AmbiX convention

AmbiX convention

For the AMBISONICS SYMPOSIUM 2011, on June 2-3 in Lexington, KY, Christian Nachbar, Franz Zotter, Etienne Deleflie and Alois Sontacchi made a proposal for an ambisonic format called "AmbiX".

"Ambisonics is a 3D audio surround rendering and representation approach based on spherical harmonics with loudspeaker independent transmission channels. Although it was developed in the seventies and the techniques are well known, there are disagreements how to normalize, store and exchange Ambisonic data.

This paper’s mission is to propose a standard for the Ambisonics community and it should be seen as an encouragement to use the proposed convention, in order to facilitate exchange and communication.
This standard is named ambiX (Ambisonics eXchangeable). [...]
[Source]

The AmbiX format is the most commonly used format, if it comes to ambisonic B-format files. 
Former there was the so called FuMa format, which is quite the same, except the different ordering of channels (e.g.: FuMA FOA: W, X, Y, Z  -  AmbiX FOA: W, Y, Z, X) 

The AmbiX format is free of any meta-data to keep things small and easy. 
This offeres also the advantage, that (almost) any conversion can be done by using simple matrixces.