FAQ

• What is ‘Spatial Audio’?
  
  ‘Spatial Audio describes any variety of techniques for simulating the 360 Soundfield that occurs in a real environment.’
  
  Axel gave a talk back in January 2018 at a festival that explains all the basics of Spatial Audio. Plus giving advice on how to capture good Spatial Audio.

   

• What’s the difference between Spatial Audio and Stereo or Mono?
  Sound is constantly immersing us in real life, full stop. Here we talk about ‘Spatial Audio’ as a way to capture and play back sound in a similar manner to how it behaves in real life. Mono and stereo, or 5.1, are audio formats that restrain the original immersive sound capabilities, not allowing the listeners to, for example, move within the sonic environment.

• What is Ambisonics?
  ‘Hot word’ in immersive media. Below you can find the Wiki definition of it.
  Note that Ambisonics is NOT THE ONLY Spatial Audio format, that works well only in certain situations. There are other ones out there that do the job better in different situations, such as VBAP, SPS etc.

‘Ambisonics is a full-sphere surround sound format: in addition to the horizontal plane, it covers sound sources above and below the listener.Unlike other multichannel surround formats, its transmission channels do not carry speaker signals. Instead, they contain a speaker-independent representation of a sound field called B-format, which is then decoded 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.’

If you have any more questions, get in touch!