I use SF's proprietary software in as a plugin for Nuendo. It's fun to play with, defintiely but also a pain as I have a hard time settling on one pattern vs another. Sometimes it's hard to choose.
I hear that. I have a hard enough time just deciding if a little eq'ing is an appropriate improvement and how much to use.
I don't have a 5.1 setup right now, but it's in the works eventually. It would be silly to not try it with this setup.
I imagine the SF plugin allows for 5.1 output similar to doing stereo output - select the patterns, maybe rolloff and a delay option for the rears. Probably sounds amazing.. but as you say for stereo, that's even more tweakage to decide on. What I was referring to is true ambisonic playback where you playback the straight b-format material and recreate the soundfield at the center of the room in all 3 dimensions
without having to make any playback or mic pattern decisions which requires realtime ambisonic decoding that corresponds to a geometric arrangement of 4, 6, 8, or 10+ speakers.
It's sort of the playback equivalent of a stereo mic vs the Sound Field b-format mic on the recording side, and the original reason the soundfield mic technology was developed. All designed from Michael Gerzon's ambisonic mathematics theory -vs- the movie theater based 'just put some speakers in the back for the effects and one in the center for dialog' non-scientific backed origin of the 5.1 standard. I'd love to hear it someday, but can't imagine ever finding the opportunity. Fascinating stuff though.