During my research, it soon became clear that although a number of people were carrying out research around the area of Ambisonic surround sound, few people were enabling others to actually use the technique!
To hopefully help remedy this situation, I’ve created a number of VST Plugins that can be used in many Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs). Screencast tutorials can be found on the on the Teaching page of this site which shows you ways of using these plug-ins in Reaper. I recommend setting up the project using hierarchical routing, as shown in one of the later videos, but manual routing works too (as shown in the earlier ones).
The plug-ins are available for Mac and PC, and can be downloaded below. The plugins are free to use for personal and educational use. If you’re using them for commercial work, please contact me, as it’s nice to know when and how my software is being used (a credit would also be nice, and donations are always welcome!)
64-bit Versions of these plugins can now be found directly below. Some changes had to be made to compile these, so I’ve left the older on the page too! Any issues, let me know. The Mac plug-ins are now universal binary so will be picked up as 32-bit for 32 hosts and 64-bit for 64-bit hosts. The PC ones are separate downloads. Just keep them in separate directories for each type of host.
Latest Mac and PC, 32 and 64-bit WigWare Plug-ins
- Mac 1st Order WigWare 32 and 64 Bit Plug-ins (4064 downloads)
- Mac Higher Order WigWare 32 and 64 Bit Plug-ins (3800 downloads)
- PC 1st and Higher Order WigWare 64 Bit Plug-ins (4804 downloads)
- PC 1st and Higher Order WigWare 32 Bit Plug-ins (2664 downloads)
- Mac 3rd Order 2D Octagon Decoder (897 downloads)
WigWare JS Effects (Reaper, or other VST hosts using ReaPlugs) and other stuff!
- WigWare Multi-Channel VU Meter (this now ships with Reaper!)
- WigWare AmbiX, FuMa and TBE Tools (convert between FuMa, AmbiX, TBE and N3D Ambisonics – UPDATED Sept. 2017 for Spatial Audio Workstation V2.2)
- Inverse Filter for YouTube 1st Order Spatial Audio
- Inverse Filter for YouTube Spatial Audio Created Directly from Google Thrive IRs
Below are the downloads for the 32-bit only versions. I’ve kept them on the site in case any changes I’ve made to the 64-bit versions above (and new compiles etc.) have broken anything!
1st Order WigWare Mac (These have now been updated to work on Mac OSX 10.4 and 10.5)
- WigWare Ambisonics Decoders (Mac) (4938 downloads)
- WigWare Ambisonic Panners (Mac) (4243 downloads)
- WigWare Ambisonic Reverb (Mac) (3886 downloads)
1st Order WigWare PC
- WigWare Ambisonic Decoders (PC) (5747 downloads)
- WigWare Ambisonic Panners (PC) (4250 downloads)
- WigWare Ambisonic Reverb (PC) (3896 downloads)
Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA)
- WigWare 2nd Order Ambisonic Panners (PC) (2476 downloads)
- WigWare 3rd Order Ambisonic Panners (PC) (2439 downloads)
- WigWare 2nd Order Ambisonic Panners (Mac) (2612 downloads)
- WigWare 3rd Order Ambisonic Panners (Mac) (2514 downloads)
- WigWare Higher Order 5.0 Ambisonic Decoder (Mac) (2350 downloads)
- WigWare Higher Order 5.0 Ambisonic Decoder (PC) (2657 downloads)
DirectX (Windows Media Player et al.) Plug-ins
These plug-ins, when installed (look at the readme file!), will automatically be used in directx aware media players when a .AMB file is played. Choose the plug-in that best matches your speaker layout! (For more details on the file format, and how to create files of this type have a look here, here, here and here). These were created quite a while ago now, so let me know if you have any problems with them!
-
Square Decoder (4 channels) (1889 downloads)
- ITU 5.0 Decoder (5 channels) (1739 downloads)
- Hexagon with a speaker directly in front (6 channels) (1498 downloads)
- Hexagon without a speaker directly in front (6 channels) (1580 downloads)
- Octagon with a speaker directly in front (8 channels) (1521 downloads)
- Octagon without a speaker directly in front (8 channels) (1596 downloads)
- 3D Cube (8 channels) (2251 downloads)
Encourage me to develop more Ambisonic plugins by clicking:
I cannot get the direct x plugins to work on Win7 64bit, I’m afraid
I can confirm the direct x plugins work on XP 32bit , thanks
Will WigWare (PC 1st order) work in Cubase 6.5? Would like to make a binaural mix from b-format.
I’m afraid I don’t have Cubase to test on. However, as far as I remember, Cubase has issues with multi-channel work (I think most use Nuendo for this, Steinberg-wise).
cheers
Bruce
Hi Bruce thanks for the awesome plugins! Regarding the Ambifreeverb, what format does it want to receive and what does it output? I see that it outputs 4ch so is it FuMa or Ambix? Do I input mono, stereo or Amibix/FuMa audio? Thankyou!
Hi. It takes in 1st order Furse-Malham B-Format and outputs the same. You can input mono or stereo and it will give you an output on all four channels, but it’s designed to take in the 4 channels of B-format.
Halo Bruce. Where can I get the 24 Channel decoder for PC ? Thanks
Hi. Sorry for the late reply! The 24 speaker decoder was specifically designed for our Multi-channel Lab here at Derby (although it’s now 32 speakers!). What speaker arrangement are you wanting a decoder for?
Thanks for sharing these plugs Bruce! Is there any ambisonics reverb for O3A in your collection?
Hi. You can just use the 1st order one with O3A (with a plug-in to change to AmbiX). I haven’t made a 16 channel version. The 1st order one was more of a proof of concept, type idea, but could be extended. I may try to do that this term as I’ve had quite a few requests now!
cheers
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
What’s the best way to decode binaural recordings to stereo?
Can you recommend one of your plugins?
Thanks in advance
Mark
Personally, I’d try a combination of a Blumlein shuffler (converts low freq phase differences to amplitude) and EQ to flatten out of the frequency response. I have a Blumlein shuffler VST if you’re interested……