Movatterモバイル変換


[0]ホーム

URL:


Jump to content
WikipediaThe Free Encyclopedia
Search

Ambisonics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Full-sphere surround sound format
Not to be confused withAmbiophonics.
It has been suggested thatAmbisonic decoding bemerged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since January 2025.

Ambisonics former trademark

Ambisonics is afull-spheresurround sound format: in addition to the horizontal plane, it covers sound sources above and below the listener.[1][2]

Unlike some other multichannel surround formats, its transmission channels do not carry speaker signals. Instead, they contain a speaker-independent representation of a sound field calledB-format, which is thendecoded to the listener's speaker setup. This extra step allows the producer to think in terms of source directions rather than loudspeaker positions, and offers the listener a considerable degree of flexibility as to the layout and number of speakers used for playback.

Ambisonics was developed in the UK in the 1970s under the auspices of the BritishNational Research Development Corporation.

Despite its solid technical foundation and many advantages, Ambisonics had not until recently[when?] been a commercial success, and survived only in niche applications and among recording enthusiasts.

With the widespread availability of powerful digital signal processing (as opposed to the expensive and error-prone analog circuitry that had to be used during its early years) and the successful market introduction of home theatre surround sound systems since the 1990s, interest in Ambisonics among recording engineers, sound designers, composers, media companies, broadcasters and researchers has returned and continues to increase.

In particular, it has proved an effective way to present spatial audio in Virtual Reality applications (e.g. YouTube 360 Video), as the B-Format scene can be rotated to match the user's head orientation, and then be decoded as binaural stereo.

Introduction

[edit]

Ambisonics can be understood as a three-dimensional extension ofM/S (mid/side) stereo, adding additional difference channels for height and depth. The resulting signal set is calledB-format. Its component channels are labelledW{\displaystyle W} for the sound pressure (the M in M/S),X{\displaystyle X} for the front-minus-back sound pressure gradient,Y{\displaystyle Y} for left-minus-right (the S in M/S) andZ{\displaystyle Z} for up-minus-down.[note 1]

TheW{\displaystyle W} signal corresponds to an omnidirectional microphone, whereasXYZ{\displaystyle XYZ} are the components that would be picked up byfigure-of-eight capsules oriented along the three spatial axes.

Panning a source

[edit]

A simple Ambisonic panner (orencoder) takes a source signalS{\displaystyle S} and two parameters, the horizontal angleθ{\displaystyle \theta } and the elevation angleϕ{\displaystyle \phi }. It positions the source at the desired angle by distributing the signal over the Ambisonic components with different gains:

W=S12{\displaystyle W=S\cdot {\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}}
X=Scosθcosϕ{\displaystyle X=S\cdot \cos \theta \cos \phi }
Y=Ssinθcosϕ{\displaystyle Y=S\cdot \sin \theta \cos \phi }
Z=Ssinϕ{\displaystyle Z=S\cdot \sin \phi }

Being omnidirectional, theW{\displaystyle W} channel always gets the same constant input signal, regardless of the angles. So that it has more-or-less the same average energy as the other channels, W is attenuated by about 3 dB (precisely, divided by the square root of two).[3] The terms forXYZ{\displaystyle XYZ} actually produce the polar patterns of figure-of-eight microphones (see illustration on the right, second row). We take their value atθ{\displaystyle \theta } andϕ{\displaystyle \phi }, and multiply the result with the input signal. The result is that the input ends up in all components exactly as loud as the corresponding microphone would have picked it up.

Virtual microphones

[edit]
Morphing between different virtual microphone patterns

The B-format components can be combined to derivevirtualmicrophones with any first-order polar pattern (omnidirectional, cardioid, hypercardioid, figure-of-eight or anything in between) pointing in any direction. Several such microphones with different parameters can be derived at the same time, to create coincident stereo pairs (such as aBlumlein) or surround arrays.

p{\displaystyle p}Pattern
0{\displaystyle 0}Figure-of-eight
(0,0.5){\displaystyle (0,0.5)}Hyper- and Supercardioids
0.5{\displaystyle 0.5}Cardioid
(0.5,1.0){\displaystyle (0.5,1.0)}Wide cardioids
1.0{\displaystyle 1.0}Omnidirectional

A horizontal virtual microphone at horizontal angleΘ{\displaystyle \Theta } with pattern0p1{\displaystyle 0\leq p\leq 1} is given by

M(Θ,p)=p2W+(1p)(cosΘX+sinΘY){\displaystyle M(\Theta ,p)=p{\sqrt {2}}W+(1-p)(\cos \Theta X+\sin \Theta Y)}.

This virtual mic isfree-field normalised, which means it has a constant gain of one for on-axis sounds. The illustration on the left shows some examples created with this formula.

