FAQ

What is Mach1 Spatial?

Mach1 is a VVBP (Virtual Vector Based Panning) that preserves professional audio best practices in mediums where quality of sound is critical for maintaining creative control and immersion. Mach1 Spatial is contained into a single multichannel deliverable and designed as a modular development approach to safely add spatial audio features to any audio stack without compromise or use of any proprietary audio containers or codecs to leverage & preserve traditional audio best practices while enabling them for any modern project pipeline such as: full 3DOF interactive spatial sound as well as 6DOF when integrated into a 3D engine. Designed for simplicity and flexibility on the development side Mach1 Spatial libraries work on top of any low level audio engine/player currently integrated, ensuring all tech stacks can support spatial audio features and allowing any development to be safely added to a unified Mach1 Spatial audio framework.

Mach1 Spatial format & the accompanying Mach1 Spatial SDK and Mach1 Spatial System don’t rely on "distance" in the panning/encoding but "divergence" meaning the further from center you pan, the more the signal distributes toward that direction, not sound more "distant", exactly as it is in traditional stereo or surround panning. This also means the format’s vector space can be scaled to any size and shape while preserving the distributed audio rendered to it, allowing ease of use and even use cases for installations or any custom configuration of speakers, conversion to any other audio format (spatial or surround), even spatial based effect use cases.

Why is Mach1 a Master Delivery Format?

Mach1 is an audio framework to unify the handling of multichannel audio formats/configurations and conversions between them, as well as ability to decode them to stereo (with or without device/head tracking) with full down-mix and up-mix control. Mach1 allows for the development for custom multichannel configurations allowing backend development control to speaker configurations and futureproofing any audio needs for consumers in the future. Since the format is built on top of conventional vector panning, all mixing practices that work for stereo or surround panning environments work for Mach1 Spatial. Due to the simplicity of the multichannel use, all spherical harmonic formats are safely encodable to Mach1 Spatial without any loss or degradation (the opposite is not true since ambisonic projection spheres cannot contain channel specific directional audio data, forcing down-mixes from Mach1 Spatial to an ambisonic format to "shrink" the soundfield to a sphere).

Key Features

Key Features for Content Creators / Audio Professionals

Process Free

Mach1 Spatial is the only spatial audio format that does not use any signal altering processes to simulate directionality. This means that encoding to it and decoding from it preserves your audio mix quality due to the format’s agnostic design and signal process free implementation. This allows Mach1 Spatial to support any surround or spatial audio mix as an input and can play it back exactly 1:1 to any configuration of speakers or virtually with head tracking in VR without needing any proprietary codecs or metadata.
No more fear or concerns of hearing your mix play back differently between two apps.

Directional Control

Allows the audio professional to be in full control of defining directional sound in the mix and can push limits to be creative or even hyper-directional. Preserves non-diegetic and diegetic sounds allowing them to remain within the same export without needing any additional processing or summing during playback.

Traditional Full Dynamic Range

Mach1 preserves a single mix post production workflow (no need for object oriented) and yet allows hyper-realistic mixing with isolated cardinal directionality giving a complete dynamic range advantage over other spatial audio systems. Mach1, like traditional surround or stereo mixing enables an engineers to have the creative freedom and control to place a reflection/reverb or even a sound ‘easter egg’ cue in only one direction without it bleeding Into the rest of the directional mix like other systems.

Lightweight & Transparent

Mach1 integrates with any existing audio system or engine. It does not require any proprietary audio library or media engine and can function fully on top of any existing audio system/engine and safely along with any other spatial audio product or solution, no need to worry about any block from development. Mach1 does not require a proprietary container and works with all codecs and containers and can be delivered without any additional metadata requirements as any form of audio to be encoded via: AAC, Wav, Aiff, MP3 in any conventional audio or video container, making it the most versatile deliverable and allowing developers to craft their UX accordingly.

Virtual Vector Based Panning (VVBP) Design

The Mach1 Spatial Audio Format is a Virtual Vector Based Panning (VVBP) system contained into a single multichannel deliverable through already existing audio containers and codecs and enabling full 3DOF interactive spatial sound—as well as 6DOF when integrated into a 3D Game Engine.

Key Features for Developers

Quickly Add Spatial Audio Features To Any Codebase

Mach1 Uses Developer Friendly APIs

Mach1 Spatial's designed and modular libraries allow developers to utilize what they need and create their own spatial features for applications, since it focuses on bringing all the baseline expected features for spatial audio, developers can safely add to this framework with their own DSP effects, while immediately adding to their project/app all the offline spatial audio rendering features content creators expect. Whether needing universal spatial or multichannel audio playback or the requirement of developing an authoring tool, Mach1 Spatial SDK ensures your development choices are starting safely and never blocked by anything.

Mach1 is Format-agnostic

Mach1 Spatial can input encode any multichannel audio format, configuration or arrangement without altering the mix with effects. Mach1 Spatial can output decode any audio format, configuration or arrangement without altering the mix with effects.

Mach1 is Codec-agnostic

Mach1 Spatial does not require any proprietary codec and supports the use of any audio codec or audio engine the device or use requires. Mach1 Spatial only expects gain manipulation of the audio streams themselves, no matter their state or rate.

Mach1 is Platform-agnostic

Mach1 Spatial does not limit its use or support on any platform, just incorporating the Mach1 Spatial SDK libraries allow the use of this approach on any platform. For the VR / AR / MR / LBE / Headtracking decoding function of the format; the only requirement is the device’s orientation inputted to our library.

Mach1 with Modern Codecs

Mach1 Spatial does not require the use of metadata but is safe to work with metadata friendly codecs. Ideally a codec that supports multichannel is the bare minimum, however utilizing multiple singel channel audio streams works with Mach1 Spatial, since this is at the disgression of design and development this means that using more modern codecs such as MPEG-H allows developers to use the additional resources MPEG-H supplies however needed. Whether used for UX/UI handling for Mach1 Spatial or just sneaking Mach1 Spatial streams wtihin an object audio MPEG-H deliverable, the design is completely open for any development.

Mach1 VVBP / SPS Formats Compared To Ambisonic Formats

Mach1 has all the same benefits of Ambisonics plus the following advantages: - In line with all vector based panning formats: stereo, 5.1 surround, 7.1 surround, etc (due to it being the only spatial VBP format & workflow) User does not need to adapt to new mixing standards and practices - True divergence panning allows users to hard pan audio for more creative possibilities - No additional processing to simulate directionality post-mix. This eliminates non- standardization of filters during playback from player to player so that what you mixed is truly outputted 1:1 - The only fully transparent spatial format that also has 100% stereo coherency on the decoded output. Allows yaw pitch and roll from the user with full stereo image unaltered. With engine tools can be deployed for 6DOF - Due to the simplicity and straightforwardness of the format’s channel design, metering is not only intuitive but can visually depict directionality innately - Removed the abstraction layer of the B-Format mix container, along with its encoding and decoding processes which can result in material improperly clipping due to processing post Mastering. - Using Mach1 transcoder you can down mix to all Ambisonic formats enabling you to have one master mix when deploying and ingesting into multiple devices or apps.