Spatial Audio -Surroundedby Sound
Spatial Audio is the next big leap towards full immersion. It allows viewers to precisely locate sounds within 360°/180° videos. The ability to see and hear in VR just as you would in the real world makes the experience far more authentic than ever before.
What is Ambisonics?
Ambisonics is an innovative new technique for encoding sound in an orientation-independent manner. This is achieved by transforming sound into a different basis function and storing the parameters into one channel resp. The higher the order of the function, the more precisely it can be represented in the signal, the more channels will be used to represent it. First order ambisonics are currently a good fit as they require only 4 parameter channels for the basis and thus fit inside a single 5.1 stream. Second order ambisonics would require 8 channels and thus could fit in 7.1. As soon as the standards improve on storing ambisonics data, Delight XR will strive to support even higher order streams.
Capturing ambisonics data requires a microphone or microphones able to capture sound from multiple directions at once. While it is possible to create such an array of microphones yourself, there any many commercial microphones already being produced with that goal in mind, including:
• Zoom H2n (with firmware version 2.00 or newer)
• TSL Products SoundField SPS200
• Audeze Tetrahedral (VR) Microphone
Even though these microphones are able to capture audio in terms of a single location, this kind of approach is inherently limited. Close-miking techniques can be used in addition to an ambisonics microphone and spatialized in post production.
There are numerous software packages and tools for post-production:
• ambiX
• Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation
• Noise Makers Ambi Head and Ambi Pan
• WigWare
"Sound does not only help the story, but also the orientation. Spatial audio will be the norm in a couple of years."
Timor Kardum, omstudios
State of the Art Ambisonics
Delight XR now supports spatial audio through first-order Ambisonics in the ambiX format, the new go-to standard for spatial audio, endorsed by Google. This means maximum compatibility with minimum effort getting your next-gen VR video content out the door and in the hands of the user!
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Delight Wizard
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