ZYLIA - 3D AUDIO RECORDING & POST-PROCESSING
  • ZYLIA Home
  • Blog
  • Shop

What is the Ambisonics format?

3/21/2017

4 Comments

 
By Jakub Wasilewski

Nowadays the entertainment industry is more and more interested in immersive experiences when it comes to movies, video games and music. Along with already quite common 360 degree videos, there is also a growing demand for 3D audio. Surround systems like 5.1, 7.1 or cinematic 22.2 can surely deliver impressive effects, but none of them is an actual full spatial audio system. Mostly because once sources had been recorded, there is no way to change their positions freely.

Speakers ambisonics
​In order to obtain a real spatial audio, an entirely different approach is needed. An approach that should not perceive sound as list of spatially speaker-fixed sources, but as a whole soundfield instead. It is where an Ambisonics technique comes in handy. But before explaining what it actually is, let me begin with a quick overview of the Ambisonics.
​At the same time when the music audience was thrilled for the first time with “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, an Ambisonics idea has been conceived by Michael Gerzon from the University of Oxford. He realised, that using three figure-of-eight microphones and additional omnidirectional one, he can make a soundfield recording that can be expressed as four speaker-independent channels, the so called B-Format. It allows to store soundfield information in four channels and decode it later into specific speaker setup.
​As you can probably imagine, representing a whole soundfield using only four channels is not optimal. Spatial audio resolution is not very impressive when using a B-Format which is only 1st order of Ambisonics, In the 1970s It was difficult to achieve higher audio resolution due to the level of technical advancements at that time. Despite the fact that the Ambisonics technique was grounded on solid technical and mathematical foundation, it has not gained much attention or commercial success. 
 Ambisonic technique
In order to obtain higher orders of Ambisonics, which provides better soundfield representation and spatial resolution, a dense microphone array and advanced signal processing algorithms are needed. Both of these advancements are the cornerstones of the new recording system developed by ​ZYLIA.

ZYLIA 3rd order Ambisonics microphone


ambisonics microphone
Fig. ​ZYLIA ZM-1 - a 3rd order Ambisonics microphone.
The ZYLIA ZM-1 microphone array is capable of recording sound in the 3rd order Ambisonics format. Recording in such format will be soon very relevant due to the recent announcements by Google and Facebook to add support for higher order Ambisonics playback in their players. Soon it will be possible to enjoy amazing spatial audio recordings on any web-enabled device. 

You need ambisonics microphone? Just try ZYLIA!


4 Comments
Daniel Courville link
3/23/2017 16:53:13

The picture of Michael Gerzon is not Gerzon.

Reply
JF Bau link
7/24/2017 11:31:40

Hello from Lyon. On what date the ambisonic decoder will be OK ? Best regards.

Reply
Sistem Informasi link
11/20/2023 15:31:09

How has the evolution of Ambisonics technology impacted the way music recordings are produced and the overall audio experience over the past few decades?

Reply
Teknik Informatika link
5/20/2024 18:45:11

What are the technical and historical aspects of the Ambisonics format, and how does it differ from traditional surround sound systems like 5.1 or 7.1? Regard <a href="https://journals.telkomuniversity.ac.id/">Telkom University</a>

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Categories

    All
    360 Recording
    6DOF
    Ambisonics
    Good Reading
    How To Posts
    Impulse Response
    Interviews
    Live Stream
    Product Review
    Recording
    Software Releases
    Tutorials

    Archives

    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    February 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016

    RSS Feed

Picture

Connect with us

Terms & Conditions   |   Refund Policy   |   Privacy Policy 
© Zylia Sp. z o.o., copyright 2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
  • ZYLIA Home
  • Blog
  • Shop