Ambisonics in Ableton Live 10 Tutorial Part 2: Producing with Envelop for Live

[@michaelgwagner]

Hi everybody, first of all, thanks for all the nice comments. This is greatly appreciated. I have not been able to do much with this channel last year, mainly because I spent a substantial amount of time converting all classes I teach into a remote delivery format. I will start posting new videos soon. Stay tuned.

[@rodneygerald126]

Pro tip: you can watch series at flixzone. Been using it for watching all kinds of movies lately.

[@daxenzo58]

@Rodney Gerald definitely, been watching on Flixzone for years myself :)

[@troyrayan9554]

@Rodney Gerald yup, I've been watching on Flixzone for since december myself :D

[@adrianfrancomatesanzabeiro5623]

this is not a tutorial... this is a whole masterclass

[@ambisolace]

Your teachings have been essential for me in getting my new setup for live ambient ambisonic improvisation up and running. Just wanted to drop in and say I’m very pleased with this setup! Thank you! running envelop in live with my supperware head tracker is just lovely ! Cheers :)

[@michaelgwagner]

Cool! Thanks for the kind words! 😊

[@macbabytutorials2883]

this wass the most impressive tutorial i have seen in for years. insane... and this man is genius.wow.

[@battlewolfe2083]

Your tutorials are the reason I love the internet! Amazing content! Thank you sir!

[@RmaNYouTube]

This Tutorial Is Gold, I never understood ambisonics format and it's mixing, but this demystefiyed for me. Thanks :)

[@michaelgwagner]

Thanks!

[@yakuparslan72]

I also like the melody you made, it was exciting to listen to you with ambisonic background music :)

[@michaelgwagner]

Thanks! 😊

[@DINProductions]

This was a fantastic tutorial. Really appreciate you going through it and explaining everything in detail. I plan on starting to incorporate this into my tracks.

[@andreiviievskyi2838]

Awesome explanation! Thank you so much

[@michaelgwagner]

You’re very welcome! :)

[@andreiviievskyi2838]

@@michaelgwagner i was learning nuendo to start messing with dolby atmos. But since it can be done with Ableton that’s amazing news for me. One thing I can’t get my head around is;“: when I monitor with headphones, can I still hear all dimensions? In the video you said binaural mode is just panning

[@michaelgwagner]

@andreiviievskyi2838 You have two ears which limits headphone experience to one dimension (left-right). You can trick the brain through feeding it a binaural render but that will never give you a true 3d experience. You need to have the audio react to head movements in order to experience 3d. That’s why I have so many videos talking about head tracking.

[@MrPiha]

....many thanks, this Ambisonics tutorial series has been very good. Learned quite a bit. Yes you are right, been exploring the devices and yes, finding some very interesting sound spaces. Excellent!

[@michaelgwagner]

Thanks!

[@peterpower2485]

This tutorial is fantastic. Thank you Michael.

[@replikat4314]

thanks alot! this was super helpful

[@MatthewHiltner]

This was great, thank you!

[@davidhallowell3457]

Question about a particular recording and mixing situation...To create a binaural 'meditative/ambient' track let's say I have 3 sound sources: acoustic guitar, keyboard pad, and a nature setting (brook with birds chirping). I could see it being almost 'too much' to try to capture all of those in even 1st order ambisonic form ( 3 original 3D spaces might collide in a muddy way (?)). I'd lean toward traditional stereo or mid-side for at least the guitar and keyboard, and maybe even the same for the nature sounds. Then I would use the approach you show here to bring the 'discrete' sources together into one 3D space. While the beginner in me is interested in recording everything with as much ambisonic info as possible, I'm seeing that's maybe counterproductive. If the question makes enough sense I'd be very interested in your thoughts. Many thanks.

[@michaelgwagner]

That’s a very interesting question. If you would go for regular stereo than you could simply convert the Ambisonics portion into stereo and mix in the stereo parts as you normally would. Binaural is a different story. If you use mid/side for a track you are technically using a portion of first order ambisonics (mid is first channel, side is second, third and forth are ignored). You could try to simply mix in the mid into the first Ambisonics channel and the side into the second and see where this goes. In the end there are no strict rules. Whatever sounds good to you is the right way to go.

[@davidhallowell3457]

@@michaelgwagner That's very helpful, thank you. The fuzzy principle I'm reaching for = high order ambisonics *recording* is best when recording a 3D environment that will largely describe the target *mixing* environment...while audio from different or arbitrary sound environments might better be captured less dimensionally and then joined in new coherent 3D *mixing* space. Still interested in your expert review of that notion. Thanks again for all the helpful content.

