Augustine Leudar wrote:
Why the need for the w coordinate
I am not a mathematician or a scientist. A sound designer's reply: The W is a "reference" signal. For example, at decoding: + W + X is the "front" direction (W and X at equal phase) + W - X is the "rear" direction (X phase reversed in relation to W) Try to look at 1st order B-Format (WXYZ) as a "three dimensional MS-stereo signal". That helped me in the beginning.
the soundscapes I am working on are large jungle soundscapes in a large indoor tropical conservatory
You must have looked at Timax? http://www.outboard.co.uk/pages/timax.htm
Where ambisonics could help in the installation is the insect noises
Yep. A single mono sound is best localized to all listeners when you play it back through one speaker only. It is a good idea to route that kind of signals directly into the appropriate speaker. A combination of different techniques is possibly the best way to do it. Soundfields with moving phantom images and ambiences and spatial images are easy to control with B-Format Ambisonics. As somebody already said, it is possible to rotate, tilt and tumble a full 3D soundfield, and much more. You can for example "zoom in" into a certain direction.
can the decoding be done with software and then burnt to wav files ?
Andrew gave you good pointers. Bruce Wiggins has described workflows in his page. Possibly you'd like to check also these sites: Dave Malham: http://www.dmalham.freeserve.co.uk/vst_ambisonics.html http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/vst/welcome.html Visual Virtual Mic: http://mcgriffy.com/audio/ambisonic/vvmic/ Aristotel Digenis: http://www.digenis.co.uk/ Acousmodules. No Ambisonics in there, but you might find other useful tools: http://acousmodules.free.fr/acousmodules_en.htm Eero _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound