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Author Topic: 3D audio?  (Read 34585 times)

compasspnt

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #30 on: December 18, 2010, 10:47:13 AM »

ssltech wrote on Sat, 18 December 2010 09:43

I object; -that's highly subjective. It's objectionably less subject to objectivity, but that's a different subject.

Sorry if anyone objects to being subject to being the object of my subjectivity, but it's better than being subject to my objectivity.


Keith!!!!
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ssltech

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #31 on: December 18, 2010, 11:14:09 AM »

...I knew that you'd object!

Laughing
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MDM (maxdimario) wrote on Fri, 16 November 2007 21:36

I have the feeling that I have more experience in my little finger than you do in your whole body about audio electronics..

Bill Mueller

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #32 on: December 18, 2010, 12:05:33 PM »

ssltech wrote on Sat, 18 December 2010 09:43

Longcat Audio wrote

The subject being one of the objects...



I object; -that's highly subjective. It's objectionably less subject to objectivity, but that's a different subject.

Sorry if anyone objects to being subject to being the object of my subjectivity, but it's better than being subject to my objectivity.

And we have a winner!

I need a nap now.

Bill
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Bill Mueller

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #33 on: December 18, 2010, 12:29:24 PM »

Longcat Audio wrote on Thu, 16 December 2010 08:38

maxim wrote on Wed, 15 December 2010 22:00


to be honest, i prefer subject-based art practice

the suspension of disbelief is hard enough to maintain, and trompe l'oeils and parlour tricks, usually, only highlight that lack of objectivity




The subject being one of the objects, a visual representation of the whole scene shouldn't be a problem...

...unless you're versed into complete audio subjectivism, and denounce any possibility of true-knowledge in that field?

Moreover, object-based mixing is not about tricks and trompe l'oeils, but more about having a tool to help the artist-engineer visually construct the scene. This is what you already do with a mixing desk, yet a bit less visually.

Binaural-transaural rendering is an option then, not a prerequisite.

Anyway, you're right: presenting some mixed sound to an audience is an artistic act, and should stay as it stands, whatever tools you use : a window to one's mind, a subjective point of view.

--Benjamin


Banjamin,

Can you attach your objects to 3D graphic objects in a game engine?

(Sorry Keith, in game design I don't have another term because even though we are viewing on a flat screen, we do build our worlds in in-game 3D space.)

Benjamin, the reason I ask is because this is pretty doable in video game engines. I did it once with the Renderware Audio library.

So for games it kind of makes sense to create this object related tool, but for audio-audio it is counter productive IMHO because as Keith so eloquently states, we are a visual animal and the objects on the screen actually reinforce what we are hearing while we are doing it, but are lacking when the listener is listening. This is like mixing songs on great speakers. It only exists in it's best form on the great speakers and for everyone else is inferior to that. Not good for your career.

I suggest the "object oriented audio programming" unless supported by "the object" (as in a video game or movie), in the listeners experience will detract from the final result by tricking the creator to accept something less than if he did not have the object oriented tool in the first place. This is the exact same thing as when you hear us old farts telling the young studs to not look at their Pro Tools monitor when mixing. Use your ears!

Unless of course you are doing something with your objects that cannot be done without them. Spinning the listener's perspective for example is really useful (again in a game or movie), but even that can be done with an automated console or DAW. You just need to make all the returns panable.

Bill

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"Don't take it personally. But this shit is a science." J.J.Blair

“The Internet is only a means of communication,” he wrote. “It is not an amorphous extraterrestrial body with an entitlement to norms that run counter to the fundamental principles of human rights. There is nothing in the criminal or civil law which legalizes that which is otherwise illegal simply because the transaction takes place over the Internet.” Irish judge, Peter Charleton

ssltech

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #34 on: December 19, 2010, 10:06:44 AM »

With gaming (and other processes such as CAD) the term '3D' is entirely and appropriately applicable, because you're involved in manipulation on the OTHER side of the screen... so as you rotate or manipulate a virtual position or axial arrangement, the resultant 2D display reflects or mimics a real multi-axial 3D position.

In audio, it's also possible to recreate '3D' as meets my pedantic objections. -A display by Thomas Dolby some ~15 years ago springs to mind, where people donned a VR stereoscopic headset and headphones, with both positional (within the room) and head-angle tracking. -The virtual space was populated with instruments which made virtual sound, and as the observer moved through the room, both the images and sounds were generated stereoscopically and stereophonically, with tracking for BOTH based on both positional AND axial data from the headset.

-So as you walked around a virtual cello (for example) you heard the appropriate sound components originating and reflecting from believable angles and at realistic amplitudes, etc.

