Posted on by Bruce Wiggins

New AmbiX WigWare Plugins Available

After some time, I decided to both update my Ambisonic tools to support the AmbiX standard (now widely used for immersive audio, 360 videos and VR) and rework my speaker array decoders using JSFX to make them a little more powerful and with a better workflow for me to quickly create new ones! My plug-ins implement near-field compensation, distance filtering and a few other things that other Ambisonic tools don’t, hence why I decided to bite the bullet and update them all. My 3D Ambisonic Reverb (AmbiXFreeverb) is also available in the bundle.

An example of one of the decoders is shown below. Dual-band decoding is available, and you’re able to tweak the overall gain of the low frequency vs high frequency decodes too (as energy optimised ones tend to be a little quieter). They’ll default to all sensible options, so if you don’t know what some of the controls do, just don’t change them 😉

Screenshot of a 3rd order Octagon Ambisonic Decoder

Both the platform-dependent VSTs (for Mac and PC) and the platform-independent decoders are available for download on the WigWare page, or below:

The VST plugins can be placed in the usual folders for Mac and PC, and a guide to installing JSFX plugins can be found at: https://reaperblog.net/2015/06/quick-tip-how-to-install-js-plugins/

The folder JSFX plugins go in is (Mac)
~/Library/Application Support/REAPER/Effects/WigWare/Amb Dec AmbiX/
or (PC)
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\REAPER\Effects\WigWare\Amb Dec AmbiX\

You’ll need to create the WigWare folders. You can get to this quickly from Reaper by selecting Options->Show Resource Path in Explorer/Finder…

9 Replies to “New AmbiX WigWare Plugins Available”

  2. HI Angelo. The decoders are cross-platform JS effects, so not in that zip file. There’s in a link just below on the page 🙂

    As for the NFC and distance sliders. I’ll write a little explanation of how these work (I use them with students, but haven’t really documented for more public use yet) as I think you’re misunderstanding them, possibly. I’ve tried to explain a bit, on the Facebook discussion. NFC is designed to pre-calibrate the encoders as if we know what distance the speakers are going to be at (to be flat at that distance). So, NFC set to 2m means…..distance set to <2m will give you bass boost.....distance >2m will give you bass cut….distance == 2m will be flat. If NFC is set to ‘off’ then distance does a more music production-friendly ‘source spread’ type control getting wider as you move in and omni at distance = 0 (and is frequency independent). I’ll try and document this at some point.

  5. Thanks for the update plugin. well done. we still have to help our biggest reaper users. certainly in .. USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\REAPER\Effects\WigWare\Amb Dec AmbiX\ we must you put the whole .zip file?? no. I don’t think.. only part of the .js??

  6. Intel-only VSTs can be used through Rosetta if the host program is also Intel-only.
    But serious software, such as Plogue Bidule, is already available in ARM format, and this requires ARM plugins.

  7. Thanks. This is why I tend to use Reaper’s JSFX format, these days ;-). My code base for the encoders is quite old, so I’ll have to see if it’ll port to a newer SDK. I do have the code mostly working in VST3 format (although that format is basically broken for order higher than 3, so I’ve avoided for now), but it’ll take a while to do the port fully…..

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