes to the IRs. It looks like JRiver's convolution engine processes both channel of each IR which defeats the purpose of adding speakers exclusively to play the convoluted sound. I have now feed 32 channels to the 16 speakers so that each speakers receives two IRs. The difference is you perceive a smoother decay. I still need to adjust the HF.

Total additional cost $600

Here is another video of my current sound. As usual, the sound of all the speakers were recorded using Roland's CS-10Em binaural microphone from my listening position. You have to wear your headphones to hear the ambiance. Listen to the sound of the 16 speakers with the main speakers turned off at 1 minute into the video to hear the difference. The files used for the playback can be found here for you to compare the sound captured in the room and the original file. As you are hearing to Youtube SQ, please hear for the difference in the ambiance and not to compare the actual SQ. Afterall, my sound was recorded using a $75 microphone.

 

[STC]

It has been more than a year since my last update. I have now gone all pro audio replacing my so called audiophile equipment. The system is currently using MOTU 24Ao, CrownXLS and several small digital amps to drive the surround. The main speakers are still the same ESL as line array behaves better with crosstalk cancellation. Some details here.

 

[STC]

Finally, I managed to do instant AB comparison that can be easily audioble over the youtube.

In the first video, you can here the difference in stereo and a proper employment of XTC. The “Plainambiol” tabs were made to illustrate the point when the settings were done inadequately.

Pay attention to the round of applause where the separation and details could be heard easily. The recording was made with a mobile phone and the difference was easily captured despite the low fidelity of Youtube.

You may also be interested some sort samples of different genre made with the first tab setting in the above video. In this video, I used 17cm space mic arrangement to capture the sound of my speakers at listening spot.

Thanks for reading and listening.

 

[VonMagnum]

Wow. The ignorance and hostile attitudes on display in this thread is kind of shocking. Spread those speakers out? So others can enjoy? Sorry Jack, but stereo only really works for ONE person. Wider isn't always better. Certainly, if one enjoys maximizing their enjoyment of two channel, why shouldn't they? I still maintain a separate high-end system for music with Carver ribbon speakers. Only recently do I feel my home theater setup is starting to approach it for two channel music, but it takes seven speakers out of 18 here (matrixed front wides plus active mixed heights for a dialog/soundstage lift and expansion plus the mains and subwoofer) in "stereo" mode to achieve what the Carvers can do alone with Sonic Holography on terms of size, depth and surrounding soundstage.

For Home Theater, panned dialog matching the screen should be the prime concern, not spreading your speakers out as far as possible.... I don't know about trying to demonstrate the system over YouTube, though. I wouldn't try to demonstrate Carver's Sonic Holography over YouTube.

Certainly for Carver's Sonic Holography, you don't need special recordings. The goal is the same regarding inter-aural crosstalk, though. It destroys stereo's full imaging potential.

To OP. I use Carver's Sonic Holography with Carver AL-III 6' ribbon speakers (with a custom designed active crossover designed by a former Carver engineer) in my music room/recording studio. Generally speaking, it's a night and day improvement over plain stereo. The sound stage widens and wraps up to 180 degrees of the listening position. I've never had one person claim the sound was 'bad' off center either. The imaging isn't correct, but it never id off center for ANY stereo setup. To the contrary, one guy asked me to put him in my will for the Carver speakers he liked them so much. Yes it can be used with modern Atmos, etc. It just widens the front channel soundstage (never a bad thing).

 

[STC]

Carver was early attempt to do XTC. Unfortunately, it was still in analogue domain. For proper XTC, the pinnae should avoid receiving sound from 60 degrees or so where they are extremely sensitive for directional cues. In ambiophonics, the speakers are move closer so that the pinnae’s role is minimized. All placements rely in time ( and level difference) only.

It is hard to demo 3D sound with 2D medium. What you can hear though the difference and perceived separation when the changes made.

Thanks for the support.

 

[VonMagnum]

"Proper" or not, it still sounds great here with my Carver ribbons with a very noticeable soundstage improvement.

 

[STC]

Poor choice of word. What i meant is the true potential of such system wasn’t utilized fully. Probably, this too doesn’t sound right? )

It is definitely better than stereo.

 

[VonMagnum]

This is my Carver system:

 

[STC]

I like those speakers. What are they?

