Knowing nothing about this space, is there already a program that uses (wave based) sound simulation to allow music programming in an arbitrary 3d environment? This could go beyond mono and stereo :)
I once worked with a brilliant audio developer/wizard who used Ambisonics (among other things).
Watching him position his desk when we switched to a new (large and open) office space is something I'll never forget. He walked around in the middle-ish of the room, snapping his fingers and listening. Suddenly he said "This is it, I'll sit here", and so he did. :)
This one seems to be static to the listener position and require more hardware. Assuming only headphones are used, something like WAVE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibM3fz-P0Ac) could be used to simulate reflection, refraction, diffraction and interference effects. If the head is accurately tracked, I could imagine 3d directional sound programming in VR. Enter the Matrix rave ;)
I'm not sure I get what you mean by arbitrary 3d environment, but I know BT's album "This Binary Universe" is composed for 5.1, and the first track "All That Makes Us Human Continues" is written entirely in CSound.
A language with which the programmer can specify the static or dynamic three dimensional position of the sound sources, absolute or relative to the listener in a specified environment. The geometry of the environment can affect reverberation, amplitude etc.
Knowing nothing about this space, is there already a program that uses (wave based) sound simulation to allow music programming in an arbitrary 3d environment? This could go beyond mono and stereo :)