Hello!
I've been doing some experimentation with 3D spatialization in Wwise 2024.1.6 and noticed that routing to a stereo bus results in some unexpected behaviors.
My mono sources positioning settings are:
Center %: 0
Speaker Panning: Direct Assignment
Listener Relative Routing: Enabled
3D Spatialization: Position + Orientation
Speaker Panning / 3D Spatialization Mix: 100
Attenuation: Enabled
3D Position: Emitter
This is then routed to a bus that is explicitly set to stereo.
If I set this sound source 1m away and rotate it along the horizon clockwise, I notice that there is a "deadzone" between +/- 45 and +/- 135 deg where the source is hard panned (fully left or fully right). Between +45 and -45 degrees or +135 and -135 degrees I see equal power panning. Personally, I would've expected to only see hard panning when +/- 90 deg in accordance with VBAP / equal amplitude panning.
I also tried rotating the source along the frontal plane (i.e. azimuth is 90 deg and elevation changes). I noticed a similar dead zone between +/- 30 deg elevation. Repeating this experiment when the azimuth angle is not 90 also shows that there is some unintuitive mapping between azimuth & elevation -> channel power.
Does anyone have information regarding the underlying panning algorithm here or why it is set up this way? I'm working on a plugin where mimicking this positioning behavior would be very useful. I looked for information elsewhere (e.g. these docs), but didn't see any clear answers. Any help would be greatly appreciated!