CHAPTER SEVEN - LOUDSPEAKER SPATIALISATION

This page contains examples for the book Immersive Spatial Sound.

Chapter 1 - How We Create A 3D Soundscape Of The World | Chapter 2 - Binaural Sound | Chapter 3 - Using Binaural Sound In Audio Drama | Chapter 4 - Using Binaural Sound In Theatre | Chapter 5 - Ambisonics, Dynamic Binaural Sound & 360° Films | Chapter 6 - VR, AR, MR & Game Audio Technology | Chapter 7 - Loudspeaker Spatialisation | Chapter 8 - Cinema, Home Cinema & The Rise Of Dolby Atmos | Chapter 9 - Spatial Audio For Music Production | Chapter 10 - Theatre & Concerts

Please wear headphones when listening to these examples.

Before you start listening to examples, check your headphones are working properly by playing this audio clip.

Sound Check
Gareth Fry

  • There is a little known issue with Bluetooth headphones/headsets. If you are using a set of wireless/Bluetooth headphones, and you select to also use that as the microphone in your teleconferencing software (Zoom, Meet, Teams, Skype, etc) then all audio in your headphones will change from stereo to mono, and is reduced to a really low quality 8kHz sample rate. This is because the Bluetooth data bandwidth is quite low, so if you’re not using the mic built in to your headphones, all that data can be used to provide high quality stereo audio; but if you use the mic, half that data is used for the microphone, and only half the data is then available for the headphone audio. This is a feature of Bluetooth itself, so this applies to Mac’s and PC;s, desktops and tablets, cheap Bluetooth headphones and the most expensive Apple headsets.

    You can test this:

    • connect some bluetooth headphones to your computer.

    • close all applications.

    • listen to this track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnzIIhLNHqg

    • it should sound super high quality, very stereo and lovely.

    • Now, open up Zoom or Meet or Teams, and start a new meeting, with the Mic input set to your bluetooth headphones

    • You should instantly hear the audio in your headphones flatten into mono, and reduce in audio quality to about 10% of what it was.

    You can get round this by using wired headphones, Bluetooth headphones that don’t have a built-in mic (quite rare these days) or by using your Bluetooth headphones and selecting to use the build-in computer microphone rather than the headphones’s microphone.

    And yes, it does apply to AirPods too.

A point source sound panned using a FOA panner (above) and a 3rd order panner (below). The FOA point source is rendered less as a point source and more as a blob in space due to the limited resolution of FOA. Image generated using Sparta’s PowerMap plugin.

A non-point source sound panned using a 1st order panner (above) and with a 3rd order panner (below). Whilst an 1st order system has reduced resolution, this may not be relevant if the sounds you are spatialising aren’t point sources. Image generated using Sparta’s PowerMap plugin.