Ambisonics surround sound effects Asbjoern Andersen


Ambisonics is a method of recording and reproducing audio in full 360 degree surround – and while it’s not exactly a new invention, recent developments in software encoding have made it a lot more interesting.

And with demand for surround source material skyrocketing with the advent of 3D audio for film and immersive platforms such as virtual reality, Ambisonics is an increasingly useful option.

But how does Ambisonics work in the real world, how do you get started – and how do you make the most it? Experienced Ambisonics recordist and sound designer John Leonard gives you the details in this special hands-on A Sound Effect primer:

The current state of surround sound recording

Before we dive into the world of Ambisonics, let’s look at the current state of the art in recording in surround. It’s pretty easy, but not inexpensive, to make high-quality surround recordings these days, not only with the various discrete array mounts available from a number of microphone manufacturers, but also with all-in-one 5.1 and 7.1 microphones being offered, such as the DPA5100 surround microphone, affectionately known as The Bicycle Seat, and the various offerings from Holophone Microphone Systems.

Both these systems use discrete miniature electret microphone capsules in a special enclosure, with each microphone feeding a separate channel of a multi-track recorder although the smaller Holophone systems can also generate Dolby-encoded surround from a two-channel output, making them useful for DSLR on-camera use.

Aside from its discrete arrays, Schoeps offers a different approach, with a microphone/software system that they call Double Mid/Side, (DMS) where a rear-facing cardioid is added to a standard mid-side pair and the resulting three channels are trans-coded in software to provide a 5.0 surround output. Details here.

Sennheiser has its Esfera system, which uses a two-channel microphone array and separate hardware to generate 5.1 outputs by means of some very clever processing, but at a fairly hefty price tag of around US$12,000 for the complete system. All of these have their advantages, but they all produce horizontal only recordings and, in the case of the DPA 5100 and the Holophone H2-Pro 7.1, require six and eight tracks respectively to record the microphone outputs.

Latest Ambisonic SFX libraries:

The selection of ambisonic sound effects libraries is constantly growing – here are the latest arrivals:

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

→ view more

The Ambisonics difference

Without getting bogged down in too much detail, Ambisonics, developed in the early 1970s by Peter Fellget and Michael Gerzon is a way of recording and reproducing surround sound in both horizontal and vertical surround from a single point source. Yes, that’s right: eat your hearts out, DTS:X™, Dolby Atmos™ and Auro 3D™, Ambisonics has been capable of full surround including height and depth for around forty years, and it’s non-proprietary. You can find the relevant Wikipedia entry here for an explanation of the basic science behind the technique.

At its simplest, what’s known as a first-order B-Format surround signal can be generated either by software manipulation of mono sources or by a special type of microphone, using a tetrahedral array of four near-coincident capsules.

The Soundfield Microphone Tetrahedral Array

The Soundfield Microphone Tetrahedral Array

Those from TSL/Soundfield output a B-Format signal, which supplies a matrixed four-channel signal, where the four channels are designated W, X, Y and Z, where W represents on omni-directional reference, X represents front and back, Y represents left and right and Z equals up and down. (This is a gross simplification, but it’ll suffice for this article.) These microphones will have hardware control units that give the user options in terms of gain and directional orientation and filtering and are at the top-end of the market.

The Soundfield SPS200 and the Core Sound TetraMic both output simple capsule feeds and need software (SurroundZone2 for the Soundfield and VVTetraVST for the Core Sound) to correctly matrix the capsule feeds into a B-Format signal.

The resulting four-channel signal can then be trans-coded for output in many ways, from a single source in mono to multi-speaker surround arrays, with the major advantage being that once you have a the initial capture, you can use post processing to vary pan, tilt, zoom and rotate: something that’s not exactly simple to achieve with other systems.

 

Lots of opportunities with Ambisonics:

Ambisonics allows you to transcode your B-format source material into a myriad of formats, by using the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plugin – including stereo, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 or 7.1 surround.

The early days of Ambisonics

The development of Ambisonics was sponsored by a UK government organization called the National Research and Development Corporation, the aim of which was to exploit commercially technology created in the public sector. With Ambisonics, it failed dismally and the technique became the preserve of a few dedicated enthusiasts, but Soundfield Microphone sales continued to those who saw the various uses to which the system could be but, not the least as a pretty impressive stereo microphone for use in recording studios.

