I need some suggestions based on experience from Soundscape related researchers. All the City's parks I would like to analyze are small in size and located in a busy streets. Thanks.
In my opinion, the value of urban soundscape recordings should not be overestimated. Then binaural recording is quite sufficient.
I do not quite understand what you mean by ambisonic recording. Do you mean recording with a soundfield mike?
What is the purpose of the analysis? What are you analyzing? Spatial distribution and sizes of sound sources, movements and trajectories. If not, a good stereo XY mikes such as the ones found on good portable recorders should be perfect. The most important thing is to precisely target the right content and reduce as much as you can all artefact noises, using a stand and a windshield to improve auditory transparency.
However, for me, a scene audio analysis should be done in-situ and not on a recording.
Thanks Roland, yes such as using Soundfield mics...... the purpose is to look at the spatial distribution and movements of sources.... as well as for subjective listening test/subjective perception purposes .... (reproduce or reconstruct the soundfiled through a multichannel configurations of loudspeakers)
If you have an ambisonic speaker array then my advice would be to use ambisonics; The issues related to non-individualised head/pinnae in binaural recording makes subjective testing with binaural potentially less favourable because of front to back localisation ambiguity etc.
I do not think either option is definitely better than another. The key question is how are you going to work on your recordings. If your target reproduction system is a multichannel loudspeaker system, then definitely go for ambisonics, but remember your listener must have his head positioned exactly in the sweet spot to hear correctly. You will not have a problem of non-individualised HRTF in the recording. The binaural option is an obvious solution if your primary listening tool is headphones, and if you are to be the main listener, then recording binaurally with your own ears seems a better option. If you have both reproduction and recording systems available, then try both and decide which works better for you. If you need to purchase a multichannel system but your budget allows, then also go for ambisonics. A 16 channel system would be fine, inexpensive monitors like Genelec 6010 are OK. A nearly as good result will be obtained with just 10 speakers: 6 around the listener in the horizontal plane at the level of the ears and four around an elevated horizontal plane.