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Handling Multichannel Sources with 3D Positioning

Multichannel sounds can be positioned in space using positioning just as well as mono sources, without downmixing to mono.

In order to compute a source's channel contributions to each speaker, "virtual emitters" are set in a circular arc around the listener. The extent of the circular arc depends on the spread (100% is the whole circle, 0% is a point in front of the listener). The circular arc is then split in as many regions of equal size as there are channels, and each of the source's original channels contribute to their assigned region. For example, with a stereo source, all virtual emitters on the left of the circle use the source's left channel, and all those on the right use the source's right channel. Once this is done, the actual contribution of each virtual emitter is computed for each speaker. Thus, the multichannel image is somewhat preserved even with 3D positioning.

[Note] Note

In a case where the spread is 0, all virtual emitters are located in a single point in front of the listener, which is similar to downmixing all channels to mono before positioning it in the 3D space.


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