The main problem with using Ambisonics in large listening areas such as movie-theaters has always been the size of the sweet-spot, which was pretty small. The effect was still obvious and fairly impressive outside the sweet spot, but didn’t have the wow-factor of artificially pan-potted effects that became the staple of 5.1 and 7.1 movie theater systems. It did, however, give a far more realistic sense of being in the scene than its rather more sensational rival.

[tweet_box]Welcome to the wonderful world of Ambisonics – a primer by John Leonard:[/tweet_box]

Ambisonics evolved

Initially, the decoding hardware was complex and expensive and the lack of truly portable multi-track recording equipment meant that you were pretty much tied to a mains supply and a rack full of gear, but the arrival of sophisticated portable computer interfaces – in my case, the Metric Halo 2882 which could be powered via the FireWire port of a Macintosh PowerBook – meant that it’s been possible to record using Soundfield microphones free from mains power for around fifteen years. Much of the material in my effects libraries has been recorded using this system, although for more portability, I also use Sound Devices 744 and 788 recorders, which have basic B-Format monitoring built-in.

ambisonics recording

Early location surround recording set-up: Mac PowerBook, Metric Halo 2882 interface and Soundfield ST250 control unit & microphone, Rycote windshield.

Further development in software processing has also meant that expensive hardware is no longer needed for transcoding and, thanks to research carried out at various academic institutions, much of the software to accomplish this is free. The small sweet-spot problem remained, though, and much of the effects material recorded in B-Format by me and others like me, was simply decoded, initially, to stereo and lately, to 5.1 surround, with the height aspect being discarded.

It’s now entirely possible using software, to enlarge the sweet spot, decode for binaural and even to deal with irregular speaker arrays in large venues.

Recently, however, there have been major developments in the use of Ambisonics, particularly with the arrival of immersive virtual reality systems such as the Oculus Rift and it’s now entirely possible using software, to enlarge the sweet spot, decode for binaural and even to deal with irregular speaker arrays in large venues.

One of the developers in the forefront of this technology is a company called Blue Ripple Sound and the good news is that the core software to experiment with this is free, with the caveat that it only works with certain DAWs at the moment, although one of these is the ridiculously cheap, but amazingly versatile Reaper.
 

Introducing a brand-new Ambisonics SFX category:

 
A whole new sound effects category is opening up here on A Sound Effect, dedicated to Ambisonics SFX libraries – and a bunch of libraries have just been added. Check out a small selection below:
 

  • Ambisonic City, Suburbs, Rural Ambiences in B-format (ambix) and binaural.

    Ambiences of the city, suburbs and rural areas. Many sound perspectives and situations. Long recordings, over 20 GB of recordings. Please check the sound list for additional info.

    Recorded with Sennheiser Ambeo VR microphone and Sound Devices Mix Pre 10-II, 744T recorder. See the track list for additional info.

    The download contains each recording in B-format (RAW-4ch.) and as Binaural Stereo files. The audio preview is binaural and should be listened to with headphones. All files are tagged with Metadata.

  • “Ambisonic Sounds – Inside Passenger Jet Vol.2” is a collection of immersive sounds for multimedia content creators, computer game developers and those who like to experiment with sound.
    The sound pack includes 31 files in Ambix.wav format and 31 files in wav format that can be used to create ambience sound inside a passenger plane.
    All recordings were made with a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Night Atmosphere Seaside Village Loops is a collection of sounds recorded on a summer night in a seaside village. In this atmospheric recording you will find seamless loops of crickets, roosters crowing, dogs barking and the distant sounds of a passing train and planes flying high above the village.

    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (24 Bit/96 kHz) and then converted to AmbiX and Stereo formats, which are located in separate folders of this sound pack.

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Immerse yourself in an atmosphere of natural power and tranquility with the “Rain and Thunderstorm” sound collection, consisting of 4 Vol-s.
    This collection features a variety of looped sounds: light rain, night rain with loud thunderclaps, and other effects that will help you create the perfect atmosphere – from a quiet, secluded night, long scenes, or endless atmospheric effects without abrupt transitions, to a dramatic thunderstorm on the horizon.
    The recording was made by a Zoom H3-VR recorder in the Ambisonics A format (96 kHz 24 Bit) and then converted to the AmbiX and Stereo formats (96 kHz 24 Bit), which are located in different folders of this sound pack.

