The Art And Science Of 3d Audio Recording

This professional book offers a unique, comprehensive and timely guide on 3D audio recording. Intended for sound engineers and professionals, and summarizing more than twenty-year research on this topic, it includes extensive information and details on various microphone techniques and loudspeaker layouts, such as Auro-3D®, Dolby® AtmosTM, DTS:X®, MMAD, SONY 360 Reality Audio and Ambisonics. It presents a rich set of results obtained from both objective measurements and subjective listening tests, and a number of case studies for 3D recording, ranging from solo-instrument techniques to full symphony orchestra, and microphone systems for virtual reality applications. Further, it includes a chapter on spatial hearing discussing issues of 3D audio sound reproduction. All in all, this book offers extensive, practical information for sound engineers and professionals.

This book presents an extensive and timely survey of more than 30 surround and 20 stereo-microphone techniques. Further, it offers, for the first time, an explanation of why the RCA "Living Stereo" series of legacy recordings from the 1950s and 60s is still appreciated by music lovers worldwide, despite their use of an apparently incorrect recording technique from the perspective of psychoacoustics. Discussing this aspect in detail, the book draws on the author’s study of concert hall acoustics and psychoacoustics. The book also analyzes the "fingerprint" features of a selected number of surround and – more importantly – stereo microphone techniques in depth by measuring their signal cross-correlation over frequency and also using an artificial human head. In addition, the book presents a rating of microphone techniques based on the assessment of various acoustic attributes, and merges the results of several subjective listening tests, including those conducted by other researchers. Building on this knowledge, it provides fresh insights into important microphone system features, from stereo to 3D audio. Moreover, it describes new microphone techniques, such as AB-PC, ORTF-T and BPT, and the recently defined BQIrep (Binaural Quality Index of reproduced music). Lastly, the book concludes with a short history of microphone techniques and case studies of live and studio recordings.

Immersive Sound: The Art and Science of Binaural and Multi-Channel Audio provides a comprehensive guide to multi-channel sound. With contributions from leading recording engineers, researchers, and industry experts, Immersive Sound includes an in-depth description of the physics and psychoacoustics of spatial audio as well as practical applications. Chapters include the history of 3D sound, binaural reproduction over headphones and loudspeakers, stereo, surround sound, height channels, object-based audio, soundfield (ambisonics), wavefield synthesis, and multi-channel mixing techniques. Knowledge of the development, theory, and practice of spatial and multi-channel sound is essential to those advancing the research and applications in the rapidly evolving fields of 3D sound recording, augmented and virtual reality, gaming, film sound, music production, and post-production.

3D Audio offers a detailed perspective of this rapidly developing arena. Written by many of the world’s leading researchers and practitioners, it draws from science, technologies, and creative practice to provide insight into cutting-edge research in 3D audio. Through exploring the intersection of these fields, the reader will gain insight into a number of research areas and professional practice in 3D sonic space. As such, the book acts both as a primer that enables readers to gain an understanding of various aspects of 3D audio, and can inform students and audio enthusiasts, but its deep treatment of a diverse range of topics will also inform professional practitioners and academics beyond their core specialisms. The chapters cover areas such as an Ambisonics, binaural technologies and approaches, psychoacoustics, 3D audio recording, composition for 3D space, 3D audio in live sound, broadcast, and movies – and more. Overall, this book offers a definitive insight into an emerging sound world that is increasingly becoming part of our everyday lives.

The Art of Digital Audio Recording teaches readers what they really need to know in order to make great sound recordings with computers - both the practical and the technical information. --from publisher description.

Immersive Sound: The Art and Science of Binaural and Multi-Channel Audio provides a comprehensive guide to multi-channel sound. With contributions from leading recording engineers, researchers, and industry experts, Immersive Sound includes an in-depth description of the physics and psychoacoustics of spatial audio as well as practical applications. Chapters include the history of 3D sound, binaural reproduction over headphones and loudspeakers, stereo, surround sound, height channels, object-based audio, soundfield (ambisonics), wavefield synthesis, and multi-channel mixing techniques. Knowledge of the development, theory, and practice of spatial and multi-channel sound is essential to those advancing the research and applications in the rapidly evolving fields of 3D sound recording, augmented and virtual reality, gaming, film sound, music production, and post-production.

This open access book provides a concise explanation of the fundamentals and background of the surround sound recording and playback technology Ambisonics. It equips readers with the psychoacoustical, signal processing, acoustical, and mathematical knowledge needed to understand the inner workings of modern processing utilities, special equipment for recording, manipulation, and reproduction in the higher-order Ambisonic format. The book comes with various practical examples based on free software tools and open scientific data for reproducible research. The book’s introductory section offers a perspective on Ambisonics spanning from the origins of coincident recordings in the 1930s to the Ambisonic concepts of the 1970s, as well as classical ways of applying Ambisonics in first-order coincident sound scene recording and reproduction that have been practiced since the 1980s. As, from time to time, the underlying mathematics become quite involved, but should be comprehensive without sacrificing readability, the book includes an extensive mathematical appendix. The book offers readers a deeper understanding of Ambisonic technologies, and will especially benefit scientists, audio-system and audio-recording engineers. In the advanced sections of the book, fundamentals and modern techniques as higher-order Ambisonic decoding, 3D audio effects, and higher-order recording are explained. Those techniques are shown to be suitable to supply audience areas ranging from studio-sized to hundreds of listeners, or headphone-based playback, regardless whether it is live, interactive, or studio-produced 3D audio material.

The Art of Recording articulates and explores the ways recorded sound is different from live sound, and how those differences can enhance music, including surround sound. It presents a system for developing the critical and analytical listening skills necessary to recognize and understand these sound characteristics--the same skills necessary to create quality recordings-- and for talking about or describing sound. The Art of Recording also considers audio recording as a creative process. The reader will learn to guide the artistry of music recording from its beginning as an idea, through its development during the many stages of the recording sequence, to its final form. Take a new and detailed look at many of the greatest recordings of The Beatles, offering insights into how the recording process shaped their music, and how you can gain control over the craft of making great recordings.