Generally, techniques are described for performing vector-based synthesis with respect to higher order Ambisonics coefficients (or, in other words, spherical harmonic coefficients). A device including a processor may be configured to perform these techniques. The processor may perform vector-based synthesis with respect to spherical harmonic coefficients to produce decomposed representations of a plurality of spherical harmonic coefficients, and may determine directional information that is distinct from the directional information and background. The processor may then apply a compensation to reduce the order of the directional information associated with the background audio objects to generate the converted background directional information and to increase the values of the converted directional information to conserve the total energy of the sound field have.