Workflow
For the production of ‘Stand By’, I chose to record and edit everything in Cubase 12, as it’s my main DAW and I’m highly familiar with its workflow, shortcuts, and overall layout. The entire project contains nearly 150 tracks, all recorded & edited in Cubase.
When it came to mixing in 3D audio, I decided to begin my spatial audio journey using Ambisonics and Reaper rather than Dolby Atmos. This decision was largely influenced by the IEM Plugin Suite, which offers powerful and intuitive tools for Ambisonics mixing — making the entry into 3D audio more approachable and flexible.
I chose to work with fifth-order Ambisonics for this project to achieve a more accurate and immersive rendering of diffuseness, spaciousness, and spatial depth. While first-order Ambisonics might seem sufficient due to the even nature of diffuse sound fields, in practice, their low spatial resolution leads to high directional correlation during playback, which significantly impairs the perception of these spatial qualities. Higher-order Ambisonics, in contrast, improves the mapping of uncorrelated signals and preserves spatial impressions much more effectively. Psychoacoustic research has shown that an Ambisonic order of three or higher is required to perceptually preserve decorrelation between neighboring loudspeakers, which is crucial for rendering depth and diffuseness. Fifth-order Ambisonics further enhances this, particularly outside the sweet spot, providing a more consistent spatial experience across a larger listening area. As demonstrated in the IEM CUBE, a fifth-order system allows nearly the entire horizontal listening plane—in this case, a 12 × 10 m concert space—to become a valid and perceptually plausible playback zone. [1]
Thus, fifth-order Ambisonics is not only a practical choice for immersive production in larger spaces, but it also strikes an effective balance between spatial resolution, technological complexity, and perceptual benefit [2].
I also had the opportunity to experience this myself during a small listening test we conducted with Matthias Frank. We listened to first-, third-, and fifth-order Ambisonics in a blind comparison and were asked to rate certain spatial parameters like spatial depth or localization. The first order was quite easy to identify due to its limited spatial resolution. However, distinguishing between third- and fifth-order Ambisonics proved to be much more challenging, as the differences were often subtle and less immediately perceptible.
After that, I started with setting up the routing, which was one of the most underestimated parts of this project. Similar to a traditional stereo production, I created a structure of groups and subgroups, but adapted it for Ambisonics. For example, in the drum section, encoding happens at the main drum group via the IEM MultiEncoder. All individual channels are routed into that group, allowing me to process them using conventional stereo plugins before spatializing them — saving both CPU resources and maintaining flexibility in the early mixing stages.
Within the drum routing, I created subgroups for kick, snare, overheads and the droom, allowing for finer control and processing. When dealing with coherent signals, such as double-tracked guitars, I first routed both signals (panned hard L & hard R) into a stereo group to conserve CPU power by processing them together. This group is then routed into a master guitar group that handles Ambisonics encoding. Since the L and R signals remain separated, you can still treat them independently from each other in the encoder. So I can still place them individually in the 3D field — even though they were previously grouped.
I followed the same approach with vocals, organizing them into groups before routing them into the Multiencoder. For specific adlibs, I used the GranularEncoder to create glitchy, scattered spatial effects.
To add a sense of depth and immersion to the vocals, I used a little bit of the FDN Reverb for diffuse reverb and the Room Encoder for some early reflections – all plugins are from the IEM Suite.
Finding this optimal signal flow took quite a bit of time and experimentation. It was a major learning process to understand how to best structure a large session for Ambisonics, and I’m still refining my approach. I’ve already begun mixing in the production studio at IEM, and although there’s certainly still room for improvement, I’m genuinely happy with the current state of the mix.
This being my first attempt of a spatial audio mix, I see it as a solid starting point — and I’m excited to continue learning and evolving through hands-on experience.
[1] Franz Zotter und Matthias Frank, Ambisonics: A Practical 3D Audio Theory for Recording, Studio Production, Sound Reinforcement, and Virtual Reality, Bd. 19, Springer Topics in Signal Processing (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019), 18–20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17207-7.
[2] Zotter und Frank, 19:18–20.
