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As someone who isn't familiar with audio technology: is there any practical use for 32 channels of audio?
by akandiah 13y ago
As someone who isn't familiar with audio technology: is there any practical use for 32 channels of audio?
- StavrosK 13y agoHaving 32 speakers around you, I would imagine. It was probably a case of "since we're standardizing, we might as well future-proof this".
- AndrewDucker 13y agoCinemas.
- ecopoesis 13y agoIt's for things like Dolby Atmos[1]. Instead of having to be stuck with a premixed 5 or 7 channel format designed for an ideal that your setup probably is not, you instead include unmixed sound and where it would ideally be coming from. The receiver then has knowledge of speaker and seating positions and dynamically mixes the output to match the room. [1] http://www.dolby.com/us/en/professional/technology/cinema/dolby-atmos-video.html http://www.dolby.com/us/en/professional/technology/cinema/do...
- kibibu 13y agoInteresting that a "virtual speaker set" won over higher-order Ambisonics (representing incoming audio as spherical harmonics). I wonder if it just boils down to easier engineering.
- sp332 13y agoAmbisonics requires a lot of actual speakers to have a large (say, couch-sized) "sweet spot" where the directional audio sounds any good.
- ioquatix 13y agoReally? I've heard some pretty amazing demos of ambisonics even with just two speakers - things which completely blow away anything I hear through mainstream productions with 5.1 and 7.1
- sp332 13y agoBut don't you have to hold your head in a smallish area for all the spherical harmonics to add up properly?
- kibibu 13y agoI find this curious, as you should in theory be able to map your 30 speakers to SH coeffs if you are using high-enough order SH (although 4th degree SH needs 25 coefficients so I guess there's not enough savings)
- sp332 13y agoLike I said, that requires a lot of physical speakers, not just encoded data.
- Shish2k 13y agoCan we just have 3D sound now, with X, Y and Z coordinates to go along with the sound clips, and the speaker system routes the right sound an arbitrary number of speakers? That works amazingly well for FPS games...
- TylerE 13y agoA feature film could easily have a hundred different layers of audio at any given time, maybe more. The storage requirements would be INSANE.
- PeterisP 13y agoTo me, hundred high-quality audio channels with lossless compression sounds not "INSANE" but "still less than the video". Playback processing might be tricky, streaming might be tricky, but actual storage for any movie or home cinema setup should be trivial. You can easily put a hundred audio channels on a fraction of a bluray disc, not counting any future improvements in storage.
- coldtea 13y ago>To me, hundred high-quality audio channels with lossless compression sounds not "INSANE" but "still less than the video". Well, 100 audio channels 50% lossless compressed files would go about 60 GB for a 2-hour movie. So not really "less than the video". And that's for 16/44.1 lossless. For 24/96 adjust accordingly. (Of course not all 100 channels will have sound playing all the time -- except if we're talking for a musical or rock concert video. But it gives a taste of the max storage requirements).
- acuozzo 13y ago> Well, 100 audio channels 50% lossless compressed files would go about 60 GB for a 2-hour movie. So not really "less than the video". My losslessly-compressed (Lagarith FTW!) VHS captures are ~60GB for a 2-hour movie and that's at 720x486.
- neckro23 13y agoEven uncompressed and being extremely generous with the bit depth/rate: 32 ch * 24 bits * 96 kHz = 73 Mbps. That's a drop in the bucket on an 18Gbps connection. As mentioned, this is probably aimed at theaters. Also consider that you could send four separate 7.1 audio programs simultaneously over the same link, which would let any audio program switching happen at the receiving end instead. Actually, the Engadget article isn't very specific about "32 audio channels". Possibly they mean 32 separate audio programs instead? Audio is so cheap bandwidth-wise that it's practically free these days.