  • Ambisonic Sound Effects Ambisonics – Roomtones Bundle Play Track 58 sounds included, 525 mins total From: $30

    Roomtones Bundle compiles nine hours and twenty-five minutes of long, evolving, and varied ambiences recorded in four distinct ground and first-floor apartments. Both busy and quiet urban soundscapes can be found in these audio files, allowing you to create vivid backgrounds for your Virtual Reality projects. Additionally, rainy recordings are included, providing versatility alongside cityscapes that range from quiet traffic in the distance to bustling pedestrians, strange bathroom rumblings, construction work, barking dogs, and moments of dead silence.

    Busier soundscapes also abound, such as the heavy hum of a fridge in a kitchen facing a street with sporadic vehicles and conversations, quiet living-room takes with distant voices and a dog snoring, persistent machine sounds from a pump, porch recordings on a rainy night, and a busy morning with varied traffic passing by.

    Holiday beach house recordings are also included, featuring distant birds chirping, barking dogs, chatty neighbors, moderate to low traffic, intense fridge hum, and upstairs bumps. Quiet and neutral takes are also provided, which can be filled later with additional content. Each division includes two different takes with open and closed windows (where applicable), adding an extra dimension to these sound files. They are perfect for creating both quiet and languid roomtone soundscapes, conveying multiple moods for any desired VR experience.

    Every sound designer’s worst nightmare is also fully realized with ten long takes of drilling, hammering, polishing, occasional conversations, and thuds from a ground-floor apartment undergoing heavy renovations. These audio files are ideal for roomtone soundscapes containing construction noise from neighbors or, with some clever tweaking, for simulating sounds from a nearby building.


    Ambisonics – Roomtones contains:

    This sound library is available in both Ambisonics FuMa (B Format) and Stereo (Binaural) formats.

View all Ambisonics libraries here

Getting started with Ambisonics

If you do want to test the waters and you have Reaper, ProTools, Cubase, Nuendo or Logic, there are a couple of ways you can achieve this at no cost, other than some time to read and understand how to set your system up. There are a number of software plug-ins that will decode audio material recorded as B-Format surround, but probably the first stop should be the plug-in specifically designed to deal with the output of Soundfield Microphones: the company is now part of TSL Products and their SurroundZone2 plug-in is available for VST, AU and AAX systems, with VST & AAX available for both MacOS and Windows computers. You can download it for free here.

If you want a more advanced version, the truly excellent Harpex-B plug-in is available here. It isn’t free, in fact it’s quite expensive, but there’s a thirty day free trial available, which is worth experimenting with.

Harpex-B Ambisonic Decoding

Two instances of Harpex-B Ambisonic Decoding software in use in a complex surround mix, along with two mid/side decoders.

If you’re a Windows user and prepared to dig a little deeper into the system set-up, then you can try Dave McGriffy’s VVMicVST plug-in, which as the name suggests is a VST-only plug-in, although Dave has recently expanded his suite of tools and these can be found on his VVAudio site.


Popular on A Sound Effect right now - article continues below:


Trending right now:

  • Strident and Demonic

    Expand the timbre of your horror violins and cellos with CIRCUS, a sinister sample pack featuring 180 WAV sounds of screeching or high-pitched string noises, perfect for horror music and dark sound design.

    Creative Tension

    This collection offers a curated selection of screeches, high-tension tremolo, heavy jeté strokes, dark demonic textures, finger patterns, chaotic string elements, clock loops and bow accents.

    Haunting and Experimental

    Create haunting atmospheres, perfect for horror, thriller or experimental soundtracks. Every element has been designed to unsettle and disturb, blurring the line between music and noise.

  • ⏰ For a very limited time:
    Add this library to the cart and enter ah4launch in the cart coupon field – to sprinkle an extra launch discount, on top of the current discount!

    Animal Hyperrealism Vol IV is a sound library containing animal vocalisations, from real to designed creatures totaling more than 2000 individual sounds in 294 files. The sounds were recorded in zoos, and wildlife centers.

    The asset list includes but is not limited to: hippos, hyenas, vultures, dwarf mongooses, elephants, African cranes, parrots, tigers, pigmy hippos, rhea ostriches, brown bears, pheasants, wildebeests, African wild dogs and many more. The content has been recorded at 192KHz with a Sanken CO100K, an Avisoft CMPA and a Sennheiser 8050 for center plus two Sennheiser MKH8040 for stereo image.

