ITU rubber-stamps '3D' audio format

Big-screen TV fans – actually, vendors and media outfits – will be celebrating at the prospect of yet another audio standard. The ITU has given clear-for-takeoff to the new standard, ITU-R BS.2088-0, which glories in the title “Long-form file format for the international exchange of audio programme materials with metadata”. …

[Terje]

I may be missing something here but did they actually specify an uncompressed format?

[Warm Braw]

>I may be missing something

Actually, there's not much to see. It's basically an existing WAV file with some revisions to support files larger than 4GB, discrete audio snippets (object-based audio) and metadata (XML).

It's intended for use in exchanging audio programmes between broadcasters - not for broadcasting to listeners.

[Trigonoceps occipitalis]

Not sure but I bet there's no oxygen in the wires.

[Ru']

Surely even uncompressed,multi-channel audio requires way less bandwidth than UHDTV too.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

The new spec looks awful. Like the old QuickTime/MP4 container, it requires two passes to assemble so it can not be streamed live. It's not clear why they bothered with broadcast metadata. I also saw no mention of compression, phasing/placement metadata, and all that good stuff needed for high quality surround sound to work. Their sample has two tracks of PCM stereo plus six tracks of PCM 5.1. Ouch. That's not how 5.1 works.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a mono speaker witn one driver, perhaps a Tannoy coaxial....

[John Robson]

Mono

A single driver cannot be coaxial - because it has nothing to be coaxial with....

Of course it would also be a massive compromise in terms of frequency response - a decent multiple driver coaxial mono speaker with good crossovers is a nice bit of kit though ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Mono

It seems that 'driver' (in the singular) is occasionally, though wrongly, used to describe a single unit comprised of two co-axial voice coils*, possibly because Altec Lansing themselves described the combined unit as a single 'speaker'. **

* http://www.audioheritage.org/html/profiles/altec/duplex.htm

** http://www.technicalaudio.com/pdf/Duplex_Speakers_related_to_Altec_604/601_1943_601_Duplex_Speaker.pdf

[John Robson]

Re: Mono

And it is a single speaker - it just has more than one driver.

In the same way a battery is usually composed of multiple cells.

A disc is made of many platters.

etc...

[thomas k]

To be popularly known as

Bullshit audio.

[Elmer Phud]

Bandwidth

They'll all want 'Stenders, Corrie and Merde-ale in fekking 3D sound --- and t'internet will die.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay audiovisual tech, bringing us the same worthless t**s but with higher detail!

Yeah, first thought upon seeing this story was that my appreciation of the misery-fest that is EastEnders will be improved *immeasurably* when I can hear their shouting-masquerading-as-serious-drama/acting from behind me as well. Just like my enjoyment of Jeremy Kyle will be infinitely more when I can see the pimple on the face of the participant being held back by security in glorious 4K.

And Michael Bay's next film on super-duper-ultra-139TB-Gamma-Ray disc will impressively sear my corneas because of its overuse of the dynamic range gimmick, rather than simply because it was filmed and edited to look like a disjointed f*****g mess as is presently the case.

[Tromos]

Useless

Long-form file format for the international exchange of audio programme materials with metadata

International? What if I just want to use it locally?

[Dave 126]

Re: Useless

What, you mean subtitles for the heathens in the next village?

[Newsman2015]

Umm... this sounds like plain old surround sound to me. What's new here?