Express Paper
Volumetric Amplitude Panning and Diffusion for Spatial Audio Production
AES Convention 153 · Paper 52 · October 2022
Abstract
Spatial audio production, especially multichannel, and dolby atmos formats are becoming increasingly common for both music, cinematic, and gaming applications. With several spatial audio formats on the rise, it is important to rethink the tools that are required to represent sound objects in 3D that are highly intuitive, accurate, and effectively translates ideas into perceptual reality. A 3D panner is one such tool that is fundamental to any spatial audio production workflow, which accurately places a sound source or an object to any point in the 3D space. Traditional techniques such as Vector Based Amplitude Panning (VBAP) require the listener to be positioned at a “sweet spot” surrounded by loudspeakers either on a 2D ring or a 3D sphere. In this paper, we describe a novel algorithm for volumetric amplitude panning that does not assume any sweet spot and works for any loudspeaker layout, both asymmetric and symmetric. We also present geometric and distance based diffusion techniques that ensure smooth spread across all directions, distances, and diffusion amounts.
