[Sursound] Sonicam

[Marc Lavallée]

I notice that although it is a Ambisonic microphone, the audio is
rendered as a stereo binaural stream; it's not clear if the Ambisonic
stream is available. But often, Kickstarter campaigns are hiding
important details to target specific markets.
--
Marc

On Fri, 26 May 2017 09:14:15 +0100

Hi all
Just seen this...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/303473622/affordable-professional-360o-sound-and-video-camer
It has 64mics, plus 9 4k camera's and is a lot cheaper than an Eigen
mic. Any thoughts? As it's got my attention.
Steve
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[Steven Boardman]

I just messaged them, apparently it will be. They will be also providing access to each individual mic stream via a software upgrade!

‘Yes, 3rd Ambisonic will be in the first shipment, but 5th order Ambisonic rendering will be provided in the early next year, by upgrading the software.’

A sphere of 17cm can’t be that great at high freq? Especially as the spec for each mems capsule is: noise level 67db, frequency response 20～20khz. (They didn’t state + or - 3db) .
I have asked for a 3rd order render, so lets see.


Here’s to hoping…

Steve

Post by Marc Lavallée
I notice that although it is a Ambisonic microphone, the audio is
rendered as a stereo binaural stream; it's not clear if the Ambisonic
stream is available. But often, Kickstarter campaigns are hiding
important details to target specific markets.
--
Marc
On Fri, 26 May 2017 09:14:15 +0100

Hi all
Just seen this...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/303473622/affordable-professional-360o-sound-and-video-camer
It has 64mics, plus 9 4k camera's and is a lot cheaper than an Eigen
mic. Any thoughts? As it's got my attention.
Steve
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[Fons Adriaensen]

Post by Steven Boardman
‘Yes, 3rd Ambisonic will be in the first shipment, but 5th order
Ambisonic rendering will be provided in the early next year, by
upgrading the software.’

Anyone promising usable 5th order from such a system is either
ignorant or deliberately misleading potential customers. Typical
kickstarter vaporware.

Post by Steven Boardman
A sphere of 17cm can’t be that great at high freq?

Depends on the distance between the capsules. In this case the
diameter is twice that of the Eigenmic, and the number of capsules
is doubled, so polar patterns will start to break down at around
6 to 7 kHz or so (assuming optimum capsules placement).

Post by Steven Boardman
Especially as the spec for each mems capsule is: noise level 67db,

Let's hope they mean a S/N ratio 67 dB, which is a self noise level
of 27 dB :-)

Ciao,

[Steven Boardman]

Surprise suprise, they can't provide a 3rd order sample at this point in
time....

Here is the message.

"We talked with our R&D team regarding to the schedule of audio. As our
timeline is to achieve the 3rd order Ambisonic in first shipment in
October, from now to October we still have a lot of work to do. The 3rd
order Ambisonic is not ready yet.

Right now our priority is the KickStarter, frankly speaking, we do not have
more personnel to optimize the recording. However, we have officially put
forward the needs of the 3rd order Ambisonic, and R&D team will prioritize
it.

We will try our best to give you a demo before the KS ends. However, if we
can't do it, we will update you as soon as it comes out."

Post by Fons Adriaensen

Post by Steven Boardman
‘Yes, 3rd Ambisonic will be in the first shipment, but 5th order
Ambisonic rendering will be provided in the early next year, by
upgrading the software.’

Anyone promising usable 5th order from such a system is either
ignorant or deliberately misleading potential customers. Typical
kickstarter vaporware.

Post by Steven Boardman
A sphere of 17cm can’t be that great at high freq?

Depends on the distance between the capsules. In this case the
diameter is twice that of the Eigenmic, and the number of capsules
is doubled, so polar patterns will start to break down at around
6 to 7 kHz or so (assuming optimum capsules placement).

