The heart of the project is a custom Swift-based iOS application I developed: a tool to record impulse responses, estimate acoustic parameters like RT60, and apply spatial convolution in real time. The app consists of several modular components:

1. A mic selector that supports mono, stereo, and (planned) Ambisonics input.
2. A recording module that captures signals from sweep tones or balloon pops.
3. A deconvolution processor that transforms recorded responses into usable IRs.
4. A convolution engine that allows users to load external sounds and place them in the captured space.
5. A visual interface that shows waveforms, energy decay, and export options.

Built using AVAudioEngine and SwiftUI, the app runs entirely on-device, making spatial recording accessible to artists, researchers, and designers

This semester, my research expands on a deceptively simple question: What if we could photograph sound?
In the age of mobile spatial computing, we no longer need heavy microphones or studio rigs to capture acoustic character. Instead, we can begin to treat spaces as sonic images — snapshots not of light, but of reflection, decay, and depth.

Through the combination of impulse response recording, real-time convolution, and MEMS microphone arrays, I’m developing a system that captures and reconstructs spatial audio impressions in real-world environments. Using mobile tools and 3D sound formats like Ambisonics, the project proposes a new workflow: lightweight, precise, and perceptually informed.

But more importantly, this shift is artistic. Just like a photographer frames a scene, we as sound designers can frame how a space sounds — and how it feels. This opens up new territory between documentation, storytelling, and sonic composition.

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.

In “Stand By”, sound design plays a critical role in reinforcing the song’s emotional core — the psychological entrapment of a toxic relationship, which parallels the patterns of addiction.

To support the emotional arc of Stand By, spatial elements were deliberately positioned behind and around the listener to enhance feelings of tension, disorientation, and emotional overload (more about that below). This approach aligns with findings by Stefanowska and Zieliński (2024), who highlight that rear-positioned and difficult-to-localize sound sources can intensify emotional responses—particularly those associated with discomfort, fear, or psychological distress.[1]

By embracing these psychoacoustic principles, the sound design doesn’t merely illustrate the lyrical content, but actively immerses the listener in the protagonist’s emotional state.

But the key principle that guided my general approach to spatial mixing came from Lasse Nipkow, who emphasized the importance of listener expectation in immersive audio. As he puts it: „Die Leute sind es gewöhnt, dass die Musik vorne spielt, also lasst sie da auch spielen, und packt Wichtiges wie Schlagzeug und Stimme in die vorderen Lautsprecher.[2]“ Translated: “People are used to music playing from the front—so let it play there, and place important elements like drums and vocals in the front loudspeakers.” This mindset shaped my core mixing philosophy. Instead of treating 3D audio as an opportunity to scatter key musical components arbitrarily throughout the sound field, I chose to respect the listener’s intuitive focus. Drums, lead vocals, and harmonic anchors were mostly placed in the front hemisphere to preserve clarity and narrative drive, while the rest of the spatial field—especially the sides, rear, and height—became a playground for emotional and textural enhancement. This balance allowed me to stay immersive without losing musical coherence.

The track begins intentionally narrow and intimate, with the vocal placed front and center and only minimal ad-libs distributed in the surrounding space – Like fleeting thoughts echoing in the periphery. The guitar is slightly off the center, a second guitar plays the octaves of the riff, positioned at low volume on the other side of the room. Subtle rim hits on the rack tom foreshadow the emotional unravelling to come, creeping in like the early signs of danger.

As the second verse enters, the space opens drastically. The full drum kit kicks in with a deep floor tom and a palm-muted guitar part, tracked four times, creates a dense rhythmic bed. Meanwhile, a haunting “Uhh” choir swirls around the listener. This ghostly texture mirrors the psychological fog of emotional abuse — disembodied voices, indifferent and cold, being around you. It captures the emotional numbness and disorientation of dependency: the sense of being surrounded, yet entirely alone.

