Re: Octophonic sound system

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>]

At 11:49 PM +0200 6/28/01, Junkie G wrote:

>       i think this conceptual matter is
>       not yet clear for me ...
>       what we understand by 3D Audio ?

"3D audio" or "3D sound" are probably bad terms because they are used 
by different people to mean different things.

If we use a visual analogy, 3D sound should probably mean sound in 
three dimensions as represented by an XYZ coordinate system. That 
would mean that binaural headphone sound or sound coming from a 
stereo pair of loudspeakers would be one-dimensional sound, and a 
standard 5.1 planar setup would be two-dimensional sound. Only if we 
add overhead speakers would we truly have three-dimensional sound.

Of course the situation is confounded when we add artificial 
reverberation or related processing to the signal, because this is an 
attempt to simulate spatial depth. However, even with very good 
psychoacoustic processing it is only a simulation of two-dimensional 
sound using a one-dimensional delivery system (I have yet to hear a 
convincing illusion of height from a binaural or even a surround 
system).

Therefore I think it's better to talk about "multichannel surround 
sound," for the sake of clarity.

Even then there are many different approaches.
-- 

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Richard Zvonar, PhD
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