Using Ambisonics as production format

This document will eventually describe how to use Ambisonic panning in Ardour, both for producing Ambisonic content and for rendering it to other output formats such as POS or 5.1. There is an article on ardour.org that could be used, and me (Jörn) has one in the pipeline as well.

This document assumes familiarity with Ambisonic concepts and techniques.

Introduction: 

Ardour can be used to create and process Ambisonic content, up to very high orders, thanks to its flexible routing concept with arbitrary numbers of channels per route.

When you want to create an Ambisonic mix, your Master bus (and any group busses you might want to use) become B-Format buses, with 4 channels for first-order, 9 for second-order, 16 for third-order, and so on. Or you could use intermediate channel counts for mixed-order setups. It is important to note that Ardour does not care what kind of data you send over those buses. The only Ardour component which does care are the panners, which currently only support discrete pair-wise panning, and hence must be bypassed.
Instead of the built-in panners, use the AMB LADSPA plugin set by Fons Adriaensen, which provides spherical panners in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order flavours.

Before you start, some preparations are necessary:

Create a new session with an appropriate multi-channel master bus depending on the order you want to work in.

Activate the option "Run plugins during recording", so that the panners are available while you're tracking (if you care about proper monitoring).

Create a mono track, bypass the  and a suitable panner into the post-fader signal stream of each track.