Ambisonic tools and utilities

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Most current software packages do not properly deal with and/or fully support ambisonic files. This is likely (I hope) to be a shortlived situation. So, some of the following utilities will hopefully soon be history …

For more general information, try this site's main page, or Ambisonia (link-logo on the right).

   Ambisonia. ambisonics surround sound
R
  1. 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.
  2. AMBINFO a Perl script that reads WAVEX header (same comment regarding platforms as ambcalc ).
  3. AMBMAN a Perl collection of utilities for manipulating, converting etc. ambisonic files.
  4. WAV2AMB a Perl script that 'corrects' the headers on Wave Format Extensible files (same comment regarding platforms as ambcalc ).

For system/software requirements and also some estimates of what order of ambisonics each of these will work with see the separate page.


Download AMBISUITE

The above programs use common subroutines and therefore come as a package, a 'suite' of programs (called AMBISUITE).

The latest version is 0.5.2 (20071102) and has important changes/fixes. You should upgrade.

The next release is coming …. The delay is in part to take advantages of developments in Sox and in part as the code is generalised for ambisonic files in general. SoX 14.0.1 now fully supports editing four channel files (making the first order manipulations much easier), 14.1.0 (when released) will write *.amb files allowing a smooth path for chained operations (at the moment the code keeps asking if this is the last operation and if so, should it convert to 'out.amb'). In the new code all intermediate ambisonic files will be in *.amb format. (20080308).
The next release is still being held to tie in with SoX's next release. It will also incorporate the stndardised channel ordering that is being finalised by
The Ambisonics Association. All in all, a major release! (20080511)

You have a choice between normal zip that you should be able to unpack on any platform (unzip ambisuite.zip) or the better compression of bzip2, which you may or may not have the software to unpack. The difference in file size is actually minimal. (Both files are under 50 KB for 0.5.1.)

This is still fast-developing software. New features added are there for testing and bug-reporting as much as for usage. You are advised to upgrade frequently. Please check output and report any unexpected results. Thank you.


October 2007, updated May 2008.

Copyright © 2007 Michael Chapman.