JOURNAL FEATURES
A quick guide to recent selected AES Journal features
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Ambisonic representation provides a relatively versatile and compact way of storing or transmitting spatial audio scenes. It has become increasingly important in recent years, resulting in a number of papers and e-Briefs at AES conventions, and a number of these are summarized in this article. Signals in this format may exist in mixed orders, requiring special decoders to be constructed that optimize spatial rendering. When it comes to decoding ambisonics for different speaker layouts, there may be advantages to active or hybrid decoders. Irregular layouts are harder to decode for than regular ones. Binaural rendering is a popular means of reproducing ambisonic content, and there is some evidence that individualized HRTF processing is useful in this context. Ambisonic information can also be data compressed, and there may be advantages to doing this after some form of signal decomposition has been done, which takes advantage of interchannel redundancy.
A workshop at the AES Spring Show discussed how high resolution audio streaming has gone from being a niche market to a mainstream commercial proposition. There are many different ways in which the idea of quality is perceived by consumers, but enough seem willing to pay for the idea of quality and to have a faithful connection with an artist's intentions. There is considerable potential for other service providers and areas of the world to develop high resolution audio streaming, but the arguments for doing so depend strongly on the business models that prevail in each context. Live streaming of events in high resolution, with both video and audio, is a burgeoning business area, enabling a larger slice of the revenue to go to artists than would be the case with streamed albums or songs.
