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Audio Importing ambisonic order 2 wave file

Discussion in 'Audio & Video' started by dpesce, Oct 2, 2017.

  1. dpesce

    dpesce

    Joined:
    Jul 29, 2015
    Posts:
    3
    According to the AmbisonicAudio.pdf documentation, the framework can support ambisonic order 2 since 2017.1 version. I've tried to import a 9 channel wave file as an ambisonic asset ... but an unspecified error occurred when adding the wave file.
    As the error occurred before I can specify the asset as ambisonic, I assume that Unity has a problem to read multichannel wave file. Maybe there's a limit to 8 channel since it works for a first order file with 4 channels.
    Can someone enlighten me on the subject?
     
  2. wfoxall

    wfoxall

    Joined:
    Oct 23, 2015
    Posts:
    7
    Did you find the answer to this? Or can anyone else enlighten us?
    It looks like I've had exactly the same journey as you 3 months later.

    On the decoder end, I realise Oculus' ambisonic decoder only supports 1st order ambisonics and I expect that's the case for Google's Resonance decoder too (although I can't find it definitively clarified in their documentation), but it would be nice to be able to get a 9-channel 2nd order ambix into Unity.
     
  3. wfoxall

    wfoxall

    Joined:
    Oct 23, 2015
    Posts:
    7
    As an update to this, it appears that there is indeed an 8-channel import limit in Unity currently.
    There is a thread on the Resonance SDK discussion here:
    https://github.com/resonance-audio/resonance-audio-unity-sdk/issues/17

    This would be a feature request from us, as 2nd order ambisonics support would make it a lot easier to implement much better audio!
     
  4. diego_montoya

    diego_montoya

    Joined:
    Apr 3, 2016
    Posts:
    2
    Any updates here, can files with more than 8 channels be imported now? Just tried in Unity 2019.2.9 and it I still get an error.
     
  5. MichalKuligowski

    MichalKuligowski

    Joined:
    Apr 14, 2020
    Posts:
    1
    Come on Unity !
     
  6. netpost

    netpost

    Joined:
    May 6, 2018
    Posts:
    388
    I agree importing second order ambisonic (9 channels) is a must to do a decent job. Does anybody have a solution to export first order ambisonic (4 channel) file from unity? Doing 3d sound in unity works well for games but how do you export the ambisonic sound to a third party audio application if you are planning to make sound for a 360 movie?

    Thanks for your help!
     
  7. RobertCoomber

    RobertCoomber

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2017
    Posts:
    15
    This is the error I receive when trying to import a 9 Channel ambisonic audio file:

    Error: Cannot create FMOD::Sound instance for clip "audiofilename" (FMOD error: The sound created exceeds the allowable input channel count. This can be increased using the maxinputchannels parameter in System::setSoftwareFormat. )
    UnityEngine.GUIUtility:processEvent(Int32, IntPtr, Boolean&)

    It's strange that I am getting an FMOD error. I did not think unity had any FMOD components that come pre-installed in the engine, however it appears there are some included. The error states that the channel limit count can be increased using some FMOD API parameters. I cannot find anything in the documentation that explains why there are FMOD components or what is the issue for the 8 Channel count limit.

    I am looking into if a custom import script could fix this issue. If the issue is that the Unity Mixer doesn't support more than 8 channels, I don't think there is a way to achieve this without 3rd party audio plugins.
     
  8. RobertCoomber

    RobertCoomber

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2017
    Posts:
    15
    This is a workaround however its quite a process.

    Wwise supports high channel count files. I've used it for 2nd and 3rd order audio files and they sound really great.

    There is quite a learning curve for installing and operating Wwise properly. I really had to have 3rd order ambisonic files for a Unity project and Wwise did the job quite nicely.
     
  9. r618

    r618

    Joined:
    Jan 19, 2009
    Posts:
    1,303
    Unity audio is based on FMOD, but any references to FMOD::System is basically useless since it's not exposed and max. supported channels for audio media is ~~ 6 IIRC
    You can, however, use FMOD Studio / their Unity Integration (and Resonance) for ambisonics