    The resulting ultrasonic spectrum is rich and allows for truly extreme manipulation of the content.

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  • Animal Sound Effects Animal Hyperrealism Vol III Play Track 1711 sounds included $180

    Animal Hyperrealism Vol III is a library containing sounds themed animal vocalisations, from real to designed creatures totaling more than 1700 individual sounds in 279 files.

    The sounds were recorded in zoos and wildlife centers. The asset list includes but is not limited to: european red deers, monkeys, reindeers, hornbills camels, crickets, tamarins, boars, frogs, red ruffed lemurs, parrots, and many more.

    The content has been recorded at 192KHz with a Sanken CO100K plus a Sennheiser 8050 for center image and a couple of Sennheiser MKH8040 for stereo image.
    Part of the cheats section of the library features samples recorded at 384KHz. For these sounds an additional microphone was employed, specifically the CMPA by Avisoft-Bioacoustics which records up to 200 KHz. This microphone was used to record most of the library but the 384KHz format was preserved only where energy was found beyond 96KHz not to occupy unnecessary disk space.
    All files are delivered as stereo bounce of these for mics, though in some instances an additional couple of CO100K was added to the sides.
    The resulting ultrasonic spectrum is rich and allows for truly extreme manipulation of the content.

    Bonus: Two extra libraries included for free:
    This library also includes two additional releases from Mattia Cellotto - for free: Crunch Mode delivers 230 crunchy sounds made with a variety of vegetables, fresh bread, pizza crust and a selection of frozen goods. The Borax Experiment gets you 158 squishy, gory, slimy and gooey sounds.
  • Animal Sound Effects Collections Animal Hyperrealism Vol I Play Track 290+ sounds included $180

    Animal Hyperrealism Vol I is a library containing sounds themed animal vocalisations, from real to designed creatures totaling more than 1300 individual sounds in 290 files.

    The sounds were partly recorded with animals trained for media production, partly recorded in zoos and wildlife centers. The asset list includes but is not limited to: african lions, bengal tigers, horses, donkeys, cows, exotic birds, owls, bobcats, pumas, dromedaries, wolves, dogs, geese, lemurs, gibbons and many more.

    All the content has been recorded at 192KHz with a Sanken CO100K plus a Sennheiser 8050 for center image and a couple of Sennheiser MKH8040 for stereo image. All files are delivered as stereo bounce of these four mics, though in some instances an additional couple of CO100K was added to the sides.

    The resulting ultrasonic spectrum is rich and allows for truly extreme manipulation of the content.

    Bonus: Two extra libraries included for free:
    This library also includes two additional releases from Mattia Cellotto - for free: Crunch Mode delivers 230 crunchy sounds made with a variety of vegetables, fresh bread, pizza crust and a selection of frozen goods. The Borax Experiment gets you 158 squishy, gory, slimy and gooey sounds.

Latest releases:

  • Horror Sound Effects Sinister Textures 5 Play Track 300 sounds included, 5 mins total $20

    We follow up vol 1-4 with the 5th instalment of the Sinister Series

    We wanted more organic scratches in our library, so we decided to get to work and record a variety of objects such as
    Finger Nails, Fake Finger Nails, Metal Pipes, Screws, Coins, and we scraped them against different surfaces like
    Cladding, Concrete, Door Mat, Laminate, Plastic, Wood, Tile, Various Fabrics

    Creating some organic Scratch and Scrapes, these can be left organic or you can redesign these sounds to create some Eerie, Scary, Horrorfull and down right Sinister scratch and scrape sounds which can be used across horror, thriller or suspense projects to create tension, impact and jump scares.

    Sinister Textures 5 will give you enough audio to give your project the authentic sound of Sinister Scratching and Scrapes, boosting your project to the next level. Sinister Textures 5 has been edited to allow a drop in ready and Royalty Free sample pack. These Samples can be used in a variety of projects from Sound Designing/Compositions for TV, Film, Documentaries and Video Games. UCS Compliant and Metadata is attached to the samples.

