Ambiophonics... Let's talk about it.

EngineerNate

EngineerNate

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I experimented with ambiophonics in college via vst plugins in Foobar2000. Some of the results were so scary good that even my non-audio friends had some literal hair raising reactions. Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek was a particularly potent demo track-in my space you would swear the various mixed voices she puts together in that song were coming from all over the room. It was a fun experiment, since at the time I didn't have a TV and could move the speakers into the correct position with little effort for comparisons. Has anyone else had experiences with it-good/bad/ugly/revelatory?

For the uninitiated:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiophonics

Cheers!
Nathan
 
My Caver has Sonic Holography but Ive never tried it. It requires setting up the speakers in a way I dont have room for. Bob
 
If you like classical, you should hunt for some Nimbus Records "Ambisonics" recordings. Nimbus recordings typically are very ambient, and their Ambisonics recording techniques enhanced that. I bet Nimbus releases would sound awesome in your Ambiophonics system.

Another similar (hardware) item, is Jim Bongiorno's Trinaural Processor. It uses a LCR three speaker set up, for stereo playback. It's supposed to sound insanely good, though I've never had to opportunity to hear it. But, it did win a Best of CES award.
 
Hey, I'm ambiophonic and never knew it!

From what I'm seeing on Wiki, Carver's holography is a take on the tech. Been enjoying that for decades now, courtesy of a C4000, C9, and currently running an H9AV full time.

The H9AV adds another tweak called "precog" that adds apparent height to the stage. Another handy dandy feature is dedicated L+R and L-R outputs on the back for driving center channel and subs - way ahead of the curve on that.

Would the Hafler thing be considered in the same general family? I'm also a fan of that, creating a four speaker array driven with a Dynaco Quadapter on the back channels of my quad system.
 
The Quadaptor is for the Dynaquad scheme, and near as I can tell is passive phase shifter. The Hafler circuit is just a wiring arrangement, with no additional equipment.
 
i've had a few different holographic units including carver built in and seperate
and some unit that was considered a clone of carver... i cant member the name of the thing ... it was considered a clone of carver but could not be proven
when you opened the unit you found a blob of hard resin ... could not id any elecetronics
i found it a gimick but now might go looking for plugins to play with
 
wouldnt this be like q-sound? with out needing add ons ?
i have a bunch of q sound stuff and think most sounds pretty good
 
tarior said:
The Quadaptor is for the Dynaquad scheme, and near as I can tell is passive phase shifter. The Hafler circuit is just a wiring arrangement, with no additional equipment.
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The Hafler circuit is considered a form of ambiophonic sound, according to Wikipedia. The Dynaco QD-1 "Quadaptor" basically takes the Hafler circuit and adds a triple rheostat to regulate things a bit. No 'phase shifting' is involved, just having the rear speakers wired out-of-phase with the fronts. Different than Ambiophonics, which involves two speakers and digital signal processing to simulate the effects of quadraphonic/surround sound, but the effect is likely similar.
-Adam
 
tarior said:
The Quadaptor is for the Dynaquad scheme, and near as I can tell is passive phase shifter. The Hafler circuit is just a wiring arrangement, with no additional equipment.
Click to expand...
Passive, yes. Phase shifter....well....maybe...... sort of. What it does is it captures the out of phase signals already present in the recording that you normally wouldn't hear through your main two front speakers and throws those to the back speakers.....and voila! Added ambiance.....aka concert hall......what was there all the time that you normally don't hear is now there. I've been using one for years and it works well on most recordings, works especially well with live recordings.

I've also played around with the Carver Sonic Hologram setup........it works....but.....like others have said, you definitely need to be in the sweet spot or its just lost. I really wouldn't call sonic holography an ambiophonics generator....more of a sounds stage expander. I've toyed with the idea of combining both to see what kind of sound you'd end up with, but have yet to try it.......
 
there are plugins for jriver
and there are expander plugins natively in the dsp studio for jriver
 
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stereoguy70 said:
Passive, yes. Phase shifter....well....maybe...... sort of. What it does is it captures the out of phase signals already present in the recording that you normally wouldn't hear through your main two front speakers and throws those to the back speakers.....and voila! Added ambiance.....aka concert hall......what was there all the time that you normally don't hear is now there. I've been using one for years and it works well on most recordings, works especially well with live recordings.

I've also played around with the Carver Sonic Hologram setup........it works....but.....like others have said, you definitely need to be in the sweet spot or its just lost. I really wouldn't call sonic holography an ambiophonics generator....more of a sounds stage expander. I've toyed with the idea of combining both to see what kind of sound you'd end up with, but have yet to try it.......
Click to expand...

I've never had a Quadaptor to examine and play with. A friendly acquaintance had a Hafler Circuit set up on his system. It was a neat effect, but I've never really had the space/time/inclination simultaneously to try it myself.
 
I remember hearing the Yamaha DSP-1 demonstrated at the HiFi show in 1985/6 and had to have one.

What an amazing piece of kit. I still have a few of them, but the novelty wore off within a few months of doing crazy things like making giant virtual echo rooms, pitch shifting one channel with respect to the other, creating massive Munster cathedrals and sitting in rock concerts, all surrounded by a roomful of speakers and amps.

It all ends up sounding weird in the end and you turn it off.
 
tarior said:
I've never had a Quadaptor to examine and play with. A friendly acquaintance had a Hafler Circuit set up on his system. It was a neat effect, but I've never really had the space/time/inclination simultaneously to try it myself.
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You should try one sometime.....I don't think you'd be disappointed. :)
 
tarior said:
If I ever stumble across one in my travels, I'll be sure to pick it up.
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Eico made a similar unit to the Dynaco one as well....and Radio Shack had their own version too......they all do the same thing pretty much the same way though. But....because Dynaco was the original, they seem to command slightly higher prices.
 
orsen said:
i've had a few different holographic units including carver built in and seperate
and some unit that was considered a clone of carver... i cant member the name of the thing ... it was considered a clone of carver but could not be proven
when you opened the unit you found a blob of hard resin ... could not id any elecetronics
i found it a gimick but now might go looking for plugins to play with
Click to expand...

Omnisonix 801?
 
Another ambiance generator in my collection. Ever wonder what one would look like if designed by rocket scientists?

Tada! ... the Hughes AK100 Sound Retrieval System Spacial Enhancer.

hughes_ak100.jpg


hughes-ak-100-naked.jpg


PS - anyone familiar with the SRS enhancement system in Windows Media Player (and several others) ... this is it's precursor, in all it's analog glory ...
 
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