Mixed-order Ambisonics encoding of cylindrical microphone array signals

HOA is a sound field reproduction method. It attempts to re-create the sound pressure at all points in the neighborhood of the listener. An important feature of HOA is that it defines a system-agnostic encoding of sound fields. Sound fields recorded using any suitable system can be encoded using HOA and later reproduced using a variety of sound presentation technologies with an appropriate HOA decoder. Sound fields carry too much information for their practical reproduction. A compromise must be made between system complexity and spatial resolution. Humans exhibit greater spatial accuracy when localizing sound sources in the horizontal plane. The cylindrical microphone arrays considered in this paper consist of a set of parallel rings of equidistant microphones aligned on the surface of a rigid cylinder.