In general techniques are described for obtaining spherical harmonic coefficients (SHC). A device comprising a processor and a memory may be configured to perform the techniques. The processor may obtain a set of coefficients of a vector representative a distinct component of a sound field the vector having been decomposed from SHC representative of the sound field. The processor may obtain a configuration mode by which to extract the coefficients where the configuration mode indicates that the coefficients include coefficients corresponding to an order greater than an order of a basis function to which one or more of the spherical harmonic coefficients correspond and exclude at least one of the coefficients corresponding to a greater order. The processor may extract the coefficients of the vector based on the obtained configuration mode. The memory may be configured to store the non-zero set of the coefficients of the vector.