Spatial Sound and Ambisonics A Four-Workshop Series

The workshops will be delivered in a hybrid format: participants may join online or attend in person at the Bass Museum of Art, where the sessions will be hosted. This allows the series to serve both a local audience gathered in the museum and a wider remote community, with all participants following the same theory sessions, practicals and independent tasks.

Live workshops (60–90 minutes each) alternate with independent study weeks, during which participants complete structured listening and production tasks at home. Each workshop opens with a theory session and closes with hands-on practice, and independent tasks are reviewed at the start of the following workshop so that learning is consolidated, personalized and cumulative.

Schedule

All four sessions run from 6:00 to 7:30 PM (EST).

• Workshop 1: Thursday, November 19, 2026
• Workshop 2: Thursday, December 17, 2026
• Workshop 3: Thursday, January 21, 2027
• Workshop 4: Thursday, February 18, 2027

What participants will learn

By the end of the series, participants will be able to:

• Explain the theory behind Ambisonics and how it differs from channel-based and object-based spatial audio.
• Understand the core concepts: spherical harmonics, A-format and B-format signals, and the listener-centered coordinate system.
• Set up a Reaper project for third-order Ambisonic production, including routing, plugins and monitoring.
• Convert tetrahedral microphone recordings from raw A-format to standard B-format (SN3D) and check their spatial orientation.
• Critically assess spatial audio experiences, from localization accuracy to the role of head tracking in immersion.
• Plan location recordings with distance attenuation, environmental acoustics and microphone placement in mind.
• Apply spatial and creative post-processing, such as rotating a sound scene and adding spatial effects.
• Deliver spatial audio to listeners through binaural rendering (HRTFs), speaker arrays and online platforms.

Format

• Delivery: four live workshops of 60–90 minutes each, with independent study between sessions. Workshops are hybrid: hosted in person at the Bass Museum of Art, with simultaneous online participation.
• Independent study: a modest, flexible time commitment for listening and production tasks, reviewed at the start of the following workshop.
• Progression: later tasks and the final workshop are deliberately adaptive, tailored to the group’s progress and interests so the series stays responsive rather than prescriptive.

What to bring

To get the most out of the workshop, please bring:

• Your laptop with REAPER installed (the free evaluation version is fine).
• The IEM Plug-in Suite, installed and loading correctly in REAPER.
• Headphones, preferably closed-back or in-ear, for binaural monitoring. Head-tracked playback devices are helpful for the listening tasks but not required.

Please install and test everything before the workshop.