I have been interested in surround sound and ambisonic recording since I got a Josephson C700S some years ago, but so far haven't done too much with it (I mostly use the Josephson for Blumlein stereo, using the third omni capsule to touch up bass response or turn it into a mid/side stereo, not for surround). As I mentioned on a thread after the NY AES meeting, ambisonics seems to be the flavor of the month, I saw the Polish "third order ambisonic," 19 channel Zylia mic and read the review of it in the October Recording issue and decided to bite. I have been playing around with it for a couple of weeks, and have recorded two string quartets with it as backup mic (to a Schoeps MK4 ORTF pair and the Josephson C700S).
The selling point on the Zylia is use for bands in rehearsal or to make virtual reality videos where the sound follows your head. My intended use as a mic for recording classical acoustic chamber music is a real outlier. Since the Josephson C700S produces native B-Format ambisonic files, WXY channels, no Z for height info, my idea was to use the Zylia Ambisonic Converter software to produce first order FuMa B-Format (canonical WXYZ channels) to mix and compare directly to the Josephson.
The default setup in the Zylia Studio recording program (I am using an Ockel Sirius A Pro pocket Windows 10 machine that runs all my other audio software) records 24 minute takes, at which point (4 GB at the default maximum 24/48 resolution for 19 channels) it begins a new file, but not seamlessly. It also normalizes the files separately if you choose to export a standard stereo mix. If you choose to record wavpack files instead of wav files you can record much bigger files. The program can convert these to wav, but so far also not seamlessly, I find I have to cut about 10ms out of the join, which is a pain. So I have learned about wavpack and wvunpack, which are the first command line programs I have dealt with since the early '90s I think. Anyway, Zylia Ambisonic Converter will make B-Format files from wv files without issues, I have purchased Reaper which handles wavpack files (when I figure out how to use it) for the dealing with the full 19 channels for a custom mix (I should live so long).
The Zylia uses 19 omni mics with all sorts of channel cancelation and beamforming, I was skeptical how it would produce something I could mix with phase inversion. And initially what I got was very disappointing; this was not like mixing the Josephson X and Y channels! I have morphed into a beta tester - it turns out that the Zylia FuMa B format did not use the canonical WXYZ ordering but erroneously had the channels ordered WZXY. When this was corrected for (they have promised that the next version of Ambisonic Converter will have the ordering corrected), I found that my stereo mix-down had better localization even than the Josephson. A friend who tested on better stereo equipment was even more taken with the Zylia. This is astonishing considering another unlikely factor: the Zylia has no preamp or volume controls (they suggest that if the sound clips or distorts, move the mic further away from the instruments, something I am used to doing for my Edison cylinder recording horn but nothing else lately). For a string quartet about four feet away from the mic, this meant having to boost the Zylia mix in Wavelab by over 20 dB.
I am interested in feedback on the sound. I get different impressions of Zylia vs Josephson depending on the headphones I listen on, so I'm curious what others hear on their setups. The clips I have linked to are from a transcription which bounces musical lines from violins to cello and viola, which I found fascinating in itself.
https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/2oytmsg3vLps the Zylia sphere, the size of a slightly too large softball, has an LED equator that I had to cover with a velcroed shoelace belt to keep the psychedelic factor down to classical chamber music levels.