VAmbiR

VAmbiR

Demo Video: https://youtu.be/jlsXcpkbFxw

VAmbiR (Ambisonics in VR) provides a Virtual Reality-based mixing and spatialization control environment.

Current tools for controlling the position and motion of sound sources in three-dimensional space are limited by the constraints of working on a two-dimensional screen, either restricting realtime control to two dimensions or employing awkward and unintuitive interfaces to allow additional degrees of control in realtime. Virtual Reality provides an ideal environment for manipulating sounds in three dimensions, free of the limitations of a 2-D workspace.

VAmbiR is a Unity-based VR application design to communicate and work with the SPAT package in Max/MSP. It allows one to control multiple sound sources within a virtual space, including real-time position, trajectory and path creation and manipulation, source grouping / parenting, level control, and simple reverb control.

Sounds can be assigned one of several different movement control modes:

     1:  Free motion - unconstrained motion within a settable volume, grab and release sources to manipulate, variable source drag.
     2:  Orbit - sources revolve around a movable center position, with a settable level of 'gravity'/attraction to the center.  
                     Orbit centers can be assigned their own movement mode or can be other sound sources.
     3:  Blink - sources move immediately from one position to another.  Time at each position is variable.  
                     Any number of positions can be assigned to a source; that source can cycle through positions randomly or sequentially, 
                     with options to loop back to the first or reverse direction through the list when the last position is reached.  Each position 
                     has a volume level, and sources have a fade time that controls how quickly the volume ramps between levels at each position.   
     4:  Set Path - similar to Blink but sources travel smoothly along paths between positions.  Time at each position instead corresponds 
                     to time taken to reach the next position (travel speed), or source velocity can be set to constant.  
     5:  Draw Path - source paths can be free-hand drawn in 3D space.  Sources follow paths at the same rate at which they are drawn.  
                     One-time, loop, or backtrack options are the same as Set Path and Blink modes.  

One can also control global ambisonic variables, including pitch, yaw, and roll of the entire ambisonic field, as well as translation of the center (listener) position and overall space scale/size.

VAmbiR additionally includes a rudimentary 3-D level meter that simultaneously visualizes different ambisonic channels in 3-D space.

More detailed documentation available at: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~hert/222/vambir-ambisonics-vr.pdf