The Art And Science Of 3D Audio Recording

Three years ago, in SOS June 2021, I reviewed a book by Edwin Pfanzagl‑Cardone, the Head of Sound at the Acoustics Department of the Salzburg Festival of classical music in Austria. Called The Art And Science Of Surround And Stereo Recording, the 400‑page tome provides detailed technical insights into the strengths and weaknesses of many different stereo and surround microphone techniques, heavily based on quantitative data obtained by a bespoke measurement technique of the author’s devising. Last year, Edwin published a similarly sized companion work, The Art And Science Of 3D Audio Recording, and — as the title clearly suggests — this new volume builds upon those stereo and horizontal surround‑miking concepts with the latest techniques for capturing height information, as required for immersive formats such as Auro‑3D and Dolby Atmos.

Once again, the information contained is derived from both quantitative measurements and subjective listening evaluations, with test sources ranging from single instruments to full symphony orchestras. However, whereas the original volume was based entirely on Edwin’s own work, a large part of the content in this new book comes from citing and summarising several other highly respected academic sources working in this field (with, I should add, their approval and assistance!), such as Wilfried van Baelen and Dr Hyunkook Lee. But while Edwin is acting in much more of an editorial role here, he has also contributed his own chapters and his own thoughts and experiences when summarising the work of others.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the sources, this new book is far more academic in nature and, as a result, reading it is somewhat harder going compared with the first volume. The text also references the first book a great deal when discussing evolutions of techniques and previous findings. I constantly found myself having to cross check with the first book to fully understand many of the points being made here — which is to say, I’d strongly recommend getting and reading the first book, too, if you don’t already have it!

Naturally, The Art And Science Of 3D Audio Recording starts with a primer on the basics of spatial hearing and immersive/3D audio, before progressing with dedicated comprehensive chapters on Auro‑3D, Dolby Atmos, High Order Ambisonics (HOA), MMAD‑3D/MAGIC Arrays, DTS:X, and Sony 360. The final quarter of the book discusses the practicalities of different 3D microphone techniques, and provides comparative and quantitative listening tests of the different approaches.

A huge amount of theoretical and practical information has been drawn together very skilfully in this new book.

A huge amount of theoretical and practical information has been drawn together very skilfully in this new book and, while it certainly takes some very careful digestion, I found it a fascinating and helpful guide to the technical workings of each technique, as well as when and why one approach might be selected instead of another. I started out my audio career mixing in good old mono, and I still think there’s nothing wrong with well‑crafted stereo. But if you like your music systems to have more than 10 loudspeakers, you would undoubtedly benefit from the knowledge contained and explained in this book.