Imagine you’re using the most advanced surround recording and reproduction system ever devised, but virtually nobody can play it back. How do you enable everyone to hear the results of your labors? One answer is to convert to a format that everybody can already enjoy. But are the inevitable compromises worth it? In the case described by the authors, the system in question is the British-designed surround system Ambisonics, and the challenge was to come up with a way of converting Ambisonic B-Format and 2-channel UHJ into conventional ‘one channel, one speaker’ surround format(s) and releasing the result. The purpose of the experiments described in this paper was therefore to develop and evaluate a process for generating widely-distributable, low-cost planar surround recordings rendered from Ambisonic (2-channel UHJ and planar B-Format) source material – without the traditional challenge of requiring the listener to have access to an Ambisonic decoder – by delivering Ambisonically-decoded speaker feeds (commonly referred to as ‘G-Format’) using a commonly-available surround distribution format.
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