Playback ambisonic audio files

[hiinaspace]

i.e. the Ambisonics Decode Effect. I'd like to take ambisonic B-format files from e.g. https://library.soundfield.com and stick them into a AudioStreamPlayer3D and have steam audio correctly render them with the listener's rotation.

This unfortunately might need more upstream godot changes to support, since right now godot won't import .wav files with more than 2 channels ("Format not supported for WAVE file (not stereo or mono).").

[stechyo]

As you're saying this will likely require changes to Godot upstream, and I'd like to avoid that for the time being to see if this can become a proper (no need for a custom fork) GDExtension.

[lukebitts]

What kind of changes would Godot need to support? Is this being tracked somewhere?

[stechyo]

Hm I'm not aware of any tracking, but do check godot-proposals.

[hiinaspace]

godotengine/godot-proposals#2748 is this directly, and godotengine/godot-proposals#9866 is probably relevant.

Thinking about it, it might not be strictly necessary for godot upstream to support multichannel audio just to be able to pass through the ambisonic data (4 channel audio) to steam audio's decoder. I.e. a custom resource format loader for ambisonics that only plays through some variant of SteamAudioPlayer.