  • Car Sound Effects Large Family Cars Play Track 2433 sounds included, 403 mins total $250

    Compilation of 10 different large family cars. Sounds are recorded 192kHz, 32bit with RØDE NTG1, RØDELink Lav, Line Audio Omni1, Shure KSM137, Shure VP88, Sonorous Objects SO.3, FEL Pluggy XLR EM272 and FEL Clippy XLR EM272 microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II and Zoom F3 recorders. Library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds.

  • Hybrid Game & UI Elements by Cinematic Sound Design delivers a versatile, high-impact sound effects library crafted to enhance your games, apps, interfaces, and multimedia projects. From satisfying button clicks and menu confirmations to dynamic game events and foley, this collection transforms every interaction into a polished, immersive experience. Inside this library, you’ll find over 250 hand-designed sounds, including UI feedback tones, notification pings, success and error alerts, interface swipes, menu transitions, foley hits, game triggers and more..

    Each sound is meticulously recorded, layered, and processed for clarity, punch, and adaptability across any platform or device. Whether you’re designing a mobile app, building a game interface, or producing interactive media, Hybrid Game & UI Elements ensures your project feels responsive, engaging, and professional. With carefully balanced dynamics and optimized mixes, this library provides the perfect blend of functionality and excitement, making every click, swipe, and in-game event satisfying and memorable. Elevate your UI interactions and game experiences with sounds designed to deliver precision, impact, and a touch of cinematic flair.

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  • “Colossal Impacts” is a powerhouse sound library built to deliver crushing force and cinematic weight to your projects. Designed for trailers, games, film, and any production demanding larger-than-life energy, this collection brings the raw intensity of massive strikes, explosive hits, and earth-shaking slams right to your sound palette.

    Inside, you’ll find an arsenal of meticulously designed audio ranging from thunderous booms, metallic crashes, and bone-rattling smashes to resonant sub drops, heavy stomps, and shattering debris. Each sound is crafted for clarity and impact, layering deep low-end power with crisp mid and high frequencies to ensure they cut through any mix while still delivering body-shaking presence.

    Whether you need to punctuate a cinematic reveal, emphasize a game boss encounter, or inject explosive energy into a trailer, Colossal Impacts provides versatile tools that adapt effortlessly to any genre. From dark and tense rumbling hits to sharp, aggressive slams, these sounds are designed to grip attention and elevate storytelling.

    Product Details:

    • 103 Designed Cinematic Impacts
    • 100% Royalty-Free
    • 24-Bit/96kHz

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  • “System & UI Feedback Elements” is a massive sound library packed with over 200 dynamic audio elements designed to give life, energy, and clarity to your projects. From polished notification dings, confetti bursts, celebratory rewards and more, this versatile collection covers a wide spectrum of sounds perfectly suited for apps, games, websites, and multimedia productions.

    Inside, you’ll discover an eclectic range of professionally crafted effects: warm clicks, futuristic confirms, arcade-inspired coin wins, soft foley textures, mechanical switches, sparkles, zippers, and a lot more. Every file has been carefully mastered for balance and transparency, ensuring that whether you’re designing a mobile interface, building a game level, or editing motion graphics, the sounds will sit seamlessly in your mix.

    This library bridges functionality with creativity. You can emphasize success and progression with achievement tones, create tension with horror drones, or enrich user feedback with subtle tactile clicks and natural textures. Each sound is optimized to deliver instant recognition and emotional punch, from playful blops to majestic chimes.

    Give your projects a professional edge, captivate your audience, and transform ordinary interactions into memorable experiences with System & UI Feedback Elements.

    Product Details:

    • 229 Interface Sounds
    • 100% Royalty-Free
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Need specific sound effects? Try a search below:


Want to dig deeper still? Daniel Courville has a whole suite of software, including a Double M/S version and one for making your Zoom H2 surround recordings sound pretty good.

How to record surround in B-Format

Want to buy a mic of your own? Aside from the Soundfield and TetraMic products mentioned earlier, a new, Kickstarter-funded company in India produces the Brahma microphones, which are also causing interest, especially as they’ve managed to build one into a Zoom H2N body, making it the smallest complete surround recording package available anywhere. Check it out here and read about one user’s experiences here

In closing, let’s sum up the key takeways from this primer:

• Ambisonics is a method of recording and reproducing audio in full 360 degree surround.

• Post-processing can transcode the recordings into various conventional surround formats.

