Distributed low-cost system enables immersive surround sound setups
Ambisonics: Introducing an Accessible, Distributed Approach
Sound
Summary
Creating immersive 3D audio experiences usually needs expensive and powerful equipment. The authors designed a system that uses many small, cheap devices working together over a network to produce high-quality surround sound. They made sure these devices keep perfectly synced up so the sound stays smooth and accurate. Their system shows it’s possible to build large, complex audio setups without costly hardware.
What this means in practice
- •For audio system integrators: Build flexible, scalable surround sound installations using networks of low-cost devices instead of expensive centralized hardware.
- •For live event producers: Create immersive sound environments with easily deployable, synchronized audio units suitable for large venues using distributed ambisonics processing.
Authors
Thomas A Rushton, Romain Michon, Tanguy Risset, Clemens Wegener, Pierre Lecomte
Abstract
This paper presents an accessible, distributed approach to higher order ambisonics using a network of low-cost microcontroller-based devices. Leveraging recent advances in embedded computing, networked audio, and precise time synchronization, the system offers an alternative to conventional centralized architectures that typically require expensive multichannel interfaces and high-performance digital signal processing hardware. The proposed architecture combines an audio plugin for soundfield design with a modular network of ambisonics processing units, which, exploiting the parallelisable nature of ambisonics decoding, are each responsible for a subset of loudspeaker outputs. Synchronization is achieved through the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol, complemented by adaptive clock correction to maintain sub-microsecond alignment between devices. A third-order ambisonics implementation demonstrates the viability of the approach, with potential scalability to higher orders and larger arrays. Overall, this work contributes to the development of frugal, distributed solutions for immersive audio, expanding access to ambisonics-based systems for a wide range of applications.