Virtual microphones can be manipulated in post-production: desired sounds can be picked out, unwanted ones suppressed, and the balance between direct and reverberant sound can be fine-tuned during mixing.

Decoding

[edit]
Naive single-band in-phase decoder for a square loudspeaker layout

A basic Ambisonicdecoder is very similar to a set of virtual microphones. For perfectly regular layouts, a simplified decoder can be generated by pointing a virtual cardioid microphone in the direction of each speaker. Here is a square:

LF=(2W+X+Y)8{\displaystyle LF=({\sqrt {2}}W+X+Y){\sqrt {8}}}
LB=(2WX+Y)8{\displaystyle LB=({\sqrt {2}}W-X+Y){\sqrt {8}}}
RB=(2WXY)8{\displaystyle RB=({\sqrt {2}}W-X-Y){\sqrt {8}}}
RF=(2W+XY)8{\displaystyle RF=({\sqrt {2}}W+X-Y){\sqrt {8}}}

The signs of theX{\displaystyle X} andY{\displaystyle Y} components are the important part, the rest are gain factors. TheZ{\displaystyle Z} component is discarded, because it is not possible to reproduce height cues with just four loudspeakers in one plane.

In practice, a real Ambisonic decoder requires a number of psycho-acoustic optimisations to work properly.[4]

Currently, the All-Round Ambisonic Decoder (AllRAD) can be regarded as the standard solution for loudspeaker-based playback,[5] and Magnitude Least Squares (MagLS)[6] or binaural decoding, as implemented for instance in the IEM and SPARTA Ambisonic production tools.[7][8]

Frequency-dependent decoding can also be used to produce binaural stereo; this is particularly relevant in Virtual Reality applications.

Higher-order Ambisonics

[edit]
Visual representation of the Ambisonic B-format components up to third order. Dark portions represent regions where the polarity is inverted. Note how the first two rows correspond to omnidirectional and figure-of-eight microphone polar patterns.

The spatial resolution of first-order Ambisonics as described above is quite low. In practice, that translates to slightly blurry sources, but also to a comparably small usable listening area orsweet spot. The resolution can be increased and the sweet spot enlarged by adding groups of more selective directional components to the B-format. These no longer correspond to conventional microphone polar patterns, but rather look like clover leaves. The resulting signal set is then calledSecond-,Third-, or collectively,Higher-order Ambisonics.

For a given order{\displaystyle \ell }, full-sphere systems require(+1)2{\displaystyle (\ell +1)^{2}} signal components, and2+1{\displaystyle 2\ell +1} components are needed for horizontal-only reproduction.

See also:Mixed-order Ambisonics

Historically there have been several different format conventions for higher-order Ambisonics; for details seeAmbisonic data exchange formats.

Comparison to other surround formats

[edit]

Ambisonics differs from other surround formats in a number of aspects:

  • It requires only three channels for basic horizontal surround, and four channels for a full-sphere soundfield. Basic full-sphere replay requires a minimum of six loudspeakers (a minimum of four for horizontal).
  • The same program material can be decoded for varying numbers of loudspeakers. Moreover, a width-height mix can be played back on horizontal-only, stereo or even mono systems without losing content entirely (it will be folded to the horizontal plane and to the frontal quadrant, respectively). This allows producers to embrace with-height production without worrying about loss of information.
  • Ambisonics can be scaled to any desired spatial resolution at the cost of additional transmission channels and more speakers for playback. Higher-order material remains downwards compatible and can be played back at lower spatial resolution without requiring a special downmix.
  • The core technology of Ambisonics is free of patents, and a complete tool chain for production and listening is available asfree software for all majoroperating systems.

On the downside, Ambisonics is:

  • Prone to strong coloration fromcomb filtering artifacts due to high coherence of neighbouring loudspeaker signals at lower orders
  • Unable to deliver the particular spaciousness of spaced omnidirectional microphones preferred by many classical sound engineers and listeners
  • Not supported by any major record label or media company. Although a number ofAmbisonic UHJ format (UHJ) encoded tracks (principally classical) can be located, if with some difficulty, on services such asSpotify.[9]
  • Conceptually difficult for people to grasp, as opposed to the conventional"one channel, one speaker" paradigm.
  • More complicated for the consumer to set up, because of the decoding stage.
  • Sweet spot which is not found in other forms of surround sound such as VBAP
  • Worse localisation for point sources than amplitude panning and counter phase signals blurring imaging
  • Much more sensitive to speaker placement than other forms of surround sound that use amplitude panning

Theoretical foundation

[edit]

Soundfield analysis (encoding)

[edit]

The B-format signals comprise a truncatedspherical harmonic decomposition of the sound field. They correspond to thesound pressureW{\displaystyle W}, and the three components of the pressure gradientXYZ{\displaystyle XYZ} (not to be confused with the relatedparticle velocity) at a point in space. Together, these approximate the sound field on a sphere around the microphone; formally the first-order truncation of themultipole expansion.W{\displaystyle W} (the mono signal) is the zero-order information, corresponding to a constant function on the sphere, whileXYZ{\displaystyle XYZ} are the first-order terms (the dipoles or figures-of-eight). This first-order truncation is only an approximation of the overall sound field.