For mixing, this curiosity is a little too cerebral, methinks. -None the less, it's good to stretch the grey muscle once in a while, to establish what the possibilities of reasonable use of technology allow, but also along the way, to revisit where the limitations of creation AND delivery lie, at any given instance.

Keith
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MDM (maxdimario) wrote on Fri, 16 November 2007 21:36

I have the feeling that I have more experience in my little finger than you do in your whole body about audio electronics..

Longcat Audio

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #35 on: December 19, 2010, 10:31:36 AM »

Bill Mueller wrote on Sat, 18 December 2010 18:29


Banjamin,

Can you attach your objects to 3D graphic objects in a game engine?



There are great audio game engines on the market (Wwise, Fmod, Rapture, and in-house middlewares developed by studios). Most of them are designed so that they won't eat up more than 1-5% of the processing time, because visuals stay the most important modality in games.

We wanted to address something else, so our mixing engine wasn't designed with the "game industry" in mind.

One of our goals was to be able to mix different panning techniques into one single mix (eg stereo+transaural+ambisonics+surround amplitude panning+...), along with serious acoustics modeling. The dreaded object approach was almost inevitable...

So we didn't want to write another game audio engine, and it's definitely not what AudioStage is about.

Anyway, if you are in some sound design work for 3D animation movies, AudioStage can import 3D trajectories from Maya or 3DS max and use them while building up your project, instead of making endless adjustments to panning automation.

Quote:


(Sorry Keith, in game design I don't have another term because even though we are viewing on a flat screen, we do build our worlds in in-game 3D space.)



We could use the term "track". That's so more subjective I can barely size it up, being object-based myself now!


Quote:


I suggest the "object oriented audio programming" unless supported by "the object" (as in a video game or movie), in the listeners experience will detract from the final result by tricking the creator to accept something less than if he did not have the object oriented tool in the first place. This is the exact same thing as when you hear us old farts telling the young studs to not look at their Pro Tools monitor when mixing. Use your ears!



Think again: what are you really doing when mixing some music-only content, without any image support? Aren't you constructing a (warped, subjective... whatever) scene or soundscape?

And what kind of tools are you using for that? your ears of course, but also electrical levels and components, gold capsules, wires, sliders or rotating buttons... I don't think audio gear is more "subjective" than a 3D scene you probably already have in mind, consciously or not...

Regarding the use of 3D sound, just remember what Hugh Padgham did on Sting's Soul Cages back in 1991, using QSound to widen the stereo image on some (err) tracks. I'm not a fan of the music, but it resulted in a crisp, open, stereo mix, because there was more space to put a lot of details between the speakers. That 60

Tomas Danko

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #36 on: December 21, 2010, 01:10:51 PM »

Longcat Audio wrote on Sun, 19 December 2010 15:31

Anyway, if you are in some sound design work for 3D animation movies, AudioStage can import 3D trajectories from Maya or 3DS max and use them while building up your project, instead of making endless adjustments to panning automation.


I work at DICE making audio for computer games (games such as Mirror's Edge, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor etc), and our in-house engine FrostBite gives us all this 3D stuff for free.

However, there are a lot of cut-scenes in games. Most of the time, they are being streamed from disc. This forces us to prerender a stereo- or 5.1 audio file timed with the video. A lot of it is motion-captured and/or animated by hand, it all ends up as a Maya animation anyway.

Using AudioStage to get the panning from all objects (i.e. say there are five characters plus a "first person" camera in the scene that move around) for free through a plug-in in Vegas or Pro Tools sounds like heaven to me. Especially since I'm sitting here working late on exactly these things for a new game (Battlefield 3) as I type.

Is there some kind of trial/demo version to test this functionality?

Cheers,

Danko
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Longcat Audio

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #37 on: December 21, 2010, 06:53:09 PM »

Tomas, you got a PM.

And by the way, AudioStage was published today. Now available to all objectivists and subjectivists out there!

Best,

--Benjamin

mcsnare

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #38 on: December 25, 2010, 04:04:06 PM »

A friend of mine heard the demo and interviewed the guy for a CNET blog. He told me it basically makes speakers sound like you're listening to headphones.

Dave

ssltech

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #39 on: December 25, 2010, 07:26:15 PM »

mcsnare wrote

He told me it basically makes speakers sound like you're listening to headphones.



My instinctive reply is: Poppycock.

Unless you can 100% eliminate acoustic crosstalk, this is -and shall ever remain- impossible.

It may well be 'different' and suggest an experience reminiscent of wearing headphones, as listening to an ordinary stereo system under anechoic conditions can do, for example.

