Soyuz 013 Ambisonic: Liveo on a Year of Immersive Live Capture
In spring 2025, Liveo bought a Soyuz 013 Ambisonic from us. This young Paris-based company films live shows in stereoscopic video and spatial audio, with one simple goal: to place the viewer back inside the venue. The sound, for its part, is captured in 360°, all around the point of view. A year and five shoots later — including the show Vertige at the Grand Palais and the show Terhal in Riyadh — co-founder and CTO Alexis Fabrigoule agreed to tell us what this microphone changed in the way they work.
Interview conducted by email in July 2026. The answers are published as received.
Can you introduce Liveo in a few words?
Liveo is a young production and distribution company founded in 2024, specialising in immersive content. We capture events in 180° stereoscopic video and spatial audio, so as to place the viewer back inside the venue, in the middle of the audience and of the room's acoustics.
We handle the entire chain, from capture through to the player. We give as much care to the audio as to the image: that is precisely what carries the sense of presence.
What kind of shoots do you use the 013 Ambisonic on?
Live performance in the broadest sense: large-scale shows, concerts, symphonic music. In a little under a year, it has been with us on five shoots, among them the show Vertige at the Grand Palais and the show Terhal in Riyadh. We also took it to a basketball game, sport being another of our activities.
What was your audio setup before, and what made you switch to the 013 Ambisonic?
We had worked with the Sennheiser Ambeo VR and the Zoom H3VR, and we took the time to listen to tests of several other models. Our conclusion is that ambisonic microphones are designed for ambience capture, not for professional concert recording. They are often found to be too cold.
We went for the 013 Ambisonic for a simple reason: we were expecting a real sound from it, rich and warm. Everything on paper pointed that way: condenser capsules, FET transistors, a genuine studio microphone design. The recordings we were able to listen to online confirmed that impression. We were not disappointed.
We are also admirers of the work of Alejandro Cabrera, the founder of Audio Brewers. He has developed impressive algorithms for ambisonics, and we had complete confidence in the A-B converter he developed in partnership with Soyuz for the 013 Ambisonic.
Finally, the microphone's handling of sound pressure is excellent (a stated max SPL of 143 dB). Combined with a 32-bit float recorder, it lets us place the mic wherever the image demands and then stop worrying about it. In the middle of a brass section, no concern at all. We had run into dynamic range problems on motor racing shoots with other microphones (placed trackside). We will most likely take the Soyuz along next time.
In practical terms, how do you integrate it into your production chain?
We place the microphone at the main point of view, that of the camera. Depending on the case, that means the front row of the audience or the middle of the orchestra. That recording becomes our mixing foundation for this point of view: the right distance, a coherent spatialisation of the sources, and the acoustic signature of the venue.
We then go through order upscaling to gain spatial precision, after which we mix this ambisonic bed with direct sources, in order to bring out the quietest instruments and recover a sharper attack. The deliverable finally takes the form suited to the distribution medium: Dolby Atmos 9.1.6, 5.1 surround, or simply ambisonics.
What struck you the most in use?
What struck us the most is how little work is needed to get something that holds up. From the very first listen to the rushes on headphones, even before any processing, you are already placed back inside the venue. The room is there, the audience is there, and the sense of space is immediate. With the other microphones, you remain more aware that you are listening to a recording.
The most revealing moment was a symphony orchestra shoot. We were very pleasantly surprised by what the 013 Ambisonic delivered on its own, placed in the middle of the orchestra. The final mix was made with the orchestra's sound engineer from his full setup, but our recording stood the comparison far beyond what we had imagined, and would be enough for many projects.
We still use the Zoom H3VR on mobile setups where size is critical. There, the gap is obvious, both in grain and in listening fatigue. The two microphones are not in the same category, and that is not what we expect from the Zoom anyway.
Does the final result meet your expectations in terms of immersive experience?
Yes, and perhaps the best indicator is this one: once the ambisonic mix is finished, we regularly find ourselves playing the whole show back, not to check it but to relive it, with the strange feeling of travelling into the past. When a mix still makes you want to go all the way through after listening to it a hundred times while working, presence is there.
We do have one reservation, which has to do with first-order ambisonics rather than the microphone itself. On very dense passages, an orchestral tutti for instance, the localisation of certain instruments can drift slightly after upscaling. So we do wonder what a higher order would bring us in spatial precision. But we know it would come at the expense of the timbre we appreciate here, and for now timbre wins.
A shoot you are particularly proud of?
The Terhal shoot in Riyadh. We were particularly glad to have taken the Soyuz along. The audio elements available to us were dry sources, with no room acoustics and no audience presence. Our ambisonic recording, on the other hand, had captured the whole room and the whole reaction of the crowd. Blending the two gave a result that exceeded our expectations, with a sense of place that would have been impossible to fabricate any other way.
Would you recommend it, and to whom?
Yes! It is an investment, and you have to be aware of that. But for any production that wants to make an ambisonic microphone the cornerstone of its spatial mix, and all the more so in high-dynamic scenarios, this is the microphone that has brought us the most. At that level of demand, we have not found its equal.
The Soyuz 013 Ambisonic in brief
The 013 Ambisonic goes against the grain of its category: where most ambisonic microphones use small electret capsules, it carries four true 25 mm gold-sputtered condenser capsules, paired with four toroidal transformers built in-house. That is what explains the timbre Alexis describes — rich, warm, a long way from the clinical neutrality expected of an ambience microphone.
- Type: first-order ambisonic condenser
- Capsules: 4 x 25 mm gold-sputtered diaphragm
- Frequency response: 20 Hz – 20 kHz
- Sensitivity: 20 mV/Pa — impedance: 150 ohms
- Max SPL: 143 dB per capsule — self-noise: 16 dB (A)
- Power: 48 V phantom
- Dimensions: 207 x 42 mm — weight: 579 g
- Supplied with: wooden case, rigid mount, shock mount, 4x XLR breakout cable, 3 m extension and the Audio Brewers plugin bundle (A-B transcoder and decoder)
Availability and price
The Soyuz 013 Ambisonic is available at Cool Kids Audio for €2,999: https://coolkidsaudio.com/products/soyuz-013-ambisonic
Any questions about fitting it into your immersive production chain? Get in touch, we are happy to talk it through.
Thanks to Alexis Fabrigoule and everyone at Liveo. Photos: © Liveo.