[@macbabytutorials2883]

this guy is genius.

[@peterpower2485]

amazingly informative and very much appreciated.

[@matthewashley95]

Great video, very helpful and remained interesting throughout. Chords were nice too!

[@OppositeDay5]

This was a fantastic and super informative tutorial. Thank you for taking the time to make this for us, it is very appreciated

[@pippastar1606]

these tutorials are so good - thank you!

[@laurentsauvagnac]

amazing tutorial thank you you made my day

[@trueidentitymusic]

Thank you Michael! Great tutorial!

[@alessandroguerri1821]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this topic, your tutorials are really saving me 😅. Is it possible to use Envelop for composing and sound designing on a 6th order ambisonic format? Or is the third order its limit? Really thanks

[@michaelgwagner]

Third is the limit. If you want to go higher the only option is Reaper.

[@lessless]

Great tutorial!

[@anirudhpratapsingh7424]

this is gold

[@shreepadgandhi6739]

Just amazing Mike...am a novice. So shall be visiting and watching this video often to actually understand. I have 2 versions of Ableton...firstly Ableton 10 Intro license and secondly Ableton Live 11 Lite that came with my Focusrite 2i2 Scarlet audio interface. Will the 'Envelope' thing work in either of my versions? If not, then I will be very sad to know that I won't be able to try whatever you have explained in your tutorials. Many thanks in advance.

[@michaelgwagner]

You will need Max4Life in order to use Envelop. I believe you need an Ableton Suite license for that. Intro, lite and standard versions don't come with Max4Live.

[@shreepadgandhi6739]

Thanks dear for your swift response. Yeah, that's true. My Ableton versions won't support Envelop...Ableton Suite is very pricey...But a 90 days trial version is available. Have downloaded and installed that. Could get Envelop tools as in your video. Honestly, i loved the ambisonic treatment...But have to now hurry up and utilise it as much as possible within the trial period...Am not a music professional so have no plans to invest that much money (649USD) needed for Live Suite. But thanks for these videos. Shall use them as reference.

[@shreepadgandhi6739]

@@michaelgwagner Also downloaded and tried Anaglyph free spatial plugin today... Not that bad at all...Combine that with Ableton built-in audio effects and it delivers good sound.

[@michaelgwagner]

Yes, that is a good one.

[@davidhallowell3457]

Thanks for this great series - it's just what I need to get up to speed. One naive question - I'm trying out the Voyage Spatial Mic, so I have 2nd order raw tracks (as 4 stereo or 8 mono tracks). Is there a scenario for that input set with Envelop, or another Ableton resource? Thx

[@michaelgwagner]

It appears that this mic can communicate via a Dante network. So you could simply use something like a Dante virtual soundcard as input device. Not sure how you would feed that into Envelop though. The common approach would be to convert the A format coming out of the mic into B format first.

[@davidhallowell3457]

@@michaelgwagner Thank you. My mic is the simpler usb spatial mic…so it’s easy to get wav files to any recorder in iOS or a computer. I’m so green to all of this…I need to sort out basic things like Aand B format. Will come up the curve quickly, though…and you are helping. I’m enjoying internalizing the info you have shared in this series. Thx.

[@erantz494]

Hey, great tutorial man! thx a lot! one question tough, i am using windows, and for some reason, the BINAURAL Decoder doesn't work, only the BINAURAL 3RD ORDER works, and it's killing my CPU! any ideas why?

[@JAIRODALLOS]

for me doesn´t work in binaural too

[@jimvandersteege]

Thanks a lot for this, this is already very helpful! I'm trying to use Ableton to playback my ambisonic A-format recordings (rode ntsf-1). Is the Ableton + Envelop pack also usable for this?? Im sorry to ask but im just a bit lost in all this new technical knowledge..

[@michaelgwagner]

You would need to convert to B-Format. A-Format is mic depended.

[@jimvandersteege]

@@michaelgwagner Okay thanks! I will try that with the soundfield by rode plugin in Reaper

[@jimvandersteege]

​@@michaelgwagner I've figured out how to render my a- format to a AmbiX or FuMa B-format... It just seems impossible to open polywavs in ableton.. would that imply that the way to go is to seperate that B-format recording into two stereo wav files? Then I don't fully understand how you would pan them in ableton to reconstruct the soundfield using the envelop kit... Very kind if you respond, but I understand if its a too big of a hassle.