Thehigher orders correspond to further terms of the multipole expansion of a function on the sphere in terms of spherical harmonics. In practice, higher orders require more speakers for playback, but increase the spatial resolution and enlarge the area where the sound field is reproduced perfectly (up to an upper boundary frequency).

The radiusr{\displaystyle r} of this area for Ambisonic order{\displaystyle \ell } and frequencyf{\displaystyle f} is given by

rc2πf{\displaystyle r\approx {\frac {\ell c}{2\pi f}}},[10]

wherec{\displaystyle c} denotes the speed of sound.

This area becomes smaller than a human head above 600 Hz for first order or 1800 Hz for third-order. Accurate reproduction in a head-sized volume up to 20 kHz would require an order of 32 or more than 1000 loudspeakers.

At those frequencies and listening positions where perfect soundfieldreconstruction is no longer possible, Ambisonics reproduction has to focus on delivering correct directional cues to allow for good localisation even in the presence of reconstruction errors.

Psychoacoustics

[edit]
Main article:Sound localization
This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Ambisonics" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR
(December 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The human hearing apparatus has very keen localisation on the horizontal plane (as fine as 2° source separation in some experiments). Two predominant cues, for different frequency ranges, can be identified:

Low-frequency localisation

[edit]

At low frequencies, where the wavelength is large compared to the human head, an incoming sounddiffracts around it, so that there is virtually no acoustic shadow and hence no level difference between the ears. In this range, the only available information is the phase relationship between the two ear signals, calledinteraural time difference, orITD. Evaluating this time difference allows for precise localisation within acone of confusion: the angle of incidence is unambiguous, but the ITD is the same for sounds from the front or from the back. As long as the sound is not totally unknown to the subject, the confusion can usually be resolved by perceiving the timbral front-back variations caused by the ear flaps (orpinnae).

High-frequency localisation

[edit]

As the wavelength approaches twice the size of the head, phase relationships become ambiguous, since it is no longer clear whether the phase difference between the ears corresponds to one, two, or even more periods as the frequency goes up. Fortunately, the head will create a significant acoustic shadow in this range, which causes a slight difference in level between the ears. This is called theinteraural level difference, orILD (the same cone of confusion applies). Combined, these two mechanisms provide localisation over the entire hearing range.

ITD and ILD reproduction in Ambisonics

[edit]

Gerzon has shown that the quality of localisation cues in the reproduced sound field corresponds to two objective metrics: the length of the particle velocity vectorrV{\displaystyle {\vec {r_{V}}}} for the ITD, and the length of the energy vectorrE{\displaystyle {\vec {r_{E}}}} for the ILD. Gerzon and Barton (1992) define a decoder for horizontal surround to beAmbisonic if

In practice, satisfactory results are achieved at moderate orders even for very large listening areas.[12][13]

Monoaural HRTF cue

[edit]
Main article:Head-related transfer function

Humans are also able to derive information about sound source location in 3D-space, taking into account height. Much of this ability is due to the shape of the head (especially thepinna) producing a variable frequency response depending on the angle of the source. The response can be measured by placing a microphone in a person's ear canal, then playing back sounds from various directions. The recorded head-related transfer function (HRTF) can then be used for rendering ambisonics to headphones, mimicking the effect of the head. HRTFs differ among person to person due to head shape variations, but a generic one can produce a satisfactory result.[14]

Soundfield synthesis (decoding)

[edit]

In principle, theloudspeaker signals are derived by using alinear combination of the Ambisonic component signals, where each signal is dependent on the actual position of the speaker in relation to the center of an imaginary sphere the surface of which passes through all available speakers. In practice, slightly irregular distances of the speakers may be compensated withdelay.

True Ambisonics decoding however requires spatial equalisation of the signals to account for the differences in the high- and low-frequencysound localisation mechanisms in human hearing.[15] A further refinement accounts for the distance of the listener from the loudspeakers (near-field compensation).[16]

Further information:Ambisonic decoding andAmbisonic reproduction systems

A variety of more modern decoding methods are also in use.

Compatibility with existing distribution channels

[edit]

Ambisonics decoders are not currently being marketed to end users in any significant way, and no native Ambisonic recordings are commercially available. Hence, content that has been produced in Ambisonics must be made available to consumers in stereo or discrete multichannel formats.

