Orange

A long time ago, when I was still in school in Toronto, I became fascinated with an obscure form of surround sound recording known as Ambisonics. In researching a paper for school I became smitten by the approach conceived by English mathematician Michael Gerzon. It’s a truly elegant system, something beyond the commercially successful surround sound approaches that we all know.

I was especially impressed with the Cowboys Junkies 1988 album, The Trinity Session. It was recorded in a old church on King Street in Toronto, in a single day. The band played in this place with incredible acoustics, ringed around a single Calrec Soundfield microphone. The Soundfield microphone is the surround microphone design based upon the theory originally published by Michael Gerzon at Oxford University.