Ambisonics has been around for decades, but it seems like it is currently undergoing a resurgence in popularity, with a number of ambisonic sound effects libraries going on sale recently, and more interest in it for Virtual Reality productions. An endorsement of that is that Google have created Omnitone, which is “a Javascript implementation of a first-order ambisonic decoder that allows you to binaurally render an ambisonic recording directly on the browser.”
Fascinating. For me I figure media producers would just use an ambisonic decoder in the first instance to decode the four 1st order ambisonic channels (W, X, Y and Z) down to a two channel stereo binaural file for uploading if that is the intended format required, but where this will be interesting is how it might be used with head tracking technology and/or as a flexible surround sound format for the web, that is decoded to whatever format the end user has, whether that be speakers or headphones.
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