New - TOA VST Plugins

Posted: 15 November 2013

Spectacular 3D Studio Mixes

We've been working on these plugins for quite a while and we're rather excited that they're ready to go! They make it easy to produce high quality 3D mixes in the studio. And you can get started for free!

They are VST plugins, which can work with some professional studio Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) such as Reaper, Max/MSP or Plogue Bidule. We particularly recommend Reaper.

The Technology

As you'd probably expect from us, these plugins are based around Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA). Specifically, they all use Third Order Ambisonics (TOA), which means that a 3D sound scene is packed into 16 channels of audio.

The Plugin Libraries

We've written a large number of plugins for work with these 16 channel TOA mixes, because we wanted you to be able to do many of the things you're used to doing with stereo or 5.1 mixes, and beyond! The libraries include panners, visualisers, spatial operations, EQ, rotation, upmixers, reverb, decoders and much more.

And to get you started, we've put together a set of plugins that cover all the essential tools you need to get started with TOA mixes, and we are releasing this free of charge! We know this as the TOA Core library. The full list of TOA plugin libraries is:

• TOA Core - the essentials to get started - free!
• TOA Decoding - extract many standard mixes (5.1, 7.1, Auro-3D etc.) from a TOA master.
• TOA Manipulators - a "Swiss army knife" of effects that modify TOA mixes.
• TOA Reverb - realistic 3D reverb.
• TOA Upmixers - convert 5.1, 7.1, Auro-3D etc. to TOA.

We've also added a VST plugin library to our Rapture3D "Advanced" product, so you can use these plugins with irregular, custom layouts.

Getting Started

So, to get started, you probably want a copy of Reaper and our free TOA Core VST plugin library.

Have fun!