Ambisonics are a type of audio that provide a representation of sound that can completely surround a listener. They can provide an audio skyboxA special type of Material used to represent skies. Usually six-sided. More info
See in Glossary for distant ambient sounds, and are particularly useful for 360-degree videos and applications.
Ambisonics are stored in a multi-channel format. Instead of mapping each channel to a specific speaker, ambisonics represent the soundfield in a more general way. You can rotate the soundfield based on the listener’s orientation (such as the user’s head rotation in VR). You can also decode the soundfield into a format that matches the speaker setup.
For instructions on how to enable, import, load, and play ambisonic audio, refer to Use ambisonic audio in your project.
An ambisonic decoder is an audio component that translates the multi-channel ambisonic format into a specific output format, such as stereo or surround sound. The resulting format depends on the Default Speaker Mode set in your project’s Audio settings.
Unity doesn’t include built-in ambisonic decoders. To use ambisonic audio, you must either:
Refer to Introduction to ambisonic audio decoders for more information.
Unity supports up to third order ambisonic audio. The preferred format is a B-format WAV file with ACN component ordering and SN3D normalization.
Channel counts for supported orders:
First order: 4 channels Second order: 9 channels Third order: 16 channels
When you assign an ambisonic decoder plug-in, Unity allocates enough runtime memory in the audio layer to support up to 16 channels. Unity reserves this memory regardless of whether your project actually uses first, second, or third-order clips.
When you play an ambisonic audio clipA container for audio data in Unity. Unity supports mono, stereo and multichannel audio assets (up to eight channels). Unity can import .aif, .wav, .mp3, and .ogg audio file format, and .xm, .mod, .it, and .s3m tracker module formats. More info
See in Glossary, it’s automatically decoded through the project’s selected ambisonic audio decoder. The decoder converts the clip from ambisonic format to the project’s selected speaker format. It also already handles spatialization as a part of this decoding operation, based on the orientation of the audio sourceA component which plays back an Audio Clip in the scene to an audio listener or through an audio mixer. More info
See in Glossary and audio listenerA component that acts like a microphone, receiving sound from Audio Sources in the scene and outputting to the computer speakers. More info
See in Glossary.
When Unity plays an ambisonic audio clip, it decompresses the file, if necessary, then decodes it to convert it to the project’s selected speaker mode. It then applies the Audio Source’s effects.
Note: Reverb zones are disabled for ambisonic audio clips.