New York-based Pro Sound Effects (PSE) sound libraries have played their in blockbuster films, indie productions, TV shows, commercials, games and apps since the company was established in 2004. Clients include the world’s largest media companies, independent sound designers and others working in creative industries of all types.

A new Ambisonic library of New York City sounds recently pushed PSE towards TSL Products’ SoundField microphone in order to capture the city’s ambiences from all angles.

Produced and recorded in 96kHz, 24-bit resolution by Pro Sound Effects’ Library Specialist David Forshee and recordist Laura Cunningham, the NYC Ambisonics library includes the ambience of streets, parks and subways from Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Particularly powerfult for a sound effects library, it gives editors and mixers the ability to manipulate the surround space to match visuals – by supplying the original B-Format audio file from the SoundField microphone as well as TSL’s SurroundZone2 plug-in, the ambience can be fine-tuned to fit requirements of a scene.

‘Since New York City is featured in so many films and television shows and has such an interesting and diverse soundscape, we thought it would be the perfect location for our first Ambisonics library,’ says David Forshee. Using the Soundfield microphone, we were able to capture an entire soundscape for each recording.’

Without the SoundField microphone, PSE would have had to use multiple microphone arrays to capture surround soundscapes. However, this takes time and usually produce audio that suffers from phase incoherence creating several problems when the 5.1 audio has to be ‘collapsed’ to create a stereo soundtrack for broadcast over SD or legacy networks.

‘We were able to easily adjust all the parameters including microphone orientation and output formats to create the optimal microphone array right from the ideal listening position,’ adds Forshee.

Using SurroundZone2 software that included with NYC Ambisonics, sound effects can be customised and then decoded to mono, stereo, 5.1, 7.1 as required. This gives an unprecedented level of control over a wide range of microphone parameters from a single user interface.

‘When you tell your story, I believe you should have the richest sonic palette available to you – always, anywhere and instantly,’ Forshee explains. ‘Using SurroundZone2 gives sound editors complete control – they can point virtual microphones in any direction, with a variety of polar patterns for greater control and creativity.’