Stereo

[edit]

Ambisonics content can be folded down to stereo automatically, without requiring a dedicated downmix. The most straightforward approach is to sample the B-format with avirtual stereo microphone. The result is equivalent to a coincident stereo recording. Imaging will depend on the microphone geometry, but usually rear sources will be reproduced more softly and diffuse. Vertical information (from theZ{\displaystyle Z} channel) is omitted.

Alternatively, the B-format can be matrix-encoded intoUHJ format, which is suitable for direct playback on stereo systems. As before, the vertical information will be discarded, but in addition to left-right reproduction, UHJ tries to retain some of the horizontal surround information by translating sources in the back into out-of-phase signals. This gives the listener some sense of rear localisation.

Two-channel UHJ can also be decoded back into horizontal Ambisonics (with some loss of accuracy), if an Ambisonic playback system is available. Lossless UHJ up to four channels (including height information) exists but has never seen wide use. In all UHJ schemes, the first two channels are conventional left and right speaker feeds.

Further information:Ambisonic UHJ format

Multichannel formats

[edit]

Likewise, it is possible to pre-decode Ambisonics material to arbitrary speaker layouts, such asQuad,5.1,7.1,Auro 11.1, or even22.2, again without manual intervention. The LFE channel is either omitted, or a special mix is created manually. Pre-decoding to 5.1 media has been known asG-Format[17] during the early days of DVD audio, although the term is not in common use anymore.

The obvious advantage of pre-decoding is that any surround listener can be able to experience Ambisonics; no special hardware is required beyond that found in a common home theatre system. The main disadvantage is that the flexibility of rendering a single, standard Ambisonics signal to any target speaker array is lost: the signal is assumes a specific "standard" layout and anyone listening with a different array may experience a degradation of localisation accuracy.

Target layouts from 5.1 upwards usually surpass the spatial resolution of first-order Ambisonics, at least in the frontal quadrant. For optimal resolution, to avoid excessive crosstalk, and to steer around irregularities of the target layout, pre-decodings for such targets should be derived from source material in higher-order Ambisonics.[18]

Production workflow

[edit]

Ambisonic content can be created in two basic ways: by recording a sound with a suitable first- or higher-order microphone, or by taking separate monophonic sources and panning them to the desired positions. Content can also be manipulated while it is in B-format.

Ambisonic microphones

[edit]

Native B-format arrays

[edit]
The array designed and made by Dr Jonathan Halliday of Nimbus Records

Since the components of first-order Ambisonics correspond to physical microphone pickup patterns, it is entirely practical to record B-format directly, with three coincident microphones: an omnidirectional capsule, one forward-facing figure-8 capsule, and one left-facing figure-8 capsule, yielding theW{\displaystyle W},X{\displaystyle X} andY{\displaystyle Y} components.[19][20] This is referred to as anative orNimbus/Halliday microphone array, after its designer Dr Jonathan Halliday atNimbus Records, where it is used to record their extensive and continuing series of Ambisonic releases. An integrated native B-format microphone, the C700S[21] has been manufactured and sold byJosephson Engineering since 1990.

The primary difficulty inherent in this approach is that high-frequency localisation and clarity relies on the diaphragms approaching true coincidence. By stacking the capsules vertically, perfect coincidence for horizontal sources is obtained. However, sound from above or below will theoretically suffer from subtle comb filtering effects in the highest frequencies. In most instances this is not a limitation as sound sources far from the horizontal plane are typically from room reverberation. In addition, stacked figure-8 microphone elements have a deep null in the direction of their stacking axis such that the primary transducer in those directions is the central omnidirectional microphone. In practice this can produce less localisation error than either of the alternatives (tetrahedral arrays with processing, or a fourth microphone for the Z axis.)[citation needed]

Native arrays are most commonly used for horizontal-only surround, because of increasing positional errors and shading effects when adding a fourth microphone.

The tetrahedral microphone

[edit]

Since it is impossible to build a perfectly coincident microphone array, the next-best approach is to minimize and distribute the positional error as uniformly as possible. This can be achieved by arranging four cardioid or sub-cardioid capsules in a tetrahedron and equalising for uniform diffuse-field response.[22] The capsule signals are then converted to B-format with a matrix operation.

Further information:Soundfield microphone

Outside Ambisonics, tetrahedral microphones have become popular with location recording engineers working in stereo or 5.1 for their flexibility in post-production; here, the B-format is only used as an intermediate to derivevirtual microphones.

