Tag Archive for: 360 Audio

Open Spaces – The Wandering Mind EP

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One of my ambient music aliases, Open Spaces, has released a new EP of works titled The Wandering Mind. The EP is released by the Australian imprint, lo fi spiritual, and can be found on all digital platforms.

This alias focuses on creating ambient spaces and moods that engage the listener in a two way relationship rather than the usual one way consumption of pop music. This ambient release aims to have an ambiguous edge to the music, in other words to create a sonic environment where the listener is unsure of what is part of the music and what is sounds from the outside environment. A metaphor if you will, for the wandering mind, that is shaped and influenced by both the internal and external environment.

The moods of this record therefore rely on a combination of field recordings, synthesis and 360 mixing to create immersive sonic environments.

For those interested in such concepts of ambient music, here’s a great introductory video of one of the ambient music forefathers, Brian Eno, talking about such concepts.

 

Sound West – Immersive Sound conference presentation

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In August I was invited to speak on Immersive Sound at the Sound West conference at the CommBank Stadium at Parramatta.

Chaired by Radovan Klusacek (SAE Sydney Campus Manager) and joined by Stewart Gedes (301 Studios), we covered many aspects of the emerging field of 360 audio.

The session gave a history of immersive 360 audio, from university based researched through to the easily available plugins and DAW enabled 360 tools available to the modern producer.

The Q&A at the end of the panel was interesting in that it definitely appear that we had engaged some of the young producers in the room to experiment with some of these new production tools and capabilities.

If you are a producer and are interested in the creating 360 music and audio, here are a few links to get you started.

Ableton Live user try the open source freeware – Envelop For Live

All DAW users try the free dearVR micro plugin

ProTools users try the FB360 suite

Logic Users – enjoy the fact that as of Logic Pro 10.7 (2021) dolby atmos spatial mixing is now native to Logic. Here’s a quick youtube tutorial to get you started.

 

Solfeggio Sculpture in 360 audio

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During 2021 I wound back most of my freelance work in order to finish my masters. For my final masters project I focused on creative research into the emerging technology of 360 audio spatialisation. In particular 360 spatialisation that can be encoded to binaural format for headphone listening.

I reviewed the literature on human spatial perception and looked at what is and isn’t possible within the 360 compositional space.  

This creative experimentation within the 360 space explored concepts brought forward from the literature review, and resulted in 4 EPs of spatialise compositions for headphone listening. Some of the compositions have become quite minimal in order to leave space for perception of the 360 space, in particular 360 parameters such as azimuth, elevation and radius. Further, the academic atmosphere of the research has put me in the mood to return to my on going interest in the esoteric side of audio, ie binaural beats, solfeggio frequencies and the like.

The first of these works has recently been released through lo fi spiritual and can be heard below. The title of this first release is Solfeggio Sculptures and is released under my own name rather than any of my previous aliases.

Cassette & digital release Opening Spaces on Constellation Tatsu

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Hooray! I have a new ambient release, this time on the Californian label Constellation Tatsu.

The lovely folks at the label have just released my EP as part of their Winter Batch of cassette releases. It can also be found at all the usual stream sites, such as Spotify below.

I have put this new EP out under a new alias, Open Spaces. Both this work and future works under this alias will be used to explore the realms of 360 audio. This EP was largely written as part of my Masters research into 360 audio techniques such as binaural recording and ambisonic spatialisation software, such as the open source freeware from Envelop.

A big thanks to Steven Ramsey and the rest of the Constellation Tatsu folks for believing in this record.

360 Project for Masters

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As part of my masters, in particular a module entitled, AUD456 – Immersive Audio, I have been studying the world of 360 content, with a focus on spatialising audio within a 360 field. Please wear headphones when viewing the above to experience the 360 Audio.

For the major work, a group of musicians and non-musicians alike were invited into SAE Studios for an Sunday afternoon improvisation. The work is titled, Men’s Circle, and features a group of men in a circular format, playing a range of provided instruments.

The instruments included; an acoustic guitar, various bells, a singing bowl, a bamboo flute, a melodic wood box, a pre-prepared Push control surface populated with field recordings, vinyl crackle and percussive one-shots, amplified via a small guitar amp, a contact microphone connected to a mini Orange amp, den-den daiko drums, and a rain stick. The participants were encouraged to choose an instrument that they felt comfortable with and change after each improvisation to another instrument.

The improvisation was captured via an InstaPro 360 Camera. Both visuals and audio were captured on the device, however, the Ambisonics microphone had some issues and glitches were present in the file. Fortunately, coupled with the in-camera Ambisonics microphone, was 4 small diaphragm condensers, Sennheiser 8040 x 2, Rodes NT55 x 2, plus 3 dynamic microphones that were used to capture a vocal performance (Shure SM58) and close mic the two amplifiers (SM57).

These microphone inputs were phase balanced and recorded to Pro Tools. The mono signals from the close micing were then spatialised using the free FB360 Workstation plugins with the DAW Reaper.

As the sounds were close mic’d, Ambi Verb HD from Noise Makers was also used to emulate a sense of the space and at points to embellish instruments such as the flute and voice with a large reverb.

To embellish the work and in order to see how Reaper and the FB 360 workstation handled Ambisonic files, some 2nd Order Ambisonic files were created using Sound Particles. The files are of an ambient nature and are only very subtly mixed in toward the end of the improvisation. The agenda was to not detract from the improvisation.

Hoped that you enjoy the improvisation and it’s presentation in both 360 Audio and Vision.