Stereo and Ambisonics: A reflection over parallel spatialization techniques

Abstract

As a composer of acousmatic music, I have often presented my work on a variety of different loudspeaker systems whese can be subdivided in two macro-families: those intended for the playback of multichannel pieces – often symmetric systems, in the shape of a circle, a dome, or a regular polygon – and those intended for acousmatic diffusions – the loudspeaker orchestras, mainly employed for the diffusion of stereo pieces, where the performer spatializes sound in real time. In this practice, it is not uncommon to listen to re-adaptations of pieces, presented in different formats to suit different types of systems, and I have always found the Ambisonics workflow a very successful approach to scale my pieces on systems belonging to the first macro-family. However, when I first faced the need of presenting my multichannel pieces on systems meant for stereo diffusion, I was very unhappy with the results I achieved through the typical methods employed to adapt Ambisonics space