Where to Put That Microphone? A Study of Sound Localization in Ambisonics Recordings

This paper examines the effects of microphone placement on sound localization in first-order Ambisonics recordings. Two microphone setups were used to capture a moving audio source in a lab environment. Array A, a tetrahedral microphone, was placed in the centre of the recording space. Array B consisted of four similar tetrahedral microphones charting a rectangular perimeter surrounding the space. Motion capture data of the moving sound source shows that anglegrams calculated from the Ambisonics recordings can be effectively used for sound localization. An additional perceptual listening study with binaural renders of the audio signals showed that the centrally-placed Array A provided superior localization. However, the corner-placed Array B performed better than expected.