Ambisonic Toolkit for Reaper is now available
as a public beta (version 1.0 beta 3).
While there is a well-established workflow for stereo production in DAWs, options have been more limited when working with Ambisonics. The Ambisonic Toolkit (ATK) brings together a number of tools and transforms for working with first order Ambisonic surround sound, and includes intriguing possibilities for spatial soundfield imaging.
The ATK toolset in intended to be both ergonomic and comprehensive, framed so that the user is enabled to ‘think Ambisonic’. By this, the ATK addresses the holistic problem of creatively controlling a complete soundfield, facilitating spatial composition beyond simple placement of sounds in a sound-scene. The artist is empowered to address the impression and imaging of a soundfield — taking advantage of the native soundfield-kernel paradigm the Ambisonic technique presents.
ATK has previously only been available for public release via the SuperCollider real-time processing environment. Cockos Reaper is a reasonably priced and flexible DAW, popular among many composers and sonic artists working with spatial sound. Reaper’s versatile design conveniently supports the ATK’s Ambisonic workflow model.
Using the JSFX text-based scripting language, the ATK has now been ported to plugins for Reaper. Several of the plugins, in particular the transforms, offers intuitive graphical user interfaces that helps visualise the effect of the various transforms. The plugins work with all operation system and processor versions that Reaper supports. On the Windows platform the plugins can also be used with other VST-hosts by means of the ReaJS ReaPlug plugin.
The ATK toolset has been been gathered, authored and developed by Joseph Anderson over a number of years, and is now a collaborative open source project. The port of ATK to Reaper has been done by Trond Lossius of BEK, Bergen Center for Electronic Arts.
A paper on ATK for Reaper by Trond Lossius and Joseph Anderson will be presented at the upcoming joint ICMC | SMC conference in Athens. If you are attending the conference, please drop by during the poster session next Thursday!
