TECHNOLOGY WHITE PAPER

​Production of six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) navigable audio using ​30 Ambisonic microphones

Abstract — This paper describes a method for planning, recording, and post-production of six-degrees-of-freedom audio recorded with multiple 3rd order Ambisonic microphone arrays. The description is based on the example of recordings conducted in August 2020 with the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra using 30 units of Zylia ZM-1S. A convenient way to prepare and organize such a big project is proposed – this involves details of stage planning, collecting needed equipment, management, and running the recording. Additionally, the placement of 2D and 360 cameras as well as the design of moving camera paths are described. Two use cases of the collected Ambisonic audio are proposed. The first one is a production of a virtual reality application using Unreal Engine 4 and Wwise. The second one uses a combination of the virtual scene from the previously mentioned application and a footage from a mobile, moving camera to create a so-called “walkthrough movie”. The proposed approach for six-degrees- of-freedom Ambisonic interpolation was evaluated on listening tests. Those tests demonstrate that it is possible to recreate a navigable 3D audio taking into account Ambisonic only input and given assumptions for microphone placement.
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Keywords — virtual reality, spatial audio, Ambisonics, sound source localization, six-degrees-of-freedom

September 8th, 2021
Bartłomiej Mróz1, Marek Kabaciński2, Tomasz Ciotucha2, Andrzej Rumiński2, Tomasz Żernicki2 
1. Multimedia Systems Department Gdańsk University of Technology, Gdańsk, Poland
2. Zylia Sp. z o. o. Poznań, Poland

​Toward Six Degrees of Freedom Audio Recording and Playback Using Multiple Ambisonics Sound Fields

Abstract — This paper describes a strategy for recording sound and enabling six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) playback making use of multiple simultaneous and synchronized higher-order ambisonics (HOA) recordings. For the evaluation of the proposed approach a 3D audio-visual navigable playback system was implemented. Subjective listening tests were conducted presenting three distinct scenarios, one using spatialized mono sources and the other two interpolated listening points from 1st and 3rd order multiple ambisonics sound fields. The obtained results demonstrate that HOA recordings are suitable for the reproduction of 6DoF immersive audio scenes.

March 10, 2019

Patricio, Eduardo; Ruminski, Andrzej; Kuklasinski, Adam; Januszkiewicz, Lukasz; Zernicki, Tomasz
Affiliation: Zylia sp. z o.o., Poznan, Poland 

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