Methods, systems, computer-readable media, and apparatuses for characterizing portions of a soundfield are presented. Some configurations include estimating a total energy of a soundfield associated with a scene space and, for each of at least some of a plurality of regions of the scene space, estimating an energy of a portion of the soundfield that corresponds to the region and creating a corresponding metadata field that indicates a location of the region within the space and a relation between the estimated total energy and the estimated energy that corresponds to the region.