Higher-order microphones

[edit]

Above first-order, it is no longer possible to obtain Ambisonic components directly with single microphone capsules. Instead, higher-order difference signals are derived from several spatially distributed (usually omnidirectional) capsules using very sophisticated digital signal processing.[23]

The ZYLIA ZM-1[24] is a commercially available microphone capable of generating third-order ambisonic recordings, using 19 omni-directional capsules.

The em64 Eigenmike from mh acoustics[25] is a 64-channel spherical microphone array capable of sixth-order capture. The production of the em64 has superseded their previous em32 microphone.[26]

A recent paper by Peter Craven et al.[27] (subsequently patented) describes the use of bi-directional capsules for higher order microphones to reduce the extremity of the equalisation involved. No microphones have yet been made using this idea.

Ambisonic panning

[edit]

The most straightforward way to produce Ambisonic mixes of arbitrarily high order is to take monophonic sources and position them with an Ambisonic encoder.

A full-sphere encoder usually has two parameters, azimuth (or horizon) and elevation angle. The encoder will distribute the source signal to the Ambisonic components such that, when decoded, the source will appear at the desired location. More sophisticated panners will additionally provide a radius parameter that will take care of distance-dependent attenuation and bass boost due to near-field effect.

Hardware panning units and mixers for first-order Ambisonics have been available since the 1980s[28][29][30] and have been used commercially. Today, panning plugins and other related software tools are available for all major digital audio workstations, often asfree software. However, due to arbitrary bus width restrictions, few professionaldigital audio workstations (DAW) support orders higher than second. Notable exceptions areREAPER,Pyramix,ProTools,Nuendo andArdour.

Further information:List of Ambisonic hardware § Legacy hardware

Ambisonic manipulation

[edit]

First order B-format can be manipulated in various ways to change the contents of an auditory scene. Well known manipulations include "rotation" and "dominance" (moving sources towards or away from a particular direction).[11][31]

Additionally, linear time-invariantsignal processing such asequalisation can be applied to B-format without disrupting sound directions, as long as it applied to all component channels equally.

More recent developments in higher order Ambisonics enable a wide range of manipulations including rotation, reflection, movement, 3Dreverb, upmixing from legacy formats such as 5.1 or first order, visualisation and directionally-dependent masking and equalisation.

Data exchange

[edit]

Transmitting Ambisonic B-format between devices and to end-users requires a standardized exchange format. Whiletraditional first-order B-format is well-defined and universally understood, there are conflicting conventions for higher-order Ambisonics, differing both in channel order and weighting, which might need to be supported for some time. Traditionally, the most widespread isFurse-Malham higher order format in the.amb container based on Microsoft's WAVE-EX file format.[32] It scales up to third order and has a file size limitation of 4GB.

New implementations and productions might want to consider the AmbiX[33] proposal, which adopts the.caf file format and does away with the 4GB limit. It scales to arbitrarily high orders and is based on SN3D encoding. SN3D encoding has been adopted by Google as the basis for its YouTube 360 format.[34]

Further information:Ambisonic data exchange formats

Compressed distribution

[edit]

To effectively distribute Ambisonic data to non-professionals,lossy compression is desired to keep the data size acceptable. However, simple multi-mono compression is not sufficient, as lossy compression tends to destroy phase information and thus degrade localization in the form of spatial reduction, blur, and phantom source. Reduction of redundancy among channels is desired, not only to enhance compression, but also to reduce the risk of dicernable phase errors.[35] (It is also possible to use post-processing to hide the artifacts.)[36]

As with mid-side joint stereo encoding, a static matrixing scheme (as in Opus) is usable for first-order ambisonics, but not optimal in case of multiple sources. A number of schemes such as DirAC use a scheme similar toparametric stereo, where a downmixed signal is encoded, the principal direction recorded, and some description of ambiance added.MPEG-H 3D Audio, drawing on some work fromMPEG Surround, extends the concept to handle multiple sources. MPEG-H usesprincipal component analysis to determine the main sources and then encodes a multi-mono signal corresponding to the principal directions. These parametric methods provide good quality, so long as they take good care in smoothing sound directions among frames.[35] PCA/SVD is applicable for first-order as well as high-order ambisonics input.[37]

Current development

[edit]

Open source

[edit]

Since 2018 a free and open source implementation exists in the IEM Plugin Suite[7] and the SPARTA suite[8] that implement the recent academic developments and thesound codec Opus. Opus provides two channel encoding modes: one that simply stores channels individually, and another that weights the channels through a fixed, invertible matrix to reduce redundancy.[38] A listening-test of Opus ambisonics was published in 2020, as calibration for AMBIQUAL, an objective metric for compressed ambisonics by Google. Opus third-order ambisonics at 256 kbps has similar localization accuracy compared to Opus first-order ambisonics at 128 kbps.[39]: Fig. 12 

Corporate interest

[edit]

Since its adoption by Google and other manufacturers as the audio format of choice forvirtual reality, Ambisonics has seen a surge of interest.[40][41][42]

In 2018,Sennheiser released its VR microphone,[43] andZoom released an Ambisonics Field Recorder.[44] Both are implementations of the tetrahedral microphone design which produces first order Ambisonics.

