Editing Ambisonics (section)

=== Higher-order Ambisonics ===
[[Image:Spherical Harmonics deg3.png|right|thumb|300px|Visual representation of the Ambisonic B-format components up to third order. Dark portions represent regions where the polarity is inverted. Note how the first two rows correspond to omnidirectional and figure-of-eight microphone polar patterns.]]
The spatial resolution of first-order Ambisonics as described above is quite low. In practice, that translates to slightly blurry sources, but also to a comparably small usable listening area or ''sweet spot''. The resolution can be increased and the sweet spot enlarged by adding groups of more selective directional components to the B-format. These no longer correspond to conventional microphone polar patterns, but rather look like clover leaves. The resulting signal set is then called ''Second-'', ''Third-'', or collectively, ''Higher-order Ambisonics''.

For a given order <math>\ell</math>, full-sphere systems require <math>(\ell+1)^2</math> signal components, and <math>2\ell+1</math> components are needed for horizontal-only reproduction.

{{See also|Mixed-order Ambisonics}}

Historically there have been several different format conventions for higher-order Ambisonics; for details see [[Ambisonic data exchange formats]].