22-09-2008, 10:18 AM
Ambiophonics uses room treatment, radical front channel loudspeaker positioning, computer recreation of real, early reflections and the later reverberant fields, and additional loudspeakers, strategically placed, to accurately propagate such ambience. Not every audiophile will be able or willing to do all that I suggest, but as each feature of the Ambiophonic system is implemented the improvement in realism will be easily audible and clearly rewarding.
Although Ambiophonics does not rely on decoders, matrices or ambience extraction, it does incorporate commercially available digital signal processors, which are essentially special-purpose computers, to recreate the appropriate ambience signals. It is therefore a prime article of ambiophile faith that while such signal generators are always subject to improvement, they have already reached an audiophile level of performance if one uses them Ambiophonically.
In Ambiophonic parlance, when we say "real" we mean that an acoustic space of appropriate size and stage width has been created that is realistic enough to fool the human ear-brain system into believing that it is within that space with the performers on stage clearly delineated in front. The nice thing about Ambiophonics and existing two channel recordings is that so-called stereo recordings are not inherently stereophonic. That is, the microphones act like ears. They don't know that their signals are going to be played back in an untreated room and subjected to cross talk, pinna angle distortion, and the other ills described below. Thus virtually any two channel recording of acoustic music, unless panned or multi-mic'ed to death, will respond well to Ambiophonic processing and reproduction.
The Ambiophonic techniques produce a sound stage as wide as that seen by the recording microphones, an early reflection sound pattern that defines the hall size, and the character of the recording space, the listener's position within that hall, and a reverberant field that complements the content of the music and the original recording venue.