A number of companies are currently conducting research in Ambisonics:

Dolby Laboratories have expressed "interest" in Ambisonics by acquiring (and liquidating) Barcelona-based Ambisonics specialistimm sound prior to launchingDolby Atmos,[50] which, although its precise workings are undisclosed, does implement decoupling between source direction and actual loudspeaker positions. Atmos takes a fundamentally different approach in that it does not attempt to transmit a sound field; it transmits discrete premixes or stems (i.e., raw streams of sound data) along with metadata about what location and direction they should appear to be coming from. The stems are then decoded, mixed, and rendered in real time using whatever loudspeakers are available at the playback location.

Use in gaming

[edit]

Higher-order Ambisonics has found a niche market in video games developed byCodemasters. Their first game to use an Ambisonic audio engine wasColin McRae: DiRT, however, this only used Ambisonics on thePlayStation 3 platform.[51] Their gameRace Driver: GRID extended the use of Ambisonics to theXbox 360 platform,[52] andColin McRae: DiRT 2 uses Ambisonics on all platforms including the PC.[53]

The recent games from Codemasters,F1 2010,Dirt 3,[54]F1 2011[55] andDirt: Showdown,[56] use fourth-order Ambisonics on faster PCs,[57] rendered byBlue Ripple Sound'sRapture3DOpenAL driver and pre-mixed Ambisonic audio produced using Bruce Wiggins' WigWare Ambisonic Plug-ins.[58]

OpenAL Soft[1], a free and open source implementation of the OpenAL specification, also uses Ambisonics to render 3D audio.[59] OpenAL Soft can often be used as a drop-in replacement for other OpenAL implementations, enablingseveral games that use the OpenAL API to benefit from rendering audio with Ambisonics.

For many games that do not make use of the OpenAL API natively, the use of awrapper or a chain of wrappers can help to make these games indirectly use the OpenAL API. Ultimately, this leads to the sound being rendered in Ambisonics if a capable OpenAL driver such as OpenAL Soft is being used.[60]

TheUnreal Engine supports soundfield Ambisonics rendering since version 4.25.[61] TheUnity engine supports working with Ambisonics audio clips since version 2017.1.[62]

Patents and trademarks

[edit]

Most of the patents covering Ambisonic developments have now expired (including those covering theSoundfield microphone) and, as a result, the basic technology is available for anyone to implement.

The "pool" of patents comprising Ambisonics technology was originally assembled by the UK Government's National Research & Development Corporation (NRDC), which existed until the late 1970s to develop and promote British inventions and license them to commercial manufacturers – ideally to a single licensee. The system was ultimately licensed toNimbus Records (now owned by Wyastone Estate Ltd).

The "interlocking circles" Ambisonic logo (UK trademarksUK00001113276 andUK00001113277), and the text marks "AMBISONIC" and "A M B I S O N" (UK trademarksUK00001500177 andUK00001112259), formerly owned by Wyastone Estate Ltd., have expired as of 2010.

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^The traditional B-format notation is used in this introductory paragraph, since it is assumed that the reader may have come across it already. For higher-order Ambisonics, use of theACN notation is recommended.

