AES New York 2019
Immersive & Spatial Audio Track Event RP05
Wednesday, October 16, 4:30 pm — 6:00 pm (1E06)
Recording & Production: RP05 - 3D Microphone Technique Shootout—9.1 Demo and Discussion
Presenter:Hyunkook Lee, University of Huddersfield - Huddersfield, UK
3D audio is rapidly becoming an industry standard for film, music, virtual reality, etc. Various types of 3D microphone arrays have been proposed over the recent years, and it is important to understand the perceptual differences among different techniques. This workshop presents a large-scale 3D mic array shootout recording session that has been conducted in St. Paul's concert hall in Huddersfield, UK. An open-access database for research and education has been created from this session. A total of 104 channels of audio were recorded simultaneously for 7 different main array configurations for 9.1 (a.k.a. 5.1.4) reproduction (OCT, 2L-Cube, PCMA v1&2, Decca Tree, Hamasaki-Cube v1&2), a 32-channel spherical microphone array, a First-Order Ambisonics microphone and a dummy head. The microphones used for the main arrays were from the same manufacturer to minimize spectral differences. Various sound sources including string quartet, piano trio, a cappella singers, organ, clarinet, piano, etc., were recorded. This workshop will explain the basic psychoacoustic principles of the arrays used, with accompanying 9.1 demos of the recordings and pictures. The pros and cons of each technique depending on the type of sound source will be discussed in depth.