Reply To: Mixing for different formats, how to go about it?

February 26, 2023 at 8:47 pm #5006
Len Moskowitz
Participant

    (I’ll continue my theme of higher-order ambisonics for immersive audio that I started over in the microphone forum.)

    Once you have a recording in B-format, it can be decoded for an essentially unlimited number of playback configurations.

    So a single higher-order B-format recording can be decoded to mono, stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.4, 22.x.y, any number of concentric rings of speakers to cover the complete immersive sphere, plus headtracked and fixed-head binaural for playback using VR visors and headphones.

    The B-format recording can be the result of a live recording, or of a studio process of creating audio tracks from sources and then placing them in the spherical space. Once they’re in B-format, the decoding for playback is a completely independent process that can be done as many times as you want. All of them come from a single B-format recording.

    If you want a sweet spot that serves all listener locations and orientations, use a VR visor that provides headtracked binaural playback. Or more simply, headtracked headphones.