UHJ Production Techniques
Creating (typically 2-channel) UHJ recordings is a simple matter of passing B-Format signals through a UHJ encoder and recording the result. These might be derived from soundfield microphone recordings or from mixdown. In addition, mixes can be created directly in UHJ by using a UHJ Transcoder, such as that offered by Audio & Design Recordings in the 1980s, along with other Ambisonic mixing hardware (see Ambisonic mixing: Legacy hardware). The Transcoder both encoded B-Format into 2-channel UHJ and in addition allowed a stereo front stage and a stereo rear stage (both with adjustable widths) to be transcoded direct to 2-channel UHJ, while other units facilitated the production of B-Format mixes that could be encoded into UHJ with the Transcoder.
A significant number of 2-channel releases were made with this equipment, including several albums on the KPM production music library label, and commercial releases such as Steve Hackett's Till We Have Faces, The Alan Parsons Project's Stereotomy, Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, Frank Perry's Zodiac, a series of albums on the Collins Classics label, and others, most of which are available on CD.
In addition, an enormous collection of UHJ releases, originally on vinyl and later on CD, which is still being added to today, has been created by British independent classical record company Nimbus Records. Nimbus was one of the earliest Ambisonic licensees.
See The Ambisonic Discography in the External links for more information.
The lack of availability of 4-track mastering equipment led to a tendency (now regretted by some of the people involved) to mix directly to 2-channel UHJ rather than recording B-format and then converting it to UHJ for release. The fact that you could mix direct to 2-channel UHJ with nothing more than the transcoder made this even more tempting. As a result there is a lack of legacy Ambisonically-mixed B-format recordings that could be released today in more advanced formats (such as G-Format). However, the remastering - and in some cases release - of original 2-channel UHJ recordings in G-Format has proved to be surprisingly effective, yielding results at least as good as the original studio playbacks, thanks primarily to the significantly higher quality of current decoding systems (such as file-based software decoders) compared to those available when the recordings were made.
Read more about this topic: Ambisonic UHJ Format
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