How to create and work with *.amb files

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[edit] mctools

The easiest way to create this format is to use Richard Dobson's mctools.... a set of command line utilities which can interleave 4 mono files into a 4 channel WAVE-EX file with the correct header. Download Richard Dobson's mctools here. Follow Richard's instructions for installation.

To cut a long story short (see below for the long version), creating a *.amb can be done by executing this command: 

interlx -x outputfile.amb input_w.wav input_x.wav input_y.wav input_z.wav

To create a *.amb directly from a multi-channel wav, do something like this: 

copysfx.exe -s4 -p -t5 song.wav BH_song.amb

where -s4 defines the bit depth. Eg, the above is used for a 24-bit interleaved file.

[edit] ambisuite

Michael Chapman is starting to release a collection (suite) of programs called AMBISUITE. The early ones do very trivial things (give information on headers in WAVEX/*.amb files; do basic ambisonic calculations). The aim is to use the same building blocks to then do more complex things (convert Wavex to *.amb [done]; place a mono sound in an ambisonic space; yaw, pitch and roll files; mix files; pan files; ...).

He trying to keep it simple and user-editable (which creates problems of non-simplicity).

The core is in Perl which works on about every system there is (including some electric toasters). The sound manipulation uses SoX (which should work on Linux/MS/Mac, except that SoX does not like 3-channel files, so the WXY to WXYZ converter has gone in the bin).

These are early releases, in the hope that bugs can be caught and squashed. So don't expected polished products.

  • AMBCALC a Perl script that prints out channel values for a given azimuth and elevation. Should work on any platform with Perl installed, thusfar tested on Linux.
  • AMBINFO a Perl script that reads WAVEX header (same comment regarding platforms as ambcalc )
  • WAV2AMB a Perl script that 'corrects' the headers on Wave Format Extensible files (same comment regarding platforms as ambcalc ).

They are released under the GNU General Public License

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