Ambisonic Decoder


Several software Ambisonic decoders are avaliable for free. One is   Richard Furse's Ambisonics Player, which is a stand-alone application, but it cannot save directly a wav file (although, if you have a serious multichannel card, you can probably re-record while the player is running without need of re-digitizing the signals).
The other one is the new, VST plugin developed by Dave Malham and colleagues. You can download it here If used inside a VST-enabled program such as Nuendo, You can easily save the decoded streams.

Available from www.gerzonic.net for OSX and win32 are: bPlayer and bRec, ambisonic file player and recorder, Emigrator: a first and second order ambisonic decoder. Implemented rigs: Horizontal: Stereo, Square, Pentagon, Hexagon, Octagon 1, Octagon 2, Surround, Cube, Dodecahedron 1, Dodecahedron 2. If this list looks somewhat familiar to you, yes, it's an implementation of the equations that can be found on Richard Furses website. Consequently you can blend from strict soundfield to controlled opposites decoding. So the set of OSX plugins is more or less complete there, an encoder, a decoder, a file recorder and a file player are available. All this stuff was done by Christian Schneider.

Bruce Wiggins released an Ambisonic Plugin for Windows: Wigware Ambisonic Decoder (WAD). This program is a Direct Show filter that allows any Direct Show capable audio player software (such as Windows Media Player) the ability to read and decode B-format wave files. In WADs current (alpha) state, it will process 16-bit or 24-bit files and decode them to a four speaker, square arrangement of speakers using a max rErV decode (i.e. using shelf filters) or an ITU arrangement using a max rE decode (no shelf filters).

Fons Adriaensen released an Ambisonic decoder "Ambdec" for first and second order. Main features: 1st or 2nd order, 2-D or 3-D decoding, up to 24 speakers (could be extended), optional dual frequency band decoding, optional speaker delay and gain compensation, optional Near-Field effect compensation, built-in test and Mute/Solo for each speaker, graphical display of polar patterns, rV, rE (not yet in this release), unlimited number of presets, Jack client with graphical user interface. Btw.: On that page are several more Ambisonic-, analysis- and recording related tools... and LADSPA- plugins... and more...

For decoding with Csound there is a decoding- orcestra "Ambidec.orc" (2nd Order Decoder) or the "Bformatdec.orc" (First Order Decoder) at the download-section of this site. Also these codes are based on the equations, which are found at Richard Furses website.

The Institute for Computermusic and Sound Technology ICST (Zürich) releases Ambisonics Externals for Max/MSP. "ambidecode~" decodes up to 3rd order ambisonic b-format to n audio-channels. Further Max/MSP externals for Ambisonic decoding are also released by Graham Wakefield.


Hardware decoders

If you instead are interested in an hardware Ambisonics decoder, then there is an analog one which is being produced by Cantares . If instead You do prefer a digital DSP based decoder, then there is the BSS Soundweb . The settings for using it as a periphonic (with height), 8 channels decoder, with shelf filters and individualized loudspeaker FIR compensation can be downloaded from Angelo Farinas web site. You can easily start from there and set up a different decoder (for 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 or whatever You like).