Pro Audio
Practical High-Resolution 3D Audio Tools For The Studio
Most of our R&D centres around a family of techniques called "Higher Order Ambisonics" (HOA) which can produce 3D audio of a quality far beyond what stereo or conventional surround systems like 5.1 can deliver. The same material can also be played on many different speaker layouts, or headphones, or used as a bed in the Rapture3D Universal gaming/VR engine, with head-tracking if you are using it.
Our suite of "O3A" ambisonic studio plugins uses third order ambisonics. This puts all sorts of magic at your fingertips, including proper panning, visualisation, spatial manipulations, reverb, decoding, video and VR integration and more.
Not all hosts can cope with these plugins yet, mostly because of high channel count requirements. We particularly recommend Pro Tools (Ultimate or Studio) or Reaper.
And, some of this stuff is free! The O3A Core plugin library provides the essential tools you need to get started. We hope that you'll be so impressed with what can be done that you'll come back and buy some of our other more sophisticated products.
O3A Core
The O3A Core plugin library is a set of essential tools that provides all the basics to produce a higher order ambisonic (HOA) 3D mix. And it's free!
The plugins included are:
- O3A Panners (Standard, Classic, Hemisphere, Large, Two Channel and Eight Channel)
- O3A Decoders (Mono, Stereo and 5.1 Basic)
- O3A Converters to/from FuMa or classic ambisonics, and between orders
- O3A Beamer
- O3A Virtual Microphone
- O3A Gain
- O3A Look and O3A Rotation
- O3A Spatial Delay
- O3A Metering (Standard and Signal)
- O3A Visualisers (Standard, Hemisphere, Colourizer and Flare)
O3A Decoding
The O3A Decoding library is a set of plugins that renders mixes to various standard formats, including 5.1, 7.1.2 and binaural stereo.
You can make many different types of mix from the same O3A Master. These plugins include decoders for 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2 (Dolby Atmos), 7.1.4, Auro-3D (9.1, 10.1, 11.1 and 13.1), IMAX (5.0, 6.0 and 12.0), Cube, Hexagon, Octagon and Quad speaker layouts. In addition to speaker layouts, there are decoders for binaural headphone output, Quad Binaural, ambisonic UHJ stereo and output to N3D. Other tools include a meter and a "brickwall" limiter.
O3A Harpex Upsampler
This plugin takes classic first order ambisonic material (O1A) and converts it to third order ambisonics (O3A) using the Harpex algorithm.
This allows recordings made with first order, four channel ambisonic microphones to be converted to high resolution, third order, sixteen channel mixes which can then be sent to other O3A plugins.
O3A Manipulators
The O3A Manipulator library is a "Swiss Army Knife" of effects that modify O3A mixes.
A variety of manipulations are included, from simple changes to the level of sound in particular directions, through to directional compression, manipulations to move sounds around in space and equalization that can be "painted" on to the audio scene. The library also includes some specialised panner plugins, tools to split up the scene into sections for separate processing, and some other features.
O3A Music
The O3A Music plugin library provides a small collection of creative tools for use with third order ambisonic (O3A) streams.
The plugins included are:
O3A Reverb
The plugins in the O3A Reverb library generate realistic 3D reverb to simulate acoustic spaces, or add "magic" to a mix.
A variety of techniques are available, including algorithmic and convolution reverbs, early reflection models, and a ground-breaking "shaped" convolution reverb.
O3A Spatial Audio
This plugin collection provides experimental decoders to convert O3A 3D audio scenes into audio designed for use with "Spatial Audio" systems like Dolby Atmos or Apple Spatial Audio. A number of Spatial Audio objects in fixed locations are used as virtual speakers.
O3A Upmixers
The O3A Upmixer plugin library is a set of plugins that can be used to convert mixes in various formats into O3A.
Speaker layout upmixers are available for various standard speaker layouts (5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2, Auro-3D, IMAX and so on). Other plugins handle stereo upmixing, ambience generation, and injection or upmixing of some other formats.
O3A View
The O3A "View" plugin library is designed to work with video, both traditional film and modern formats for Virtual Reality.
Show video on screen or VR, synchronized with your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). In your DAW, you can monitor with a choice of binaural decoder, with head tracking.
You can even control some of our plugins from the video display, or in VR!
O1A Decoding
The O1A Decoding plugins decode (or "render") first order ambisonics (O1A) to various other standard formats such as stereo, 5.1 and beyond.
These aren't the plugins you're looking for, probably. If you are working with other O3A (third order ambisonic) plugins or material then you should normally use the O3A Decoding plugins rather than the O1A ones.
Binaural Surround
The Binaural Surround Plugins convert channel-based mixes into binaural stereo for headphones.
The plugins included are:
- Binaural Surround - 5.1
- Binaural Surround - 6.1
- Binaural Surround - 7.1
- Binaural Surround - 7.1.2 (Dolby Atmos) and 7.1.4
- Binaural Surround - Auro-3D 9.1, 10.1, 11.1 and 13.1
- Binaural Surround - 22.2
- Stereo Crosstalk Cancellation
Rapture3D Advanced
Flexible, high quality 3D audio for professional film and music production and presentation, installations, VR and gaming.
- Advanced speaker layout configuration with flexible support for custom speaker layouts using many speakers.
- AAX and VST2 Plugins for advanced ambisonic decoding in the studio at up to seventh order.
- Rapture3D OpenAL Driver for use with compliant OpenAL games and other software, using high quality Higher Order Ambisonic bus running at up to fifth order.
- Rapture3D Ambisonic Player.
- 3D headphone surround (using five HRTFs for different head shapes).
- Preset speaker layouts including stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 3D7.1, Auro-3D, 22.2, Cube and more.
- On Windows, Microsoft DirectSound or Steinberg ASIO audio output (for access to studio grade audio hardware).
- On macOS, CoreAudio support.
This product does not include the Rapture3D Universal SDK or Unity support.