 

[VonMagnum]

As it says in my signature, Carver AL-III ribbon speakers (natural oak). The 48" ribbons originally produced 125Hz-20kHz, but there was a known notch in the frequency response around 150Hz so the designer of the crossover recommended a 200Hz crossover point instead which I went with for the active crossover. So the 48" ribbons produce 200Hz-20kHz +/- 3dB and the 10" downward facing woofers do 27Hz-200Hz (2-way design). The crossover is by Audio-X-Stream.

 

[STC]

Thanks. The signature isn’t visible. Me not really a computer techie.

 

[Klipschhead302]

Well, it's been a few years since I've been to this thread. The OP originally stated use any 'ol speakers, cheap speakers what have you and I simply don't believe in throwing speakers into a mix just so they can try desperately to sound just ok to achieve the effect he was hoping for. I have listened to good Carver systems and they sounded great so nothing against Carver. This is something else requiring a huge mess of equipment and speakers to "get right". I repeat once again, this whole thing is a solution looking for a problem. It's not going to create a believable sound stage. Listening to the recordings, some of them phase shift which hurts my ears, some surround tracks that play with phase does this to me as well.

I prefer to listen to a very good 2.1 or 2 channel system for music, this way I know what I'm going to get, no phase headaches where bass goes to die. Anybody sensitive to phase knows what I'm talking about.

Anyway as Sheldon would say to the OP, I see it as Hokem, so I'm out.

 

[VonMagnum]

I don't know about Ambisonics, but I do know Carver's Sonic Holography works with any reasonable speaker; in fact it may work better with box speakers than my dipole ribbons (no rear wave to contend with which is never going to "cancel" interaural crosstalk on the rear wave, just perhaps the front). Sonic Holography inverts part of the other channel to cancel the other one out at your head (in practice, it reduces the signal crosstalk, not really eliminates it, but this is enough to naturally widen the soundstage; no "phase sounds" here at all). I can turn Sonic Holography off at a push of a button (doesn't work well with albums with Q-sound like Rogers Waters' Amused To Death that already plays with the soundstage beyond normal stereo).

 

[STC]

Anyway as Sheldon would say to the OP, I see it as Hokem, so I'm out

Hokem? Phase sensitive? Are these just some opinions like cables? You may want to look at Bock and Keele. Or visit the full-sphere 3D reproduction system . Not to forget the institute where 40 years of research that began with improving Carver's Holographic. Criticism is welcomed but criticizing for the sake of criticizing without any basis doesn't help anyone.

I have no idea what about mixing speakers that you referring to. All you have to use is use whatever speakers you have unless your are mixing up the virtual concert hall reverbs production which got nothing to do with crosstalk cancellation.

 

[VonMagnum]

Hokem? Phase sensitive?

Hey, I just got yelled at on AVForums (for a message months old) by some guy that says extracting extra speakers using "center out" on a two Pro Logic Procesors (say to get top middle from front/rear height) is NOT 5.1.6. It's fake (might as well as said hokem).

The results are identical to an Atmos rendered top middle (more or less with a tiny beat of speaker leakage) and aren't subject to receiver channel limitations (like 11-channels for DTS:X) and works with all Atmos soundtracks (Disney locks theirs at 7.1.4 so top middle won't work even if you have/need it) and even Auro-3D that doesn't support it.

But hey, people LOVE to feel better about themselves by putting down what they either don't have, don't want or don't understand. I say it sucks so it must suck even if I've never heard it.

 

[STC]

But hey, people LOVE to feel better about themselves by putting down what they either don't have, don't want or don't understand. I say it sucks so it must suck even if I've never heard

+1

 

[STC]

After 3 years with different XTC, I finally found that Reaper DAW and Motu24Ao gave me the best option. The sound is comparable to other high end which costs more than 10 to 20 times. Here is a video where the audio was recorded using a binaural microphone. All the system playback was recorded from the sweet spot.

All system will benefit from Interaural crosstalk cancellation. It is free or make your own XTC using Audiomulch or Reaper but requires a little patience to get it right.

 

[Pogre]

I played your video and it sounds like crap on my tablet. You can't upload to YouTube and expect that anyone is going to hear what you do...

 

[STC]

Probably you clicked a wrong link. No one played the video last 60 minutes. Anyway, don’t bother. It will sound crap to you.