Post by Steven Boardman
Especially as the spec for each mems capsule is: noise level 67db,

Let's hope they mean a S/N ratio 67 dB, which is a self noise level
of 27 dB :-)
Ciao,
--
FA
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)
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[Politis Archontis]

Hi Steven,

as Fons mentioned before such an array will have trouble to deliver proper HOA components at a useful range. Running a simple simulation here for R=17cm and assuming perfect matched microphones and perfectly (uniformly) arranged, spatial aliasing starts to become serious at 4.5kHz. Assuming that the encoding filters allow some noise amplification, eg 15dB, to get some more usable low frequencies:
2nd order is well behaved at 200 Hz - 5.5 kHz
3rd order at 600 Hz - 5 kHz
4th order at 1 kHz - 4.5 kHz
5th order at 1.5kHz - 4 kHz

Since the microphones will have some unidealities, and their placement is not uniform as far as I can see, the actual performance can be worse than that, depending how much the encoding filters are optimized for the setup or not. And again that’s assuming 15dB of more noise (frequency-dependent) at the HOA signals than the microphones, which may be a problem at many recordings. Less permitted noise on the other hand means that all the low limits for all orders go up, hence, even smaller usable ranges.

If one wishes to capture spatial sound in a HOA format, instead of having a device that tries to do everything, it would make more sense to have a separate camera, and a dedicated HOA microphone since it requires careful optimization for that purpose.

Regards,
Archontis Politis

Post by Steven Boardman
Surprise suprise, they can't provide a 3rd order sample at this point in
time....
Here is the message.
"We talked with our R&D team regarding to the schedule of audio. As our
timeline is to achieve the 3rd order Ambisonic in first shipment in
October, from now to October we still have a lot of work to do. The 3rd
order Ambisonic is not ready yet.
Right now our priority is the KickStarter, frankly speaking, we do not have
more personnel to optimize the recording. However, we have officially put
forward the needs of the 3rd order Ambisonic, and R&D team will prioritize
it.
We will try our best to give you a demo before the KS ends. However, if we
can't do it, we will update you as soon as it comes out."

Post by Fons Adriaensen

Post by Steven Boardman
‘Yes, 3rd Ambisonic will be in the first shipment, but 5th order
Ambisonic rendering will be provided in the early next year, by
upgrading the software.’

Anyone promising usable 5th order from such a system is either
ignorant or deliberately misleading potential customers. Typical
kickstarter vaporware.

Post by Steven Boardman
A sphere of 17cm can’t be that great at high freq?

Depends on the distance between the capsules. In this case the
diameter is twice that of the Eigenmic, and the number of capsules
is doubled, so polar patterns will start to break down at around
6 to 7 kHz or so (assuming optimum capsules placement).

Post by Steven Boardman
Especially as the spec for each mems capsule is: noise level 67db,

Let's hope they mean a S/N ratio 67 dB, which is a self noise level
of 27 dB :-)
Ciao,
--
FA
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)
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[Steven Boardman]

Hi Archontis

The size is 170mm diameter not radius.
They also state the capsules are in arrays of 16, so 4 arrays of 16 capsules. Looking at the camera though, I can’t work it out….

The also said:

'The noise and frequency respond i quote is for individual mic. We have noise reduction algorithm to improve 15db in total compared to each mic.
For frequency respond, we are using the EQL process，reach to the “flat".'


I knew that it wouldn’t be well behaved in the entire range, and as a consequence could not be relied on for a quality full bandwidth recording.
This isn’t always the point though. As it could still be used as a reliable reference for the most crucial of frequency ranges, the voice.
As long as it can record dialogue, one can reconstruct with ADR. It’s just wether it is intelligible, and accurate enough spatially.
90% of audio for films is done in post anyway, especially dialogue.

It includes 6 camera’s (and the footage isn’t too bad), so to me it seems like a bargain. I just need to hear the audio first. Otherwise it maybe better just to spend it all on a camera.
What has been mentioned by Fons, and yourself is obviously completely true, but we all know in practice it is probably worse. Even more reason to hear their 3rd order render. Of course 5th is a dream…..

While we are on the maths;
For 3rd order, and with the minimum amount of capsules, how small would the sphere need to be, for a range up to say 16kHz, or maybe even 18kHz?