In the chorus, additional guitar layers are spread wide across the field, amplifying the pressure. Key lyrical lines are doubled with backing vocals:

I’m running in circles
‘Forced to stay’
I want to leave this place
‘But I can’t get away’
It’s frustrating
‘And suffocating’
Promised paradise is a lie — so ‘I’ stay on stand by

After each chorus, the song narrows again, mimicking the push-and-pull dynamic of emotional manipulation — the moments of clarity crushed by renewed confusion. At the line “You made me crazy when you…”, only the lead vocal and one side of the choir remains — before the wall of sound returns suddenly in verse two. This verse escalates with ‘open’ guitar chords (as opposed to the palm-muted ones before), and the drummer expands the groove with the addition of the rack tom.

To emphasize the transition into the second chorus, guitar death notes are layered with the snare hits in the fill — eight tracks in total, radiating outward. The final vocal line “Bursting away” is spatially fractured and scattered in all directions, as if the voice itself is breaking apart under the weight of emotional overload.

Then, after the second chorus, comes the confrontation: four cycles of build-up, followed by four of breakdown. During the build-up, a series of toxic phrases like “After everything I’ve done for you”, “Don’t push me”, “You’re nothing without me” — are placed chaotically into the space. Each one is distorted and spatially placed. Some are passed through granular synthesis (via the IEM Granular Encoder), transforming them into chaotic, stuttering fragments that glitch and scatter unpredictably. It places the listener inside the chaos of an abusive dynamic, where reason disintegrates and confusion dominates.

The tension is increased through a gradual high-cut filter on the guitars — which opens more and more, the closer the breakdown comes. A burning fuse — a literal sound effect — moves around the listener, traveling over their head just before the drop, suggesting both tension and inevitability.

At the start of the breakdown, a sub-drop slams in, marking the collapse. The four breakdown cycles remain true to traditional rock instrumentation but are widened into immersive 3D space.

Then, the moment of illusion arrives. We transition into the stairwell reverb section — a metaphor for the seductive promise of escape. Instead of distributing the stairwell recording (captured with five microphones) across the room, I placed the microphones behind the listener, emphasizing the contrast with the confined front-space. The mix collapses forward again, symbolized by sliding guitars that pan from back to front and the return of the fuse sound, automated to rush toward the listener. It’s the false hope of recovery — crushed by relapse.

The final chorus hits harder. The bass becomes more expressive, adding fills to push the groove forward. The word “suffocation” is no longer static — it’s sung alternately on the left and right, while the lead vocal itself begins to drift toward the backing voices, suggesting emotional fragmentation.

The line “Promised paradise is a lie” is repeated three times in the final chorus. And after that the final lyric line of the song comes – “And I stand on stand by”. A solitary voice. Nothing more. Just like addiction, the emotional trap is isolating. You’re still there. Still connected. But unable to move.

[1] Antonina Stefanowska und Sławomir K. Zieliński, „Spatial sound and emotions: A literature survey on the relationship between spatially rendered audio and listeners’ affective responses“, International Journal of Electronics and Telecommunications, 25. Juni 2024, 297, https://doi.org/10.24425/ijet.2024.149544.

[2] Hans-Martin Buff, Überall., 2020, 60.

Guitar & Bass Recordings

For the bass, we used a Fender Jazz Bass, recorded directly through my Line 6 Helix modeller. We chose a amp simulation that included impulse responses (IRs) replicating the mic’d sound of a cabinet captured with an Audix D6 (typically a kick drum mic) and a Shure SM57. This unusual combination provided exactly what I was looking for: deep, punchy lows from the D6 and more defined highs from the SM57 — a perfect balance for our mix.

With the electric guitars, we kept the 3D audio production in mind throughout the entire process. That’s why we recorded multiple layers to allow for spatial variation during mixing. I played the guitar parts using both a Gibson Les Paul Standard and a custom-built Telecaster — again routed through the Line 6 Helix, which offered us a broad palette of amp and cab simulations with consistent quality.

Vocal Recordings

Vocals were recorded using my Neumann TLM102. We tested several microphones, including the AKG C414 as well as the new version of this microphone, the Austrian Audio OC818. In the end, the TLM102 simply fit Lukas’s voice the best. For certain shouts and accents, we recorded more takes to give us more layering options in the mix.

Backing vocals and harmonies were performed by Clemens (our bassist), Lukas (our lead vocalist), and myself. We used a variety of techniques — including thirds above and below the lead vocal — and occasionally doubled the lead in octaves to add emotional weight or build intensity in specific sections.