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Testing Aalto COMPASS ambisonics decoder

February 9, 2019

There has been quite a bit of development of higher-order ambisonics plugins in recent years. Today I have been testing the latest version of the COMPASS recorder that comes as part of the SPARTA plugins fro Aalto University. SPARTA is short for Coding and Multidirectional Parameterisation of Ambisonic Sound Scenes, a somewhat similar approach to the Harpex plugin.

Below is a binaural rendition of some tests I have done today.

I have a mono source (Butterfly by Grieg) encoded using Blue Ripple the Shoebox. Thjis encodes with distance clues and early reflextions emulations within a shoebox space. In addition I am using the BlueRipple Reverb, but with early reflextions disabled (as they are already taken care opf by Shoebox).

Decoding is done using COMPASS. I have set it up to work with 16 speakers according to the setup at my studio, and here I’m doing a virtual binaural endition of what it sounds like over those 16 speakers.

Please listen using headphones. I am continuously moving the sourcve around within the shoebox space as can e seen in the purple plugin interface at bottom left.