Am I correct in assuming that the distance between the capsules needs to be less than half the highest wavelength represented?

Best

Steve

Post by Politis Archontis
Hi Steven,
2nd order is well behaved at 200 Hz - 5.5 kHz
3rd order at 600 Hz - 5 kHz
4th order at 1 kHz - 4.5 kHz
5th order at 1.5kHz - 4 kHz
Since the microphones will have some unidealities, and their placement is not uniform as far as I can see, the actual performance can be worse than that, depending how much the encoding filters are optimized for the setup or not. And again that’s assuming 15dB of more noise (frequency-dependent) at the HOA signals than the microphones, which may be a problem at many recordings. Less permitted noise on the other hand means that all the low limits for all orders go up, hence, even smaller usable ranges.
If one wishes to capture spatial sound in a HOA format, instead of having a device that tries to do everything, it would make more sense to have a separate camera, and a dedicated HOA microphone since it requires careful optimization for that purpose.
Regards,
Archontis Politis

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[Politis Archontis]

Hi Steven,

(hurried reply on the go) the numbers were for 17cm diameter (8.5cm radius). You also get around 15-18dB SNR improvement just by combining that many microphones, that’s still included in that simulation.

I wasn’t saying that the device is not good or useful, apart from the video, you can do a lot of useful stuff with that many microphones, binaural rendering, beamforming etc.. I was saying that it’s not a very good HOA microphone with these specs.

Best,
Archontis Politis






On 30 May 2017, at 16:26, Steven Boardman <***@gmail.com<mailto:***@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Archontis

The size is 170mm diameter not radius.
They also state the capsules are in arrays of 16, so 4 arrays of 16 capsules. Looking at the camera though, I can’t work it out….

The also said:

'The noise and frequency respond i quote is for individual mic. We have noise reduction algorithm to improve 15db in total compared to each mic.
For frequency respond, we are using the EQL process，reach to the “flat".'


I knew that it wouldn’t be well behaved in the entire range, and as a consequence could not be relied on for a quality full bandwidth recording.
This isn’t always the point though. As it could still be used as a reliable reference for the most crucial of frequency ranges, the voice.
As long as it can record dialogue, one can reconstruct with ADR. It’s just wether it is intelligible, and accurate enough spatially.
90% of audio for films is done in post anyway, especially dialogue.

It includes 6 camera’s (and the footage isn’t too bad), so to me it seems like a bargain. I just need to hear the audio first. Otherwise it maybe better just to spend it all on a camera.
What has been mentioned by Fons, and yourself is obviously completely true, but we all know in practice it is probably worse. Even more reason to hear their 3rd order render. Of course 5th is a dream…..

While we are on the maths;
For 3rd order, and with the minimum amount of capsules, how small would the sphere need to be, for a range up to say 16kHz, or maybe even 18kHz?

Am I correct in assuming that the distance between the capsules needs to be less than half the highest wavelength represented?

Best

Steve




On 27 May 2017, at 23:18, Politis Archontis <***@aalto.fi<mailto:***@aalto.fi>> wrote:

Hi Steven,

as Fons mentioned before such an array will have trouble to deliver proper HOA components at a useful range. Running a simple simulation here for R=17cm and assuming perfect matched microphones and perfectly (uniformly) arranged, spatial aliasing starts to become serious at 4.5kHz. Assuming that the encoding filters allow some noise amplification, eg 15dB, to get some more usable low frequencies:
2nd order is well behaved at 200 Hz - 5.5 kHz
3rd order at 600 Hz - 5 kHz
4th order at 1 kHz - 4.5 kHz
5th order at 1.5kHz - 4 kHz

Since the microphones will have some unidealities, and their placement is not uniform as far as I can see, the actual performance can be worse than that, depending how much the encoding filters are optimized for the setup or not. And again that’s assuming 15dB of more noise (frequency-dependent) at the HOA signals than the microphones, which may be a problem at many recordings. Less permitted noise on the other hand means that all the low limits for all orders go up, hence, even smaller usable ranges.

