O7A Research
O7A Research Tools
The O7A plugins provide versions of our Higher Order Ambisonics plugins running at an even higher spatial resolution than in our standard Pro Audio packs. They are intended primarily for research, or studios with high-end modern hardware.
Many of these plugins are quite demanding in CPU load, and some of them are extremely demanding. If you thought the channel counts needed by O3A were high then O7A may be a shock, as the plugins need 64-channel tracks. This can often mean a four- or sixteen-times increase in CPU load. We have some notes available about this.
For most applications, our standard O3A plugins are probably what you need. They are much lighter on your CPU, don't need nearly so many channels, and give a high quality already pushing the boundaries for most real-world applications.
But, if you're still here... the libraries here roughly mirror their O3A equivalents, but work at much higher spatial precision. There are some other differences to the O3A plugins, and some plugins with particularly high channel counts are absent.
AAX support is limited to channel numbers available through standard stem types, and requires Pro Tools Ultimate 2023.6 or later.
The plugin library packs can each operate stand-alone, but we generally recommend the O7A Core always be present. It is sometimes assumed in the documentation and examples.
O7A Core
The O7A Core plugin library is similar to the O3A Core library, providing a set of basic tools for higher order ambisonic mixing.
The plugins included are:
- O7A Panners (Standard, Classic, Hemisphere, Large, Two Channel and Eight Channel)
- O7A Decoders (Mono, Stereo and 5.1 Basic)
- O7A Converters to/from FuMa or classic ambisonics, and between orders
- O7A Beamer
- O7A Virtual Microphone
- O7A Gain
- O7A Look and O7A Rotation
- O7A Spatial Delay
- O7A Metering (Standard and Signal)
- O7A Visualisers (Standard, Hemisphere, Colourizer and Flare)
O7A Decoding
The O7A Decoding plugins decode (or "render") O7A to various other formats including Binaural Stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.4, Auro-3D, IMAX, 22.2 and Quad Binaural. A meter and brickwall limiter are also included.
O7A Harpex Upsampler
The O7A Harpex Upsampler plugin converts first order ambisonic material (O1A) to seventh order (O7A) using an analysis/resynthesis approach.
O7A Manipulators
The O7A Manipulator plugins focus on making changes to the content of seventh order ambisonic (O7A) streams.
The plugins in this pack include:
O7A Music
The O7A Music plugin library provides a small collection of creative tools for use with seventh order ambisonic (O7A) streams.
The plugins included are:
O7A Reverb
The O7A Reverb plugins add synthetic reverberation to O7A streams.
A variety of techniques are available, including algorithmic and convolution reverbs, early reflection models, and a ground-breaking "shaped" convolution reverb.
O7A Spatial Audio
This plugin collection provides experimental decoders to convert O7A 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.
O7A Upmixers
The O7A Upmixers plugins convert mixes in various multichannel formats to O7A streams.
Formats supported for scene-based upmixing include 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.4, Auro-3D, IMAX and 22.2. Stereo upmixing can be steered, and ambience plugins spread mono or stereo material out depending on frequency.
O7A View
The O7A View plugin library is similar to the O3A View library, providing tools to help work with video, for VR or film.
A separate View application shows video on screen or in VR, and connects to the DAW over a network connection. It can be used to take control of some plugins in this library and others.
VR-friendly panners are also included, along with a stereo VR monitoring plugin.
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.