Ambisonics - Disadvantages

Disadvantages

Ambisonics also suffers from some disadvantages:

• It is not supported by any major record label or media company.
• It has never been well marketed and, largely as a result, is not widely known.
• It can be conceptually difficult for people to grasp (as opposed to conventional "one channel=one speaker" surround, which is easier).
• It requires an Ambisonic decoder box at the replay end, and there are few commercial decoder manufacturers. However, G-Format ameliorates this (with attendant benefits and drawbacks), and there is a growing collection of free Ambisonic software decoders.
• The minimum number of loudspeakers required for planar (horizontal) decoding is four. While this is satisfactory in the average sized living-room for which it was designed, if the listening area is too large then, without treatment, the resulting soundfield can approach the limits of stability. This has resulted in some unimpressive demos. A six-speaker horizontal array is more stable.
• The two-channel matrixed form of Ambisonics, 2-channel UHJ, is not comparable to "true multichannel" (discrete) surround distribution systems. While multichannel distribution formats for Ambisonics exist (such as B-Format, G-Format and 2½ to 4 channel UHJ), only 2-channel UHJ and, to a lesser extent, G-Format have been employed in commercial releases to date.