[@michaelgwagner]

@jimvandersteege Check out one of my recent videos that talks about how to turn Ableton into a multichannel DAW. There is a custom E4L device called Audio Injector that allows you to send individual channels into E4L directly. You would habe to split up your B-Format into stereo pairs and use that injector device.

[@jimvandersteege]

@@michaelgwagner amazing... will do! Thanks a lot!

[@Sentientfx1]

Very interesting - thanks for posting! I'm trying to use Envelop with Max8. Do you know if the plugins respond to midi CC or OSC commands?

[@michaelgwagner]

Not directly, but ther are workarounds with various max4live devices.

[@hartonopatrick]

Any windows user here? I found the binaural decoder is not working. Any updates or solutions? Thx

[@nexcyia]

Yeah it doesnt work on windows... I tried it on my macbook and it worked

[@tomallonsmusicalcreation1111]

Hi and thanks ! Question : How do I process An already coded ambisonic / raw files from a 360 recorder such as zoom h3 vr ? Can I use the panners ?

[@NigaTronNyanz]

Hello Michael. Super informative videos and looking to use them for an installation soon. This all possible in Ableton 9?

[@michaelgwagner]

Yes, it also works in Live 9, but the setup is a bit more complex because you need to do the routing outside of Ableton.

[@NigaTronNyanz]

Any way I could get help with this as I have a zero reference point to try and set up that routing?

[@michaelgwagner]

It appears that they no longer provide an easy access to the Envelop for Live 9 devices. But you can still access them through Github. Routing through Max was a bit of a pain though. I highly recommend upgrading to Live 10.

[@phantascy1213]

can you create a tutorial how to create an entire track from start to finish. i feel like one source pan and one master bus technique is sort of counter productive.

[@michaelgwagner]

I am teaching a class about this topic next term. Maybe I find the time to create such a tutorial.

[@phantascy1213]

@@michaelgwagner appreciate the thought ! thanks for responding it makes me feel like its more possible now lol

[@SoundAuthor]

I don't know why this is, but whenever I have "Binaural" mode selected, there is no output. But "Binaural (3rd Order)" and the other modes work fine.

[@dancadeejay]

Dont you have solution for that problem yet? It happend with me too

[@Benutzername0000]

same here

[@experience360vr2]

Same Here

[@henryaugustine4514]

Had this same problem. To fix, go to your track with your source panner and meter and make sure that your meter is routed to the track that your master bus is on.

[@kaesh7831]

@@henryaugustine4514 Thanks! I don't know why but didn't work for me with sends, but if I rout one audio track to another and that to master - works!

[@Andhony9]

Hi Michael, thank you so much for this tutorials. I've a question: where I can find ambisonic IRs? I don't think I can use normal IRs x4... I'm trying to make a 3D soundscape and Envelop plugins are very usefull.

[@michaelgwagner]

Sorry for the late response. I do not know of any IR repositories for Ambisonics, unfortunately.

[@thomasanderson6815]

I hear the spatial movement on my IPad Pro but not on my earphones. Please help.

[@justintotravel]

I cant seem to get a signal to come into the meter or the master bus. Any ideas what I need to do?

[@privateryan5613]

Hey Michael, I don't know why this is, but whenever I have "Binaural" mode selected, there is no output. But "Binaural (3rd Order)" and the other modes work fine. I'm on Windows, the Envelop website says Windows may experience issues. Wondering if that's my problem?

[@fabriciolins6616]

I have the same issue. Many thanks for anyone who can help with this!

[@vivekp9206]

I have the same issue too. Did you fix it?

[@chasmain]

did anyone solve it?

[@michaelgwagner]

Try the latest version from Github.

[@chasmain]

@@michaelgwagner i'm using Ableton live 11.2.1 do you think it may work?

[@sebastianroberts9988]

Hey michael, i've just started getting into abisonic producton and when i put the e4l meter I get no ginal coming through atall. any help? I'm using live 9.

[@michaelgwagner]

Live 9 does not support the advanced routing that is necessary for the latest version of Envelop. On the Envelop site they say that they no longer support Live 9, but you should be able to download the Live 9 version fo Envelop from Github.

[@sebastianroberts9988]

@@michaelgwagner Ahh ok, I'll do that. I do plan on upgrading when I can afford it.