Florian Grond — Zylia's mission immersive audio solutions
The meeting allowed members to learn about the Zylia 3rd order ambisonic microphone system and production software from a company insider and a user's perspective. Florian Grond gave an overview of the system and described his experiences with using the system for a range of music recording tasks, demonstrating the novel approaches to ensemble recording that using the microphone enables. In particular, Grond reflected on the change in thinking promoted by using high-order coincident, pattern-controllable and steerable arrays in place of several single-channel microphones. For example, he demonstrated using the microphones in a spaced pair arrangement that can be post-processed as a near-coincident directional pair or many other configurations. The enhanced directivity of the 3rd order system and the possibility for dynamic VR-style perspective changes move the audio producer into new territory not possible at the time of Gerzon's original invention of the technique.
In addition to his work with Zylia, Grond provided attendees with some insight into his creative work with text-sound performance poets and his ethnographic research work with vision impaired participants using binaural recording techniques and verbal recall to provide insight into the listening experience of the sensory-diverse community.
The meeting was well attended and resulted in an interesting discussion with members.