If one wishes to capture spatial sound in a HOA format, instead of having a device that tries to do everything, it would make more sense to have a separate camera, and a dedicated HOA microphone since it requires careful optimization for that purpose.

Regards,
Archontis Politis



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[Stefan Schreiber]

Post by Politis Archontis
Hi Steven,
(hurried reply on the go) the numbers were for 17cm diameter (8.5cm radius). You also get around 15-18dB SNR improvement just by combining that many microphones, that’s still included in that simulation.
I wasn’t saying that the device is not good or useful, apart from the video, you can do a lot of useful stuff with that many microphones, binaural rendering, beamforming etc.. I was saying that it’s not a very good HOA microphone with these specs.

But this mike will be used to record (mostly) background (and
on-location) scene audio - and not to record some complete film track!

As Steven says most of the audio will be mixed in the studio.

It would be nice to compare the Sonicam SA mike solution later to say
the Ozo Vr camera. (I still don't know how "Ozo 8-capsule spherical
audio" is supposed to work...)

So a mathematical "camera audio review" is maybe interesting but will be
way too negative - because the intended use is not to record music. At
least not on its own.
(A SF mike can do this and an eigenmike to a certain degree.)

Best,

Stefan

P.S.: Why can't we assembled here on the "Ambisonics list" (coughing) be
a little bit more friendly to the people actually applying
Ambisonics? ;-)

Post by Politis Archontis
Hi Archontis
The size is 170mm diameter not radius.
They also state the capsules are in arrays of 16, so 4 arrays of 16 capsules. Looking at the camera though, I can’t work it out….
'The noise and frequency respond i quote is for individual mic. We have noise reduction algorithm to improve 15db in total compared to each mic.
For frequency respond, we are using the EQL process，reach to the “flat".'
I knew that it wouldn’t be well behaved in the entire range, and as a consequence could not be relied on for a quality full bandwidth recording.
This isn’t always the point though. As it could still be used as a reliable reference for the most crucial of frequency ranges, the voice.
As long as it can record dialogue, one can reconstruct with ADR. It’s just wether it is intelligible, and accurate enough spatially.
90% of audio for films is done in post anyway, especially dialogue.
It includes 6 camera’s (and the footage isn’t too bad), so to me it seems like a bargain. I just need to hear the audio first. Otherwise it maybe better just to spend it all on a camera.
What has been mentioned by Fons, and yourself is obviously completely true, but we all know in practice it is probably worse. Even more reason to hear their 3rd order render. Of course 5th is a dream…..
While we are on the maths;
For 3rd order, and with the minimum amount of capsules, how small would the sphere need to be, for a range up to say 16kHz, or maybe even 18kHz?
Am I correct in assuming that the distance between the capsules needs to be less than half the highest wavelength represented?
Best
Steve
Hi Steven,
2nd order is well behaved at 200 Hz - 5.5 kHz
3rd order at 600 Hz - 5 kHz
4th order at 1 kHz - 4.5 kHz
5th order at 1.5kHz - 4 kHz
Since the microphones will have some unidealities, and their placement is not uniform as far as I can see, the actual performance can be worse than that, depending how much the encoding filters are optimized for the setup or not. And again that’s assuming 15dB of more noise (frequency-dependent) at the HOA signals than the microphones, which may be a problem at many recordings. Less permitted noise on the other hand means that all the low limits for all orders go up, hence, even smaller usable ranges.
If one wishes to capture spatial sound in a HOA format, instead of having a device that tries to do everything, it would make more sense to have a separate camera, and a dedicated HOA microphone since it requires careful optimization for that purpose.
Regards,
Archontis Politis

[Fons Adriaensen]

Post by Steven Boardman
'The noise and frequency respond i quote is for individual mic. We have noise
reduction algorithm to improve 15db in total compared to each mic.

That's true for the omni (zero-order) response, its noise figure will
be 15 dB better than that of each capsule.

For all the other components this doesn't work. The lower band
frequencies that Archontis posted are the ones at which the noise
would become 15 dB *worse* than that of each capsule. I haven't yet
repeated the simulation, but these figures look entirely credible.

Ciao,