[Vorbis-dev] Vorbis, ambisonics and 'Vorbis Tools'

[Christopher Montgomery]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 7:49 AM, e deleflie <edeleflie at gmail.com> wrote:

> Progress has been made on the proposed draft spec for integrating
> ambisonics into vorbis. We are not yet finished (should be soon), but
> you can see the progress here:
>
> http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df4dtw69_3626qqq6st

Note that I'm responding before reading the above... I need too, just
daon't have the spare cycles to concentrate on it now :-(

> The issue we have hit now concerns how/who would implement the
> encoding and decoding in Vorbis Tools. Because ambisonics uses
> spherical harmonic components, an ambisonic file could contain
> anything from 3 channels up to (potentially) 16 and more channels.
> Both encoding and decoding would then be error prone to getting the
> right channels in the right place with the right metadata.
>
> My question is, how should we approach Vorbis Tools ... would the
> ambisonics community write their own encoding tools? ... does Vorbis
> Tools *have* to contain support for ambisonics? Would the ambisonics
> community write code to roll into Vorbis tools? Should we spec this
> out, or leave it to the better intuition of the vorbis devs?

This is actually something I want to tackle myself.  And my instinct
is that I would like first class support for Ambisonics across the
Vorbis toolchain.  Ambisonics is where my professional life and
hobbies meet, so I look forward to having some time to really get lost
in it :-(

Assuming I ever get to do that.  Uninterrupted thinking time is always
the rub these days.

Nor do I mean to imply I want to 'take this over', just that I want to
fully lend my own shoulders to pushing ahead.

> In the draft spec, we have begun specing this out in Section 1.7 ...
> but some of our members feel strongly that this should not be in
> there.

I'll have to go read it. :%)

Monty