This open access book provides a concise explanation of the fundamentals and background of the surround sound recording and playback technology Ambisonics. It equips readers with the psychoacoustical, signal processing, acoustical, and mathematical knowledge needed to understand the inner workings of modern processing utilities, special equipment for recording, manipulation, and reproduction in the higher-order Ambisonic format. The book comes with various practical examples based on free software tools and open scientific data for reproducible research.The book’s introductory section offers a perspective on Ambisonics spanning from the origins of coincident recordings in the 1930s to the Ambisonic concepts of the 1970s, as well as classical ways of applying Ambisonics in first-order coincident sound scene recording and reproduction that have been practiced since the 1980s. As, from time to time, the underlying mathematics become quite involved, but should be comprehensive without sacrificing readability, the book includes an extensive mathematical appendix. The book offers readers a deeper understanding of Ambisonic technologies, and will especially benefit scientists, audio-system and audio-recording engineers. In the advanced sections of the book, fundamentals and modern techniques as higher-order Ambisonic decoding, 3D audio effects, and higher-order recording are explained. Those techniques are shown to be suitable to supply audience areas ranging from studio-sized to hundreds of listeners, or headphone-based playback, regardless whether it is live, interactive, or studio-produced 3D audio material.

To improve the limited degree of immersion of static binaural rendering for headphones, an increased measurement effort to obtain multiple-orientation binaural room impulse responses (MOBRIRs) is reasonable and enables dynamic variable-orientation rendering. We investigate the perceptual characteristics of dynamic rendering from MOBRIRs and test for the required angular resolution. Our first listening experiment shows that a resolution between ${15}^{\circ }$ and ${30}^{\circ }$ is sufficient to accomplish binaural rendering of high quality, regarding timbre, spatial mapping, and continuity. A more versatile alternative considers the separation of the room-dependent (RIR) from the listener-dependent head-related (HRIR) parts, and an efficient implementation thereof involves the measurement of a first-order Ambisonic RIR (ARIR) with a tetrahedral microphone. A resolution-enhanced ARIR can be obtained by an Ambisonic spatial decomposition method (ASDM) utilizing instantaneous direction of arrival estimation. ASDM permits dynamic rendering in higher-order Ambisonics, with the flexibility to render either using dummy-head or individualized HRIRs. Our comparative second listening experiment shows that 5th-order ASDM outperforms the MOBRIR rendering with resolutions coarser than ${30}^{\circ }$ for all tested perceptual aspects. Both listening experiments are based on BRIRs and ARIRs measured in a studio environment.

The quote from Pierre Boulez, given as an epigraph to this article, inspired French researchers to start developing technology for spherical loudspeaker arrays in the 1990s. The hope was to retain the naturalness of sound sources. Now, a few decades later, one might be able to show that even more can be done: In electroacoustic music, using the icosahedral loudspeaker array called IKO seems to enable spatial gestures that enrich alien sounds with a tangible acoustic naturalness. After a brief discussion of directivity-based composition in computer music, the first part of the article describes the technical background of the IKO, its usage in a digital audio workstation, and psychoacoustic evidence regarding the auditory objects the IKO produces. The second part deals with acoustic equations of spherical beamforming, how the IKO's loudspeakers are controlled correspondingly, how we deal with excursion limits, and the resulting beam patterns generated by the IKO.

Phantom sources are known to be perceived similar to real sound sources but with some differences. One of the differences is an increase of the perceived source width. This article discusses the perception, measurement, and modeling of source width for frontal phantom sources with different symmetrical arrangements of up to three active loudspeakers. The perceived source width is evaluated on the basis of a listening test. The test results are compared to technical measures that are applied in room acoustics: the inter-aural cross correlation coefficient (IACC) and the lateral energy fraction (LF). Adaptation of the latter measure makes it possible to predict the results by considering simultaneous sound incidence. Finally, a simple model is presented for the prediction of the perceived source width that does not require acoustic measurements as it is solely based on the loudspeaker directions and gains.

The icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO) is able to project strongly focused sound beams into arbitrary directions. Incorporating artistic experience and psychoacoustic research, this article presents three listening experiments that provide evidence for a common, intersubjective perception of spatial sonic phenomena created by the IKO. The experiments are designed on the basis of a hierarchical model of spatiosonic phenomena that exhibit increasing complexity, ranging from a single static sonic object to combinations of multiple, partly moving objects. The results are promising and explore new compositional perspectives in spatial computer music.

The directivity of a sound source in a room influences the D/R ratio and thus the auditory distance. This study proposes various third-order beampattern pattern designs for a precise control of the D/R ratio. A comprehensive experimental study is conducted to investigate the hereby achieved effect on the auditory distance. Our first experiment auralizes the directivity variations using a virtual directional sound source in a virtual room using playback by a 24-channel loudspeaker ring. The experiment moreover shows the influence of room, source-listener distance, signal, and additional single-channel reverberation on the auditory distance. We verify the practical applicability of all the proposed beampattern pattern designs in a second experiment using a variable-directivity sound source in a real room. Predictions of experimental results are made with high accuracy, using room acoustical measures that typically predict the apparent source width.