Audio Brewers Drops Ambisonic EQ

Audio Brewers is a specialized developer of professional software for spatial audio, founded by sound designer and musician Alejandro Cabrera. The company focuses exclusively on creating tools for Ambisonics and immersive audio workflows, aiming to simplify the production process for creators in music, film, VR, and AR. Ambisonics itself is a full-sphere surround sound technique developed in the 1970s that captures sound from all directions. Unlike channel-based audio that assigns sounds to specific speakers, ambisonics encodes a complete spherical sound field, which can then be decoded for various speaker setups or headphones. This makes it particularly useful for VR and 360-degree video, where the audio needs to respond to the user's head movements. The new ab EQ plugin offers 10 independent equalizer bands for each spatial dimension—Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, and Bottom. This allows for detailed spatial sculpting of sound, such as reducing low frequencies behind the listener while boosting presence on the sides. It is available for macOS and Windows, with an introductory price of €49 until April 10, 2026, after which it will be €59. A companion iOS version, ab EQ X, is also available. The global immersive audio market is on a significant growth trajectory, projected to reach over $10 billion by 2025 and potentially $32 billion by 2033, with a compound annual growth rate of 16%. This expansion is driven by the integration of spatial audio in virtual and augmented reality, as well as the adoption of 3D audio in home entertainment and vehicles. The IDL Immersive event was held at The Village Recording Studios in Los Angeles, a historic studio that opened in 1968 in a former Masonic temple. The studio has a rich history, having hosted legendary artists like Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, and Bob Dylan, and has been used to record scores for numerous major films. The event focused on "direct-to-immersive" recording, utilizing Immersive Design Labs' 7.0.4 recording array with eleven calibrated microphones to capture a full acoustic sound field. The panel, which included artists and producers like Willy Porter and Ryan Ulyate, explored how capturing music immersively from the source influences artistic decisions during the performance itself. Panelists at the IDL event, such as Grammy-winning mixer Justin Gray, emphasized that this immersive recording approach allows spatial arrangement to become part of the composition, rather than a post-production decision. Immersive audio consultant Ceri Thomas contextualized the trend, arguing that immersive sound is a return to the natural way humans have always experienced sound.