In the previous Post Crispin14 suggests that the term ‘surround sound’ as used in “get creative with surround sound” is perhaps a little bit tired … and I agree, it gets thrown around in DVD and general home theatre discussion a lost… and most surround sound in DVD’s and on home theatres is relatively poor compared to the immersion of ambisonics. How can we communicate that.
The word ‘sound field’ is one possibility. …… “get creative with sound fields” ?
an other one is to work with ‘ambisonics’ … “get creative with ambisonic surround” … but people dont know that ambisonics is more immersive
spell out the difference … “get creative with next-generation surround sound“
One thing to note is that it has to be clear, from quickly that the site is about surround sound.
- immerse yourself in surround sound … although that doesn’t suggest that you can do it yourself.
- get creative with sound and space … although that doesn’t s
Here are some ways to communicate that this sound is more ‘enveloping’
- 3D sound, immersive, holographic, virtual, sound scene, sound realm,
get creative with holographic sound (not sure about this one)
…. difficult.
… and I’m loving it.
Its a bit like “how to do create a business for dummies” .. and it kind of reads like Alan Carr’s famous “Stop smoking the EZY way”… i.e. it really spell it out.
What Gerber says is really resonating with me … he says that in any business there’s the Technician, the Manager and the Entrepreneur. Most businesses are started by a Technician and businesses will only survive if the Technician is held under control by the Manager who has to serve the vision of the Entrepreneur.
The good news is I’m sick of the technical side of things (I would _love_ to hand that over to someone else). I think my nature is much more as an Entrepreneur, although I have little discipline and I need to encapsulate a vision into a ‘business plan’. I have some management skills in that I have managed small teams of ‘technicians’ and I am aware about the need to align the technician’s understanding with the bigger plan, and maintain the technician’s enthusiasm in his/her work.
But I need to define what the business is, from a high level, so that the management and technicians can follow the vision. I’m working on it 
There’s a bit of a discussion going on the Ambisonia Yahoo list…. should Ambisonia offer Stereo decodes or not? Might seem like a simple question, but it touches on the heart of what Ambisonia is about … I guess it is a ‘Mission Statement’ defining question.
There are lots of different possible stereo decodes, and one of the empowering things about Ambisonics is that an Ambisonic recording can yield all of them. We could do UHJ, Blumlein fig-8′s at 90, back to back cardioids, ORTF, spaced cardioids etc.
But some contributors are arguing that offering stereo will ‘dilute’ the site a little. I agree. On the other hand, it will expose lots more people to the contens of the site…
Here’s an email I posted on the Ambisonia Yahoo list:
I’d like to keep this discussion going a bit because I think Ambisonia is reaching a point where it it will need a clear definition of what it is about. This whole stereo discussion really nails the identity issue, I think.
Again, I’m thinking out loud …
One of the issues with ‘Surround Sound’ is that it rarely stands on its own. Its never a ‘must have’ its always an ‘optional’, or a ‘nice to have’… there’s always a “you can listen to this (DVD) in stereo if you dont have a surround sound system at home”. etc.
There are no movies which depend on Surround for plot-critical development.
A lot of music is ‘post-produced’ in surround … not ‘produced’ in surround.
And there’s not much material which is _only_ available in surround sound…. exclusively surround.
All this really produces a kind of ‘undermining’ of surround.
A while ago I was having a conversation with Paul D about how a ‘true’ surround composition would be a composition which had a different (higher?) meaning/communication/worth in surround than when cut down to stereo.
For Ambisonia.com to say “here, download it in stereo”, continues this undermining. And that’s bad. Ambisonia could represent that ‘exclusivity’ of surround. “Surround Sound isn’t stereo with a bit behind, its something else altogether”…
But offering stereo also dramatically increases access to the content on the site. And that will pull more people who might then go on and upgrade to a proper surround system.
This is one of those difficult product management questions … reduce the purety of the product, or compromise a bit to pull more people in …
.. and I think answering that question can only be done by defining what Ambisonia is about … what it’s mission statement is.
What is the Ambisonia.com Mission Statement?
Now this is a tricky question because I’m not sure the Mission Statement should relate to me personally or relate to Ambisonia.com as a business or what. I’m going to offer a bunch of them, and let them simmer down to one over time. I’ve created a new category ‘mission statement’ for blog posts, and I’ll make the ambisonia.com Mission Statement an ongoing line of thought.
Ambisonia.com’s (potential) mission statements are:
- For Etienne Deleflie to make money doing something he enjoys.
- To create a micro-economy around Ambisonics so that the whole ambisonics community’s efforts can be ‘sustained’.
- To deliver the potential of ‘Surround Sound’ to consumers (who really only have access to surround in movies and post-produced rock albums)
- To create a portal, perhaps a ‘one stop shop’ for anyone who wants to listen, publish, or buy hardware (?) for surround sound.
- To peddle the surround sound industry (?)
- To build a ready audience so that Etienne Deleflie can easily distribute his own surround sound compositions to a large group of people (yes, this is actually the initial motivation for building ambisonia
Ambisonia is not really about pushing ‘ambisonics’. I was interested in surround sound before I discovered ambisonics. In my research on surround sound, I discovered this format and its vibrant active community… and realised that this was by far the best format to work in even though it didn’t have any commerical support. Ofcourse, whilst ambisonia is not about pushing ambisonics, ambisonics and its ‘spirit’ is a significant part of ambisonia.
So I assume that I can have only 1 mission statement … and the above are probably a way off the mark. Its a start.