• Specialist hardware and software is required for recording and processing the audio.

• Much of the processing software is free and works with many DAWs.

• Microphone prices start at under $1,000.00

 

A big thanks to John Leonard for this overview of what Ambisonic recording is all about! Check out his sound effect libraries here, and explore the new Ambisonics SFX category here.

 
 

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About John Leonard:

John Leonard is an experienced sound designer and recordist from the UK, where he’s done pioneering work in theatre sound since the 1970s. His work includes exhibition projects in the UK, North America and China, and shows in London’s West-End, The National Theatre Of Great Britain, The Royal Shakespeare Company, The Royal Court, The Almeida, The Lincoln Center Festival and more. He’s also the creator of the popular Immersive FX sound effect series. Learn more about his work here.



 
 
THE WORLD’S EASIEST WAY TO GET INDEPENDENT SOUND EFFECTS:
 
A Sound Effect gives you easy access to an absolutely huge sound effects catalog from a myriad of independent sound creators, all covered by one license agreement - a few highlights:

  • Strident and Demonic

    Expand the timbre of your horror violins and cellos with CIRCUS, a sinister sample pack featuring 180 WAV sounds of screeching or high-pitched string noises, perfect for horror music and dark sound design.

    Creative Tension

    This collection offers a curated selection of screeches, high-tension tremolo, heavy jeté strokes, dark demonic textures, finger patterns, chaotic string elements, clock loops and bow accents.

    Haunting and Experimental

    Create haunting atmospheres, perfect for horror, thriller or experimental soundtracks. Every element has been designed to unsettle and disturb, blurring the line between music and noise.

  • ⏰ For a very limited time:
    Add this library to the cart and enter ah4launch in the cart coupon field – to sprinkle an extra launch discount, on top of the current discount!

    Animal Hyperrealism Vol IV is a sound library containing animal vocalisations, from real to designed creatures totaling more than 2000 individual sounds in 294 files. The sounds were recorded in zoos, and wildlife centers.

    The asset list includes but is not limited to: hippos, hyenas, vultures, dwarf mongooses, elephants, African cranes, parrots, tigers, pigmy hippos, rhea ostriches, brown bears, pheasants, wildebeests, African wild dogs and many more. The content has been recorded at 192KHz with a Sanken CO100K, an Avisoft CMPA and a Sennheiser 8050 for center plus two Sennheiser MKH8040 for stereo image.

    The resulting ultrasonic spectrum is rich and allows for truly extreme manipulation of the content.

    15 %
    OFF
  • Destruction & Impact Sounds Cataclysm Play Track 1482 sounds included $195

    Cataclysm is a vast collection of recorded, synthesized and designed sounds created to support important destructive moments and add a stronger sense of extreme consequence to any sound.

    The recorded section of library features elements such as flash powder explosions, propane cannon blasts and artillery cannons recorded in unique natural environments with violent transients and lush, long and varied tails. It also features falling trees, forge burners, large trebuchet wood groans, rock smashes as well as more ordinary items recorded and designed to feel like an over the top version of themselves such as vacuum cleaner suctions, metal vase holders, ground pounders and more.

    The synthesized section of the library features equally rich textures in the form of explosion sweeteners, other-worldly environmental reflections, scorching energy risers and more.

    Finally, recorded and synthesized content was employed to develop the designed section, where the hyperrealism of the recordings meets the clean yet aggressive textures of the synthesized section in catastrophic assets themed around the library’s title.

    Bonus: Two extra libraries included for free:
    This library also includes two additional releases from Mattia Cellotto - for free: Crunch Mode delivers 230 crunchy sounds made with a variety of vegetables, fresh bread, pizza crust and a selection of frozen goods. The Borax Experiment gets you 158 squishy, gory, slimy and gooey sounds.
Explore the full, unique collection here

Latest sound effects libraries:
 
  • Horror Sound Effects Sinister Textures 5 Play Track 300 sounds included, 5 mins total $20

    We follow up vol 1-4 with the 5th instalment of the Sinister Series

    We wanted more organic scratches in our library, so we decided to get to work and record a variety of objects such as
    Finger Nails, Fake Finger Nails, Metal Pipes, Screws, Coins, and we scraped them against different surfaces like
    Cladding, Concrete, Door Mat, Laminate, Plastic, Wood, Tile, Various Fabrics

    Creating some organic Scratch and Scrapes, these can be left organic or you can redesign these sounds to create some Eerie, Scary, Horrorfull and down right Sinister scratch and scrape sounds which can be used across horror, thriller or suspense projects to create tension, impact and jump scares.

