I am trying to do an Ambisonic mix in Cubase Pro 9 with the waves Ambisonic toolbox, with encoder and head tracker, works like a charm using qudro channels. But how do I export this in a B format file that I can sent to a video editor?
Help much appreciated, thanks!
An interesting subject. Wish I had something useful to add. The bus width limitations in Cubase keep it from exceeding 4-channel FOA. I suppose you could try exporting it as quadro, which would likely come out as some sort of wav file. The B-format is related to the wav format. Adding a quadro output bus would be part of that approach. I suppose you could try exporting 4 mono wav files (1 per channel) and hope the video editing software can sort it out. It looks like Premier Pro can deal with 4 channel wav files. (Premier Pro and youtube) You’d need to get the channels in the correct order.
Another possible tactic would be to export a 4 channel wav and convert it to B-format using ffmpeg. like this? While youtube isn’t likely what you’re aiming at, b-format is.
I’m a bit surprised that the waves plugin doesn’t somehow offer an export option itself. I have yet to select ambisonics plugins. The waves ambisonic plugins look good (and I’m considering them). For now, I’m leaning towards dearVR (plugin alliance). I’m not sure they have B-format export either! Luckily, I’d most likely export as binaural anyway. There are other options, or course, but one likes to keep it cheap. It may be possible to do something with FB360 (free) or Reaper (cheap). I’m glad to have other things to do while this technology has a chance to mature.
Best of luck with this. Please post if you find an answer.
How to get a true Ambisonics-B file?
The short answer is that you can use Cubase or any DAW that supports four-channel audio files and hosts VST plugins.
The process is to use an ambisonics panner, then put the encoder VST at the end of the Cubase chain and set Cubase output to “ambisonics”. Then you also need a decoder on your PC (or Mac) to be able to hear it properly. NOTE: when the Ambisonics-B file is used, it will be used in a game, app, or YouTube video that has a decoder built into it. So even though you have created a 4-channel file now, when it is heard by the listener it will be true 360 audio both vertically and horizontally, which can be heard through normal headphones.
NOTE: Waves Nx is not a true ambisonics VST. Although Waves Nx panner is useful, and the Nx listening plugin can decode ambisonics, but don’t put it in your actual listening chain because Nx is a virtual approach and not true Nx, it’s just good for panning and listening.
There are actually a lot of rendering VST plugins that will encode Ambisonics-B format for you, and they work fine in Cubase.
To encode in 4-channel ambisonics, get a real ambisonics encoder.
The end result will be a 4-channel .wav file in Ambisonics-B format.
At this time, this ambisonics encoder is free:
You can also do a search like this:
I can tell you that YouTube already supports true Ambisonics-B mixes and has a decoder built in. So you upload your Ambisonics-B file to YouTube and select the appropriate settings to tell YouTube it’s Ambisonics-B. I would not advise uploading 360 videos though, because at this time, the YouTube player chokes on the actual video part.
“Headlocked” ambisonics means that it is not tracking your head movements to change location. For most music purposes, ambisonics will be headlocked, unless you are creating a non-musical experience (or live stage) where the person can move around, such as in a game where there are audio elements all around the player controller and these change audio position as the player moves around in the game scene.
There are more refined ambisonics format, including 7 channel, 9 channel, and these all produce more refined audio localization in a complete 360 degree space vertically and horizontally. But 4-channel is fine for most purposes, and is better for most CPUs.
Good luck!
–David Lieder
Game Design WTF
www.gamedesign.wtf
Thanks for the information, especially re:Waves Nx not being for real. The Rode plugin looks very nice. At this point, C10 has ambisonic support, so matters are presumably simpler.
I like the idea of music not being headlocked, unless there’s a more important audio environment going on at the same time, such as a gaming situation. It would be more interesting to hear the music slightly differently each time, or to subtly alter the mix by moving your head.
I don’t know how the head tracking would work without video. The playback software would presumably ignore head tracking data in the absence of a virtual (video) environment. I wonder if anybody is thinking about this. You could be browsing the web, say, and listening to head-tracked ambisonic music. The visual information would have nothing to do with the head tracking in a case like that.
Reading over the C10 manual, I realize that a 3D mouse is a possibility. 3Dconnexion?
Gearslutz has no entries after August 2018, where they say it doesn’t work on Windows.
Still, I think there may be hope.