Need ambisonic sounds for your VR projects, games, or 360 videos? Here are free ambisonic sounds that you may want to add to your projects.
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What’s ambisonic sound?
If you are new to ambisonics, let’s spend a couple of minutes talking about this audio format.
The ambisonic sound is not a new invention. It was developed back the in 1970s. Ambisonics is a full-sphere surround sound format, which allows the sound to cover the listener from top to bottom.
When reproduced, ambisonic sound technology does not send the audio signal to any specific amount of speakers (unlike stereo). It is speaker-independent. Any array of speakers can decode ambisonic sounds. This property of ambisonic sound creates the representation of a full, uninterrupted sphere of sound.
To get to this level of sound representation, you can either use ambisonic microphones or plugins, like the free SoundField by RØDE Plug-in. You can always get ambisonic sounds for free or license them online.
Free ambisonic sounds
Here are a couple of places where you can download ambisonic sounds for free.
Free SoundField sound library
RØDE, the popular brand of microphones, launched the free ambisonic sound library a while ago. This Ambisonic Sound Library is a big, ever-growing collection of ambisonic recordings from some of the world’s top sound recordists.
You can download all the sounds from the library for free and use them in your projects. Create an account to have access to the SFX.
Shutterstock Ambisonic Sounds
Shutterstock has several free ambisonic sounds that you can download here. You can download 18 free sounds with ambisonic effects about surfing and skating. It’s over 2Gb of ambisonic SFX.
All these free ambisonic sounds are free to use in personal and commercial projects. It’s good to add them to your arsenal of sounds effects.
Paid ambisonic sound libraries
If you need more ambisonic sounds and audio, you may want to license it on these sites. The fees will vary from one-time to subscriptions. If you work on commercial projects, it may be worth paying for the license.
PremiumBeat
PremiumBeat, a popular royalty-free music site, has over 150 ambisonic songs that you can license for $49 per song or use them with their music subscription.
Envato Elements
Envato, a massive collection of everything video and audio elements, has over 50 ambisonic sounds in their SFX collection. You can have access to them by subscribing.
Shutterstock sound effects
The newly added collection of sound effects on Shutterstock have over 50% of all sounds as ambisonic. Hear them here.
The ambisonic format, where music or sound effects, is handy for meta, VR, 3D projects. The full-immersion, three-dimensional visual experiences were only be enhanced with the addition of ambisonic audio.
Need more free sounds effects for your creative projects? Check out our free SFX collections.