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7 thoughts on “Welcome to the wonderful world of Ambisonics – a primer by John Leonard

  1. Great article, but I don’t quite understand this ‘getting started’ paragraph:

    ‘If you do want to test the waters…there are a couple of ways you can achieve this at no cost, …software plug-ins that will decode audio material recorded as B-Format…probably the first stop should be the plug-in specifically designed to deal with the output of Soundfield Microphones.’

    If you need to buy a Soundfield microphone, how is this at ‘no cost’. If you can use your own microphones, how do we ENCODE our recorded sound into B-Format?

    • Hi Christopher, thanks for the comment! Now, I’m not John :) – but I think what he means by that paragraph is in terms of working with existing B-format recordings, ie working with B-format content in your DAW.

  2. Hi,

    Thanks for this great article. I’m just starting to learn the process of capturing and mixing 360 sound. I’m confused though, is the “only” benefit of buying an ambisonic mic just have to do with the ease of workflow? Sort of how it’s best to use a matched stereo pair for stereo recordings if you want the best result with the least hassle? Or is it literally impossible to set up regular mics in a tetrahedron array and eventually get an ambisonic file from that capture, even if it happens in post through a plugin like ambipan or something similar? That seems like it would make sense intuitively since you should be able to use prerecorded mono SFX samples and create an ambisonic environment using a plugin like that…right? Sorry for the novice question. Hope it made sense.

  3. Hello Christopher & Jared,

    Christopher, I did indeed mean that you can experiment with existing B-Format material: there’s plenty of free stuff around – try http://www.ambisonia.com for non-commercial material that you can play around with. Then buy libraries from Asbjoern and keep us poor recordists from starving!

    Jared, Soundfield-type microphones that use a tetrahedral array are designed to keep the capsules as close together as possible, effectively to create a point-source, which will give the best results. My ST450 and my TetraMic are both compact, portable set-ups that can be fitted into shockmounts and windshields and used in the same way as a conventional microphone for effects gathering. It’s possible and quite easy to build an array from conventional microphones for horizontal surround only, and there are various illustrations of rigs that achieve this, using an omni and two figure-of-eight microphones. Do a search for ‘Native B-Format Array’ or go straight here – http://www.radio.uqam.ca/ambisonic/native_b.html for a pretty comprehensive example. You’ll notice that it’s not exactly a compact set-up, though.

    Please feel free to ask anything else and I’ll see if I can help.

  4. Hi,

    I’m doing an audio project for work (completely new to ambisonics/encoding/speaker systems in general, though do have some basic understanding).

    Just to check i’ve got this right, in extreme laymans terms, would I be able to record a piece of ambisonics audio (using for example, a Sennheiser Ambeo 3D VR mic), mix the B format using various different software available, then somehow output it to either a channel based or object based speaker system? (For example, Dolby Atmos or Auro-3D).

    I can’t seem to figure out if Dolby Atmos or Auro-3D are compatible with ambisonics recordings.

    Sorry if these are really basic questions, I’m completely new to file formats and encoding!

    Thanks,
    Lewis

  5. Lewis,

    I’m not sure what you mean by “mix the B-Format” The B-Format signal is what you’ll get after doing the processing from the A-Format (basically capsule outputs) from the Ambeo, the TetraMic or the Soundfield SPS-200. All these microphones have their own processing software to let you achieve this, with varying degrees of precision, and once done, you’ll need further processing to do anything useful with the B-Format. Probably the best bet for transcoding at the moment is Svein Berge’s Harpex-X, which will let you output a multi-channel file that will work with Dolby Atmos or Auro-3D, although it’s not a low-cost option, or a simple one, as you’ll need to use two instances of the plug-in to get the requisite number of output channels.

    There are other options available, but I don’t have time at the moment to go into them at the moment, due to work/life complications. I’ll do my best to expand on them a little later.

    You’re not entering a simple world here, and it’s not a cheap one, either: be prepared to spend lots of time and money. You can download the Harpex manual here: https://harpex.net/manual.pdf

    All the best,

    John

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