Michael G Wagner | Audio Brewers: The Conversation

During a recent conference visit to Athens, I had the opportunity to tour Alejandro Cabrera's studio and discuss his work with Audio Brewers, one of the leading developers in the ambisonics space. The studio itself demonstrates serious commitment to audio quality, featuring a sophisticated "box within a box" isolation design that achieves 70-75 dB of sound reduction from the busy Athens streets outside. Alejandro walked me through his journey from sampling instruments to plugin development, culminating in his recent integration with Pro Tools—a significant milestone that brings ambisonic decoding directly into professional studio workflows. His approach reflects the practical needs of working engineers: the Pro Tools decoder strips away unnecessary complexity, requiring no manual configuration of speaker layouts or technical parameters.

Our conversation explored broader questions about immersive audio technologies and the value of ambisonics as a mathematical rather than proprietary framework. Alejandro's perspective as both artist and developer shapes how Audio Brewers designs its tools—prioritizing usability and automation over exposing every possible parameter. This stands in contrast to more engineering-focused plugin designs that can overwhelm creative workflows. We also touched on our respective musical backgrounds and how the intersection of artistic and technical knowledge continues to inform our work. For anyone interested in spatial audio, plugin development, or the practical implementation of ambisonics in professional contexts, this conversation offers insight into how these tools are actually built and deployed by someone working at that intersection.