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Author Topic: Ambiophonics 4.1 surround setup help  (Read 825 times)

styjp

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Ambiophonics 4.1 surround setup help
« on: April 07, 2020, 09:49:07 am »

Hi guys.

This is my first post here. Thank you for all your work so far.

I am after setting up JRiver to apply ambiophonics DSP for surround movie playback without DACs, just my HDMI as an output, but I am having difficulty splitting the input, processing the channels independently using DSP, and then mixing them up again in order to output an ambiophonics mix.

I want to use an amiophonics dsp to process the two front channels and the two rear channels independently. What this means is that a 5.1 movie will be split to 2.0 (Front) 2.0 (Rear) and .1 (LFE), processesed, and then remixed back to 4.1 to output using hdmi to the receiver.

What I need to do basically is:
5.1 input -> mix the C channel in L & R -> mute C channel -> apply ambio DSP to front channels only - 2.0 Front
5.1 input -> apply ambio DSP to rear channel only -> output - 2.0 Rear
5.1 input -> leave LFE .1 channel untouched -> output - .1 LFE

The reason I am after using the DSP twice for different speakers set (front and rear) is because the DSP needs to process stereo and output stereo.

Thank you.

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jsmith967

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Re: Ambiophonics 4.1 surround setup help
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2020, 10:00:08 am »

Welcome to the forum.

I have tried this before for ambio 4ch ("envelophonics"). It is not possible in JRiver, since JRiver only lets you use a 2 ch. VST dsp to process the front L/R channels. You can't use two instances of 2ch VST dsp to process both the L/R and SL/SR. I tried everything but JRiver, as far as I know, does not have this capability. What I ended up doing is using an external DSP (minidsp) to process the SL/SR channels.

More broadly, I eventually gave up this setup though. While ambiophonics is awesome for music, I found it very unsatisfying for movies. Two reasons (in addition to the setup difficultly mentioned above) for dispensing with ambio for home theater:

1. Despite ambiophonics' claims, dialogue from a split spatial source (even at 10* separation) is simply not as crisp as a single center channel.
2. Ambiophonics is designed for a single listener, max 2 listeners. Once you get out of the sweet spot, the advantages of ambiophonics is gone, in my experience. So, even on my small couch in my theater, the people to left and right of the sweet spot heard a very small sound-stage because the cancellation wasn't being applied to their ears.
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styjp

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Re: Ambiophonics 4.1 surround setup help
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2020, 10:09:53 am »

Hi, thank you for welcoming me and the very quick reply.

Looks like you have been where I want to be. I don't mind the limited sweet spot as we are only two, but I wasn't sure about the center channel from the get go. I was thinking of trying this with the center channel and without to compare effects.

Thank you very much for clearing things up quickly regarding this not being possible with JRiver. I thought that zones would be something to play with but I had no idea where to start.
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jsmith967

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Re: Ambiophonics 4.1 surround setup help
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2020, 10:58:08 am »

Umm, maybe it would be possible via the Zones. I never tried that. I'd be worried about a delay possibly
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