However, UNLESS inter-channel acoustic bleed is eliminated, any suggestion that it is 'the same as listening in headphones', I have to treat with significant suspicion (that it may be a little flippant or simplistic, as opposed to being completely thought-through) I'm afraid.

Now, interchannel acoustic crosstalk CAN indeed be effectively eliminated, but only by prediction -and for the prediction to work the distance MUST be controlled to a ludicrous degree- the position would have to be preposterously restrictive.

Which leaves me with the supposition that the comment is either 'wrong', or the system is -to all intents and purposes- quite useless, beyond the limits of a highly controlled 'parlor trick'.

Incidentally, I notice that Mr. Bongiovi is still selling his brand of similar parlor trickery... 'making tiny speakers sound massive'... I came across one of his branded items in Best Buy while I was Christmas shopping, a couple of days ago. -I remain underwhelmed. -Again, an overly enthusiastic commentator said that his mystical process can make a tiny, low-powered 4" speaker "thump you in the chest".

Unfortunately with physics the laws can be 'concealed' by trickery... but I've yet to see them bypassed.

Keith
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MDM (maxdimario) wrote on Fri, 16 November 2007 21:36

I have the feeling that I have more experience in my little finger than you do in your whole body about audio electronics..

Jon Hodgson

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #40 on: January 01, 2011, 07:08:18 AM »

ssltech wrote on Sun, 26 December 2010 00:26

mcsnare wrote

He told me it basically makes speakers sound like you're listening to headphones.



My instinctive reply is: Poppycock.

Unless you can 100% eliminate acoustic crosstalk, this is -and shall ever remain- impossible.

It may well be 'different' and suggest an experience reminiscent of wearing headphones, as listening to an ordinary stereo system under anechoic conditions can do, for example.


Well, that's actually what the word "like" means, it doesn't mean "exactly the same", though of course degree of similarity is somewhat subjective.

Crosstalk cancellation is a fundamental part of 3d audio systems on speakers, perfect it isn't, but it is effective, certainly in the gaming environment.
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ssltech

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #41 on: January 01, 2011, 10:04:57 AM »

IN the gaming environment, certainly.

-Where the attention is distracted far from the exactness of the audio. Humans are visually-dominant where direction sensing is concerned, and the brain is used to over-riding the ear's suggestion in the presence of visual information.

'Like' is a troublesome word. It can mean 'a little like', or 'exactly like'... -On it's own, it can most often be taken to mean 'just like', which is why it troubles me so much.

Keith
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MDM (maxdimario) wrote on Fri, 16 November 2007 21:36

I have the feeling that I have more experience in my little finger than you do in your whole body about audio electronics..

syntheticwave

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #42 on: February 02, 2011, 02:26:43 PM »

Jon Hodgson wrote on Sat, 01 January 2011 06:08

Crosstalk cancellation is a fundamental part of 3d audio systems on speakers, perfect it isn't, but it is effective, certainly in the gaming environment.



...but unfortunately, crosstalk cancellation cannot produce the elevation level, which should be essential, if we calling about 3D audio.

Really 3D in my view only possible at dummy head recordings, Ambisonics, Vector based amplitude panning or Holophony. Traditional audio contains no information regarding the elevation of the source, or whats more important, his first reflections in the recording room. Thus, 3D audio is not possible at  traditional way.

Regards H.
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Jon Hodgson

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #43 on: February 09, 2011, 12:00:14 PM »

syntheticwave wrote on Wed, 02 February 2011 19:26

Jon Hodgson wrote on Sat, 01 January 2011 06:08

Crosstalk cancellation is a fundamental part of 3d audio systems on speakers, perfect it isn't, but it is effective, certainly in the gaming environment.



...but unfortunately, crosstalk cancellation cannot produce the elevation level, which should be essential, if we calling about 3D audio.


What makes you say that?

I don't recall any specific issue with elevation on speakers at Sensaura.
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syntheticwave

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Re: 3D audio?
« Reply #44 on: February 24, 2011, 09:04:55 AM »

Longcat Audio wrote on Sun, 19 December 2010 09:31


One of our goals was to be able to mix different panning techniques into one single mix (eg stereo+transaural+ambisonics+surround amplitude panning+...), along with serious acoustics modeling. The dreaded object approach was almost inevitable...


I am absolutely agree, thats the only possible way for true spatial audio. However, you have forgot the wave field synthesis as one of the object based approaches. The Holophony solution would provide feasible 3D solution for that principle, especially in combination with Vector Based Amplitude Panning and Ambisonics.

Besides, we should no longer dread the object approach. A lot of problems which are unavoidably in traditional audio may become solved at this approach.


Regards H.

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