Spatial audio production for immersive fulldome projections

Fulldome is an immersive half-spherical video format utilized mainly in planetariums which is often combined with spatial audio playback. This combination on one hand offers new ways of perceiving sound in space and on the other hand helps enhancing fulldome productions with audiovisual synergy. However, audio production for fulldome video poses some technical and artistic challenges. Limited time slots and resources seldom allow to work on sound productions inside a planetarium directly. Likewise, the various spatial audio technologies provide the user with fairly different approaches to create, position and move sounds in space. This paper investigates three different approaches to create spatial audio content for fulldome productions in remote studios and to present them in a planetarium: object based proprietary Fraunhofer “SpatialSoundWave” (SSW) system, scene based Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA), and channel based production will be compared. Technical challenges and potentials of storytelling in spatial audio will be discussed.