Localization of 3D Ambisonic Recordings and Ambisonic Virtual Sources

The accurate recording and reproduction of real 3D sound environments is still a challenging task. In this paper, the two most established 3D microphones are evaluated: the Soundfield SPS200 and MH Acoustics’ Eigenmike EM32, according to 1st and 4th order Ambisonics. They are compared to virtual encoded sound sources of the same orders in a localization test. For the reproduction, an Ambisonics system with 24 (12+8+4) hemispherically arranged loudspeakers is used. In order to compare to existing results from the literature, this paper focuses on sound sources in the horizontal plane. As expected, the 4th order sources yield better localization as the 1st order sources. Within each order, the real recordings and the virtual encoded sources show a good correspondence.