NEXT: 3-D RADIO – SAY WHAT?

WHY THE BBC’s NEW TECH GIVES FRESH ENERGY TO RADIO RESEARCH

Okay, radio rangers, here’s a new tech term to know and share: AMBISONICS. It's a system for broadcasting radio in 3-D and yes, they've made it work in Britain. Just when much of the broadcast world is either deploying or grappling with HD radio, along comes a real live way to broadcast not in two dimensions but in three. Does this mean you need a hole in the top of your head to hear it? No, but you might need one in the ceiling of your car.

Before I proceed, please note the date of this column – specifically that it is NOT April 1^st. Although some of this might reek of an April Fool’s gag, it’s all real. And just wacky enough to have come from our broadcasting buddies in Britain.

I got this lead from a mention in Larry Shannon's excellent industry blog, Radio-TV Daily News. If you aren't already on Larry's daily mailing list, jump aboard NOW . There's no better source for a wide variety of radio news and insight.

A recent article in The Daily Telegraph, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, reports that an experimental unit of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has already demonstrated its Ambisonics system of 3-D radio. First reports are impressive. Whether the new technology has any application for real-world radio is another matter.

Toto, We’re Not In Stereo Anymore

Imagine yourself in a car with music or talk on the radio. You have your basic left-right stereo speaker configuration. In many vehicles, there’s also a front-rear mix control. However you blend them, you still get one thing: two-channel stereo.

Very Sixties.

Now imagine that a third dimension in sound appears – above your head. That’s where the BBC system places the third speaker. The results, the report claims, are something special: a whole new way to experience broadcast audio.

For the demo, a memorable sound effects-heavy scene from The Wizard of Oz was produced for radio using the new 3-D system. According to The Telegraph, the 3-D transmission “makes music sound impressive (but) it’s most revelatory for drama...the tornado scene, with the wind swirling towards Dorothy’s house, took on a new atmosphere”.

The concept of radio in 3-D would seem best suited to automobiles, where it’s a lot easier to mount a speaker overhead than in, say, your family room.

How It Works

I’ll just quote The Daily Telegraph article:

The system uses more channels and so is able to pipe sound to more speakers independently. Although it requires new ways of initially recording sound, it can also be mixed from existing recordings. The result is an advance that does not require rewiring of the radio process and so could, if the BBC chose, be implemented over the Internet.

Okay...

What I think that means is that you might see such a technology deployed

in non-broadcast media first (or exclusively). And with the approach of Internet in car radios, that makes something like 3-D radio a very real possibility.

Bigger Picture: Radio Is Pushing Technological Boundaries Again

The BBC points out that the wider significance of its dance with 3-D radio is that radio is back in the pushing-the-tech-envelope business. That’s a good thing. With DAB iffy in some countries and outright stalled in others, television and new media take the prizes for most recent innovations.

As the BBC’s audio guru, Tim Davie, remarks: “It’s vital we plug radio (back) into the landscape of innovation."

It may be years before we see any meaningful rollout of 3-D radio. It could have a haphazard life like HD or an extended twilight a la AM stereo. It could also fall into the category of gimcrack tech, the likes of Quad FM. What I like about the BBC’s experiments with 3-D radio – and hardly any organization holds the record for more innovative work than the “Beeb” – is that fresh thinking should always be welcome in radio.

Sometimes, it takes new thinking like the BBC's Ambionics 3-D radio system to remind us of that.