References

[edit]
  1. ^Michael A. Gerzon,Periphony: With-Height Sound Reproduction. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 1973, 21(1):2–10.
  2. ^Franz Zotter and Matthias Frank,Ambisonics: A Practical 3D Audio Theory for Recording, Studio Production, Sound Reinforcement, and Virtual Reality. SpringerOpen, 2019.
  3. ^Gerzon, M.A. (February 1980).Practical Periphony. 65th Audio Engineering Society Convention. London:Audio Engineering Society. p. 7. Preprint 1571.In order to make B-format signals carry more-or-less equal average energy, X,Y,Z have a gain of2 in their directions of peak sensitivity.
  4. ^Eric Benjamin, Richard Lee, and Aaron Heller,Is My Decoder Ambisonic?, 125th AES Convention, San Francisco 2008
  5. ^Franz Zotter and Matthias Frank,All-Round Ambisonic Panning and Decoding. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 2012, 60(10): 807-820.
  6. ^Christian Schörkhuber and Markus Zaunschirm,Binaural Rendering of Ambisonic Signals via Magnitude Least Squares. Fortschritte der Akustik, DAGA, Munich, 2018.
  7. ^abDaniel Rudrich et al,IEM Plug-in Suite. 2018 (accessed 2024)
  8. ^abLeo McCormack,Spatial Audio Real-Time Applications. 2019 (accessed 2024)
  9. ^"Ambisonic UHJ Discography "Complete List" of record labels".
  10. ^Darren B Ward and Thushara D Abhayapala,Reproduction of a Plane-Wave Sound Field Using an Array of LoudspeakersArchived 8 October 2006 at theWayback Machine, IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing Vol.9 No.6, Sept 2001
  11. ^abMichael A Gerzon, Geoffrey J Barton, "Ambisonic Decoders for HDTV", 92nd AES Convention, Vienna 1992.http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=6788
  12. ^Malham, DG (1992)."Experience with Large Area 3-D Ambisonic Sound Systems"(PDF).Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics.14 (5):209–215. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 22 July 2011. Retrieved24 January 2007.
  13. ^Jörn Nettingsmeier and David Dohrmann,Preliminary studies on large-scale higher-order Ambisonic sound reinforcement systems, Ambisonics Symposium 2011, Lexington (KY) 2011
  14. ^Armstrong, Cal; Thresh, Lewis; Murphy, Damian; Kearney, Gavin (23 October 2018)."A Perceptual Evaluation of Individual and Non-Individual HRTFs: A Case Study of the SADIE II Database".Applied Sciences.8 (11): 2029.doi:10.3390/app8112029.
  15. ^Eric Benjamin, Richard Lee, and Aaron Heller:Localization in Horizontal-Only Ambisonic Systems, 121st AES Convention, San Francisco 2006
  16. ^Jérôme Daniel,Spatial Sound Encoding Including Near Field Effect: Introducing Distance Coding Filters and a Viable, New Ambisonic Format, 23rd AES Conference, Copenhagen 2003
  17. ^Richard Elen,Ambisonics for the New Millennium, September 1998.
  18. ^Bruce Wiggins,The Generation of Panning Laws for Irregular Speaker Arrays Using Heuristic MethodsArchived 17 May 2016 at the Portuguese Web Archive. 31st AES Conference, London 2007
  19. ^E. M. Benjamin and T. Chen, "The Native B-Format Microphone", AES 119th Convention, New York, 2005, Preprint no. 6621.http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=13348
  20. ^[1] E. M. Benjamin and T. Chen, "The Native B-Format Microphone: Part II", AES 120th Convention, Paris, 2006, Preprint no. 6640.http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=13444
  21. ^C700 Variable Pattern Microphones, Josephson Engineering
  22. ^Michael A. Gerzon,The Design of Precisely Coincident Microphone Arrays for Stereo and Surround Sound, 50th AES Convention, London 1975,http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=2466
  23. ^Peter Plessas,Rigid Sphere Microphone Arrays for Spatial Recording and Holography, Diploma thesis in Electrical Engineering - Audio Engineering, Graz 2009
  24. ^"ZYLIA - 3D Audio Recording & Post-processing Solutions".Zylia Inc.
  25. ^"Products | mhacoustics.com".mhacoustics.com. Retrieved7 April 2018.
  26. ^"Eigenmike | mh acoustics".eigenmike.com. Retrieved6 December 2024.
  27. ^P G Craven, M J Law, and C Travis,Microphone arrays using tangential velocity sensorsArchived 30 June 2009 at theWayback Machine, Ambisonics Symposium, Graz 2009
  28. ^Michael A Gerzon and Geoffrey J Barton,Ambisonic Surround-Sound Mixing for Multitrack Studios, AES Preprint C1009, 2nd International Conference: The Art and Technology of Recording May 1984.http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=11654
  29. ^Richard Elen,Ambisonic mixing – an introduction, Studio Sound, September 1983
  30. ^Nigel Branwell,Ambisonic Surround-Sound Technology for Recording and Broadcast, Recording Engineer/Producer, December 1983
  31. ^Dave G. Malham,Spatial Heading Mechanisms and Sound Reproduction 1998, retrieved 2014-01-24
