For Unity 2017.1 and later, the Oculus Spatializer supports ambisonic audio, letting you attach 4-channel AmbiX format audio clips to game objects. Rotating either the headset (the AudioListener) or the audio source itself affects the ambisonic orientation.

Ambisonics are decoded by OculusAmbi, our novel spherical harmonic decoder. Compared to traditional rendering methods that use virtual speakers, OculusAmbi provides a flatter frequency response, better externalization, less smearing, and uses less compute resources.

You can smooth the cross-fading between multiple ambient ambisonic audio sources in your scene by customizing the Volume Rolloff curve for each audio source.

Add Ambisonic Audio to a Unity Scene

To add ambisonic audio to a scene in Unity:

Import the OculusNativeSpatializer Unity package into your project.

Select OculusSpatializer for the ambisonic plugin. To do so, click Edit > Project Settings > Audio to open the Audio dialog

From Ambisonic Decoder Plugin, select OculusSpatializer. The following image shows an example.

Next add the AmbiX format ambisonic audio file to your project. Copy the audio file to your Unity assets.

In the Project window, select your audio file asset.

In the Inspector window, select the Ambisonic check box and then click Apply.

Create a GameObject to attach the sound to. Go to GameObject and select the GameObject you want to add to the scene.

Add an Audio Source component to your GameObject and configure it for your ambisonic audio file. Start by dragging the audio file to the GameObject you added to the scene. There should be a “speaker” icon on the GameObject.

In the AudioClip field, select your ambisonic audio file.

In the Output field, select SpatializerMixer > Master.

Add the ONSP Ambisonics Native script component to your GameObject.

Ambisonic Sample Scene: YellowBall

For a quick demonstration of the Meta Quest support for ambisonic sound sources, open the YellowBall scene included in the OculusSpatializerNative package. Turning your head left and right changes the ambisonic orientation accordingly.

NOTE: If building to a Meta Quest VR device, this scene requires several XR dependencies in order to run properly with headtracking.

Under Window > Package Manager > Unity Registry (dropdown), install these packages:

XR Legacy Input Helpers com.unity.xr.legacyinputhelpers

XR Plugin Management com.unity.xr.management (for Unity versions later than 2019.3)

Under Player Settings > XR Plugin-in Management > Plug-in Providers, check “Oculus” for Android

For Unity 2019.3 and earlier, go to Edit > Project Settings > Player, and ensure Virtual Reality Supported is selected.

Before you click Play in Unity, be sure that you have enabled the OculusSpatializer as both the Unity audio Spatializer Plugin and Ambisonic Decoder Plugin, as described in Download and Setup. You can then open and run YellowBall in /Assets/Oculus/Spatializer/scenes.

Note, if you are using some newer versions of Unity, and get a warning “Component of type GUI Layer is no longer available in Unity. References to it will be removed!”, see Unity Issue Tracker⁠ to fix the issue.

The following shows the Yellow Ball Project and the settings on the Audio Source.