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Symposium on Soundscapes and Immersive Sound

September 5, 2019

Konferencija2019_logo

Next week I am looking forward to participate in the 3rd International Conference on Music and Sound Design in Film & New Media.

The symposium will focus on Soundscapes and Immersive Sound, and takes place at Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

Here is the abstract for my presentation:

 

Clouds, Fog, Shimmer – Creative Shaping Of Sound Fields In Ambisonics

Authoring of ambisonics sound fields often seem to be based on a conceptual approach that resembles object-based spatialisation. Object-based spatial scenes in, for instance, Dolby Atmos combine sound sources with meta-information that describe spatial positioning. In the ambisonics authoring workflow, it is common to encode sources (often mono- or stereo-) in a straightforward way that ensures that they arrive from the desired direction. Prime examples of this approach are encoding plugins with graphical user interfaces that display the accompanying 360° video so that the sound designer can glue sound objects onto their visual counterparts.

The Ambisonic Toolkit (ATK) offers a set of tools for working with ambisonics. In addition to a number of encoders and decoders, the ATK offers possibilities for transforming sound fields. The model of the ATK is a sound-field sound-image model rather than a sound-object sound-scene model. In addressing the holistic problem of creatively controlling a complete sound field, ATK allows and encourages the composer to think beyond the placement of sounds in a sound-space and instead attend to the impression and image of a sound field. This is viewed to be the idiomatic approach for working with Ambisonic technique, leveraging the model the technology presents. This presentation moves beyond planewave encoders to illustrate how more complex sound fields and textures can be synthesised, encoded and processed.

Ambisonic encoders and transforms are combined with other common processing techniques such as delay, reverb, distortion, granulation, compression and feedback to create spatial sonic objects that can be described as fields, textures, clouds, dust, fog or shimmer. Most examples are processed in first order using Reaper and ATK, but additional examples illustrate how this can be combined with processing in parallel environments such as Cycling’74 Max and how these techniques can be extended to third order ambisonics.