Ambisonic B-Format Audiofile Support

Ey,

I recently made some soundfield mic fieldrecordings of the sea and like to use these recordings in Renoise, but that is impossible at the moment :( .

I don’t know how difficult this is to implement, but a soundfield b-format.wav consists out of a four-channel signal encoded in 1 file. Three of the signals, the X, Y and Z channels, describe the space around the microphone in the X (Front/Back), Y (Left/Right) and Z (Up/Down) dimensions, and are equivalent to recordings made with three figure-of-eight microphones at right angles to each other. The fourth channel, known as W, is equivalent to a recording made with an omnidirectional microphone, and provides a reference for the three other channels.(quoted from: http://www.soundfield.com/soundfield/soundfield.php )

More info + diagram pics can be found here:
http://www.soundfield.com/downloads/b_format.pdf

Grts,

R

Are you looking to preserve the ambisonic properties, or just get a usable stereo recording out of the ambisonic source file?

both would be cool to have,…but guess it is rather specific.

right now I wanted to have them for stereo use and have used another program to convert them.

I recently started a field recording project using ambisonics. I recorded cyclist demonstrations (for example at a Critical Mass Event) and I’m also planning two events with ringing cyclist groups in a more controlled environment and a more sophisticated microphone placement. The goal is to make a sound installation with four speakers in a room and I want to arrange and place my sounds to the speakers in some interesting ways.

I came across this old thread, because I wonder how you treat ambisonics in post production. I’m experimenting with the “ICST ambisonic externals” in max msp and the “envelope for live” plugins in ableton.

https://www.zhdk.ch/forschung/icst/software-downloads-5379/downloads-ambisonics-externals-for-maxmsp-5381

https://www.envelop.us

They are working pretty well and I can place the sound in different places. I listened to the results with headphones, encoded to binaural.

But: How do you do like “cutting, placing, fading, layering, …” the samples, because renoise and ableton cannot read multichannel .wav files. Do you use another DAW like reaper?

I also do not understand what happens when I split the .wav files (for example with wave agent from sound devices) from a B-Format (AmbiX, in my case) file into its four .wav files. I’m not understanding what I am hearing then or if I can use them in a group track. I think when I split the A-Format, then you here just the X, Y, Z and W pure microphone recordings.

Didn’t had the time to dive in deeply (but I will), so I thought I just make this post, to see how people are doing that kind of thing, because the handling with those recordings is totally different.

Greetings, Robo

(p.s.: I was using an Ambeo Microphone from Sennheiser with the zoom f8)