  32. ^Richard DobsonThe AMB Ambisonic File FormatArchived 22 April 2014 at theWayback Machine
  33. ^Christian Nachbar, Franz Zotter, Etienne Deleflie, and Alois Sontacchi:AmbiX - A Suggested Ambisonics Format Ambisonics Symposium 2011, Lexington (KY) 2011
  34. ^YouTube Help,Use spatial audio in 360-degree and VR videos
  35. ^abMahé, Pierre; Ragot, Stéphane; Marchand, Sylvain (2 September 2019).First-Order Ambisonic Coding with PCA Matrixing and Quaternion-Based Interpolation. 22nd International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-19), Birmingham, UK. p. 284.
  36. ^Mahé, Pierre; Ragot, Stéphane; Marchand, Sylvain; Daniel, Jérôme (January 2021).Ambisonic Coding with Spatial Image Correction. European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO) 2020.
  37. ^Zamani, Sina; Nanjundaswamy, Tejaswi; Rose, Kenneth (October 2017). "Frequency domain singular value decomposition for efficient spatial audio coding".2017 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics (WASPAA). pp. 126–130.arXiv:1705.03877.doi:10.1109/WASPAA.2017.8170008.ISBN 978-1-5386-1632-1.S2CID 1036250.
  38. ^Valin, Jean-Marc."Opus 1.3 Released".Opus documentation. Retrieved7 September 2020.
  39. ^Narbutt, Miroslaw; Skoglund, Jan; Allen, Andrew; Chinen, Michael; Barry, Dan; Hines, Andrew (3 May 2020)."AMBIQUAL: Towards a Quality Metric for Headphone Rendered Compressed Ambisonic Spatial Audio".Applied Sciences.10 (9): 3188.doi:10.3390/app10093188.hdl:10197/11947.
  40. ^Google Specifications and tools for 360º video and spatial audio, retrieved May 2016
  41. ^Upload 360-degree videos, retrieved May 2016
  42. ^"Oculus Developer Center: Supported Features/Ambisonics". Archived fromthe original on 3 November 2016. Retrieved1 November 2016.
  43. ^"Sennheiser AMBEO VR Mic"
  44. ^"Ambisonics Field Recorder Zoom H3-VR"
  45. ^Chris Baume, Anthony Churnside,Upping the Auntie: A Broadcaster's Take on Ambisonics, BBC R&D Publications, 2012
  46. ^Darius Satongar, Chris Dunn, Yiu Lam, and Francis LiLocalisation Performance of Higher-Order Ambisonics for Off-Centre Listening, BBC R&D Publications, 2013
  47. ^Paul Power, Chris Dunn, W. Davies, and J. Hirst,Localisation of Elevated Sources in Higher-order Ambisonics, BBC R&D Publications, 2013
  48. ^Johann-Markus Batke and Florian Keiler,Using VBAP-derived Panning Functions for 3D Ambisonics Decoding 2nd International Symposium on Ambisonics and Spherical Acoustics, Paris 2010
  49. ^Florian Keiler, Sven Kordon, Johannes Boehm, Holger Kropp, and Johann-Markus Batke,Data structure for Higher Order Ambisonics audio data, European Patent Application EP 2450880 A1, 2012
  50. ^"Dolby Laboratories acquires rival imm sound". The Hollywood Reporter. 23 July 2012.
  51. ^Deleflie, Etienne (30 August 2007)."Interview with Simon Goodwin of Codemasters on the PS3 game DiRT and Ambisonics".Building Ambisonia.com. Australia: Etienne Deleflie. Archived fromthe original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved7 August 2010.
  52. ^Deleflie, Etienne (24 June 2008)."Codemasters ups Ambisonics again on Race Driver GRID ..."Building Ambisonia.com. Australia: Etienne Deleflie. Archived fromthe original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved7 August 2010.
  53. ^Firshman, Ben (3 March 2010)."Interview: Simon N Goodwin, Codemasters".The Boar. Coventry, United Kingdom: The University of Warwick. p. 18. Core of Volume 32, Issue 11. Retrieved7 August 2010.
  54. ^"DiRT3".Gaming News. Blue Ripple Sound. 23 May 2011. Retrieved21 November 2013.
  55. ^"F1 2011".Gaming News. Blue Ripple Sound. 23 September 2011. Archived fromthe original on 19 December 2013. Retrieved21 November 2013.
  56. ^"DiRT Showdown".Gaming News. Blue Ripple Sound. 18 June 2012. Archived fromthe original on 14 December 2017. Retrieved21 November 2013.
  57. ^"3D Audio for Gaming". Blue Ripple Sound. Archived fromthe original on 13 December 2013. Retrieved21 November 2013.
  58. ^"Improved Spatial Audio from Ambisonic Surround Sound Software - A REF Impact Case Study". Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Retrieved18 February 2016.
  59. ^"openal-soft/ambisonics.txt at master · kcat/openal-soft · GitHub".GitHub. Retrieved15 June 2021.
  60. ^"List of PC games that use DirectSound3D - Google Docs". I Drink Lava. Retrieved26 June 2021.
  61. ^"Unreal Engine 4.25 Release Notes | Unreal Engine Documentation". Epic Games, Inc. Retrieved27 May 2022.
  62. ^"What's new in Unity 2017.1 - Unity". Unity Technologies. Archived fromthe original on 24 March 2022. Retrieved27 May 2022.

External links

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ambisonics&oldid=1279240789"
Categories:
Hidden categories:

[8]ページ先頭

©2009-2025 Movatter.jp