Waves B360 Ambisonics Encoder Plug-In (Download) User Manual
Page 9
B360 Ambisonics Processor / User Guide
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Why two B-format standards?
Ambisonics was developed in the 1960s by mathematicians and physicists. It was not created by industry or
standardized by committees. It was born of devotees of math and music who set out to make a better way to reproduce
multi-dimensional surround sound. They succeeded, but as is often the case, great solutions are not guaranteed
commercial success. For many years, Ambisonics remained a favorite of a niche market, but was largely unnoticed by
the larger market. Now, it’s gaining traction as a viable format for fully immersive surround sound.
Since Ambisonics has never been a standard per se, the rules of how to use it were never completely established. The
math is the math, but the definition of the B-format stream was not formalized. There are now two commercially used
Ambisonics definitions: FuMa and AmbiX. The two are essentially the same—only track sequence and levels differ. B360
uses the AmbiX. So if you begin with an AmbiX format and you will distribute in AmbiX, then you don’t need to make any
conversions on either end of the process. But if you need to convert between FuMa and AmbiX, you must use the
appropriate conversion tool (as shown above).