NAB 2016: Sennheiser's AMBEO 360 Audio

NAB 2016: Sennheiser's AMBEO 360 Audio
By Full Compass Live
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANK7svVeWKQ&w=560&h=315]

NAB is covered in VR goggles this year. It's a traffic jam of virtual video experiences.

Sennheiser experts heard a gap in the VR experience and took it as a challenge to match the 360 video experience with a 360 audio experience. And that's where the new AMBEO 3D audio line of microphones come in.

Achim Gleissner with Sennheiser explains the audio problem they were trying to solve for the VR world, "You have the immersive video impression, but what was missing was the immersive audio impression!"

The microphone provides 4 audio output channels so it's an analogFullcompass LogoDefinition:
A signal that is continuous in nature, as opposed to being defined as a series of discrete numbers (or elements) as found in digital signals; electrically "analogous" to an acoustical signal in the air.
mic and then it's all converted into B-FormatFullcompass LogoDefinition:
An audio format for 3-D audio based on Tetrahedral or Soundfield recording.
to get the VR experience in the audio domain.

Gleissner says you should use one mic per camera because "there's one position where  you put the camera and it captures 360 audio and then it's merged with the video signal into one stream."

The sound test we had with AMBEO was...incredible. Matching what we heard with everything we were seeing. Gleissner says Sennheiser doesn't have any pricing or availability set for AMBEO just yet. But we'll keep a 360 ear out for that and when we hear it, we'll pass it along to you.

Check out more NAB 2016 items here!