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Why Ambisonics Does Work

Several techniques exist for surround sound, including Ambisonics, VBAP, WFS, and pair-wise panning. Each of the systems have strengths and weaknesses but Ambisonics has long been favored for its extensibility and for being a complete solution, including both recording and playback. But Ambisonics has not met with great critical or commercial success despite having been available in one form or another for many years. Some observers have gone so far as to suggest that Ambisonics can’t work. The present work is intended to provide an analysis of the performance of Ambisonics according to various psychoacoustic mechanisms in spatial hearing such as localization.

Authors: Benjamin, Eric; Heller, Aaron; Lee, Richard
Affiliations: Surround Research, Pacifica, CA, USA; Pandit Littoral, Cooktown, QLD, Australia; SRI International, Menlo Park, CA, USA(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention:129 (November 2010) Paper Number:8242 Import into BibTeX
Subject:Multichannel Audio Playback

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