Effect of ambisonic order on spatial release from masking

In two experiments, spatial release from masking (SRM) was measured using an ambisonic reproduction system for a range of different ambisonic orders. The first experiment used ambisonic panning while the second experiment used impulse responses recorded from a sixth-order ambisonic microphone. Both experiments found a progressive increase in SRM with increasing ambisonic order for speech presented against a single speech-shaped-noise interferer. SRM increased progressively up to at least fourth order and continued to asymptotically improve at higher-ambisonic orders toward the level achieved with point sources. The second experiment found that this effect was robust for different acoustic environments.