Ambisonics-carrying Formats
From Ambisonia
This page describes the various audio formats that can carry B-Format material suitable for playback.
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[edit] AMB (the studio format)
AMB files are the de facto standard for storing and playing back Ambisonics material. AMB is a standard which is similar to .WAV files, but which can be specially recognized as "not just a regular file".
The advantage of the AMB format is that since it is a WAVEX format, it can be read by most DAWs.
Currently, only a limited number of players support .AMB files, and .AMB recordings are usually extremely large (from 20 to 300MiBs).
(More info needed.)
[edit] Vorbis (the delivery format)
A patch has been proposed to the Ogg/Vorbis developers, offering support for up to 3rd order Ambisonics. The patch is awaiting approval.
Whilst there is no player that can currently play an ambisonic Vorbis file, there is work under way currently to include ambisonic playback in MPlayer (a popular cross-platform media player).
[edit] Other Multi-Channel formats
These multi-channel formats can carry multiple channels, but as of yet, there is no information contained within the file that explicitely says that the contents are ambisonic.
[edit] WAV
WAV files are bread-and-butter, "raw" PCM-encoded audio files.
While .WAV has its limitations and is not the best vehicle for Ambisonics playback, the format is ubiquitous. Hundreds of .WAV editors, players, and applications exist that import, export, use, and play .WAV files, and almost all material will end up as a .WAV file or processed with a .WAV-compatible editor at sometime during it's lifetime before reaching your ears.
In terms of Ambisonics, .WAV files are generally converted to .AMB files before playback.
[edit] WavPack/FLAC
WavPack and FLAC are "lossless" audio-file compressors. They reduce the file size of raw .WAV files, and decode to bit-for-bit identical replicas of the original files. Since compression is lossless, compression ratios tend to range from 30%-50% of the original source .WAV file on disk, instead of the 80%-95% file-size reduction seen with "lossy" formats such as Ogg/Vorbis.
