[LAD] Attenuation of sounds in 3D space

[JohnLM]

On 2010.07.22. 16:45, Arnold Krille wrote:
> On Thursday 22 July 2010 16:29:01 Chris Cannam wrote:
>> Question that just occurred to me.  I'm very ignorant about spatial
>> audio, and although I'm sure several of my colleagues could tell me
>> this, I thought it might be sort of on-topic here.  Is it possible, or
>> easy, or sensible, or worthwhile, to reduce a B-format recording into
>> stereo in multiple different ways in order to achieve different
>> subjective "listener position" results when using headphones?
>
> It makes sense to reduce B-format to stereo.
>
> But the target is important, if you aim at headphones, there are decoders that
> create an binaural signal. If normal stereo-systems are the target, you will
> do a decoding similar to any ambisonics setup but only use two speakers in the
> correct stereo positions and decode to file...
>
> The headphone-version gives more of the ambisonics feeling, but the normal
> stereo signal also benefits from the recording done in ambisonics.

I've been studying process of spatialization a bit, and ambisonics 
figure in there quite a bit.
I was wondering if there is some "data loss" if I encode ambisonic 
format and then decode it to whatever "direct channel-to-speaker" format 
(stereo, 5.1, others) is needed, in stead of writing to different 
channels directly.

To make it a bit clearer: What difference would these methods cause?
1. Inputs -> B-format -> 5.1
or
2. Inputs -> 5.1

Simply first method allows me to concentrate making ambisonics only, and 
then use already existing decoders to create final output.