[Flac-dev] (Universal) Ambisonic implementation

[James Cloos]

I always thought that the best way to put ambisonic media in flac was to
use an ogg container, with the 0-order w channel in one flac stream, the
three first-order channels in a second flac stream, the five second-order
channels in a third flac stream and the seven third-order channels in a
forth flac stream.

An alternative would be to group the 0-order and first order into the
first stream and continue as above for the second and third order channels.

Keeping the same-level channels together should help the compression,
but different-order channels are likely to have less inter-dependence.

Limiting each flac stream to just same-order channels requires four
flac streams for a sixteen-channel third-order ambisonic, rather
than just two streams, but makes it easier to drop the higher-order
channels when desired.

Allocation of forth and higher order ambison channels into the flac
streams is left open, but higher orders are increasingly difficult
to record and therfore are increasingly rare.  Forth and higher level
may be a purely theoretical concern.

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos at jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6