ABSTRACT
While adept in their areas, many media production professionals may have little audio production experience with cinematic virtual reality (cine-VR). In addition, many audio production experts are unfamiliar with Ambisonics and other immersive formats and techniques commonplace in virtual reality workflows. To unpack the audio considerations, this chapter focuses chiefly on cine-VR production methods with examples drawn from GRID Lab work. The Zoom H3-VR is a self-contained, first-order Ambisonic microphone and recorder. This configuration means that it can do all of the recording and Ambisonic format decoding necessary for spatial production. When it comes to post-production, there are a dizzying variety of Ambisonic converters, spatial audio plug-ins, studio software, 360° video players, and virtual microphone programs. The emerging possibilities are staggering. Nowadays, some smartphones have spatial and Ambisonic audio capabilities, as do video game systems, site-specific art installations, museums, concert facilities, live streams, and even everyday headphones.
