2005/11/12, 01:52:56, UTC

 Ambisonic Player Specification (V1)


Implementation

The Ambisonic player will be:

  1. Open Source
  2. Cross platform (Windows, OSX,

File association

The Ambisonic player will be associated with files ending in *.amb

Useability

Once configuration (for the user's array) is complete, Ambisonic files can be played with a simple double click.

Compatible files

The Ambisonic player will play files that fit the B-format specified on this page (that's basically multi-channel WAVE-EX files).
The Ambisonic player will not play a collection of separated mono files. This is suggested so that B-format content developers are forced to adhere to a single format (consistency should fascilitate the consumer's uptake of the format).

In its first implementation, the player will not be able to play G-format files (as in... re-encode back to B-format)

Support for compatible files

Audio applications that can write the defined WAVE-EX format will be listed (somewhere) to fascilitate content developers developing the right format.


Configuration

The Ambisonic player will save configuration to disk... hence requiring only a once off configuration
Configuration will involve choosing the speaker array to decode to. There will be a set of default configurations, as well as arbitrary per-speaker configurations.

Predefined configurations

Decode to:

  1. 4 speakers horizontal
  2. 6 speakers horizontal
  3. 8 speakers horizontal
  4. cube (8 speakers)
  5. ?
  6. consumer 5.1 layout

Drag and Drop configuration

Configuration for arbitrary speaker arrays is possible via a drag and drop GUI, where the user can drop speaker icons on a stage. This GUI should be able to handle 3D layouts as well (that'll be challenging!)

Independent Speaker levels

The user will be able to modify the levels on a per speaker basis for 'slightly irregular speaker layouts'. (Is this a bad idea?)

+-6db for W channel

By default, the player will assume a 3db attenuation on W. But it will also offer the posibility to tweak that.