"All You Need To Know about 3D Audio" Webinars

On Wednesday, April 13th, and Thursday, April 21st of 2022, the Sound Particles webinars “All You Need to Know About 3D Audio” took place. Organized by the Sound Particles Marketing team, together with the speaker, Nuno Fonseca, the event was remarkably engaging.

With more than 1600 people registered for the webinars, the events were nothing but a success! The audience questions contributed to very engaging and active Q&A sessions that were carried out by the speaker, Nuno Fonseca.

During the two parts that made this webinar, the participants had the chance to get to know all the basics to start diving into the 3D audio world with four main topics: channel based-audio, object-based audio, Ambisonics and binaural.

And because we don’t want anyone to miss the opportunity to access all this information, we will, in a fast and clear way, give you a snippet of what was presented during the events.

WEBINAR 1

The first webinar started with a warm welcome by Iolanda Santos, Sound Particles Marketing team member, as the webinar host. While being professional and funny, the hostess greeted all the attendees that were joining, by presenting the two webinars that would teach the attendees all they needed to know about 3D audio. The speaker, Nuno Fonseca, CEO of Sound Particles, ran over the topics of channel-based audio and object-based audio in detail, finalizing with a Q&A session to interact with the audience.

Starting with channel-based audio, our speaker, Nuno, started talking about the stereo format, and why we use an angle of around 60º between speakers. 
Right after, when presenting the center speakers, he proceeded to explain why we need this extra speaker between the left and right, and when talking about surround sound it was important to understand why cinemas use several speakers for each surround channel. 
Later on, when presenting the LFE and sub-woofer, Nuno presented the historical reason behind the creation of a specific low-frequency channel.

At the end of this section, we saw the different immersive formats, from 7.1.2 to NHK 22.2 during the immersive audio topic.
To finish channel-based audio, Nuno highlighted its advantages and disadvantages.

The second topic covered was object-based audio and here we tried to understand the differences between channel-based audio and object-based audio before going into the meaning of metadata and why the mix is done only during the playback. 
To show a good example, Nuno Fonseca mentioned Dolby Atmos and showed what differentiates a Dolby Atmos theatre from a 7.1 movie theatre. To complete the topic, the concept of beds, their advantages, when to use them, and when to use objects were also introduced. 
Just like in the topic before, we got to see the advantages and disadvantages of object-based audio. 

To finish the webinar, and before going to the Q&A session, Nuno ended with a very interesting curiosity. Did you know that 'Fantasia' (1940) used an object-based system? Yes, it was very limited and analog but the base was there! 

WEBINAR 2

Before Nuno started diving into the topic of Ambisonics, it was important to first understand the Middle-Side technique, and then we actually got to know what's recorded in each Ambisonics channel. An important point to touch was also how the Ambisonics microphones work and the need for High Order Ambisonics.  
Nuno also went into the different 'flavours' of Ambisonics and the meaning of terms like ACN, FuMa, SN3D, AmbiX, etc.  
To conclude this topic, the audience got to learn the advantages of Ambisonics in VR and its overall advantages and disadvantages. 

Finally, the last topic, binaural, covered how our brain detects sound direction and how we can use it to create 3D sound with headphones. To understand it better, Nuno explained the concepts of HRTF's, HRIR's, and BRIR's and why personalized HRTF are so important.
Closing the topic of binaural, and just like we did for the previous topics, it was very significant to understand the advantages and disadvantages of binaural sound.

After one hour of deep knowledge, the webinar ended with a super engaged and participative audience that contributed with insightful comments and questions that were answered live by the speaker.

Sound Particles has been present in multiple offline and online events covering topics related to the 3D audio world but its own event was a goal that has finally been achieved! We were in awe with the number of registrations and we couldn’t help but notice in the live chat when people were sharing where they were from - from Poland to Cambodja, to Kyoto and California. We appreciate everyone’s time and contributions to make these webinars a success. It was a pleasure and a very fulfilling process for Sound Particles to organize this online event and the feedback from everyone who joined us will help our future webinars (yes, there are more to come so stay tuned!)

If you are curious about some topics, or want to know the answer to some of these questions, don’t hesitate to download our free ebook “All You Need to Know About 3D Audio"

If you want to know when our next webinar is, subscribe to our Newsletter!

PS - want to get a small taste of the webinar behind the scenes? Check out our TikTok!

From the Sound Particles team, we would like to thank you for joining us, we promise we will see you soon!