If you go back in the archives you will find posts where I and Fonz discuss 3 D playback rigs based on having 6 horisontal speakers that can be "reused" when playing back 3D.
Fons even made me a Ambdec config for 10 speakers I should be able to use with my MOTU traverer III The motu cards are recognized in recent verisions of firewire drivers. Avlinux is a good distribution to use for Linux Sound and Video. Regards Bo-Erik -----Original Message----- From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Carmichel Sent: den 23 december 2011 00:31 To: sursound@music.vt.edu Subject: [Sursound] Thanks for links, insights, etc. Greetings: Hello Michael C. and Fons A., Thank you for your detailed and informative responses to my questions. Fortunately, the speakers I have chosen are well-matched and have good response characteristics. I matched them some time ago; however, each speaker underwent testing at an identical location, not at their respective positions in my listening room. Because I am interested in three-dimensional Ambisonics, four of the eight speakers in the (current) octagonal array will have to be close to floor level: This is the only way to get moderately wide vertical separation without putting the listener in a high chair. I recently observed that speaker response (independent of room characteristics) changes because the floor imparts an affect (I believe more than just the proximity effect). Fortunately, large amounts of EQ aren't needed, and I'm mostly interested in smoothing the response in the 100 Hz to 10 kHz range. I'm a minimalist when it comes to audio. I was never one to use graphic EQs (or modern-day VSTs to achieve the same). I began building amplifiers while in grade school, and a 10 watt, class-A amp designed by J. Linsley Hood and described in Wireless World (1969-ish?) was a favorite of mine for many years. Later I built a class-A, push-pull VT amp with 300Bs and an interstage transformer. This was for my Lowthers. I never got into the single-ended stuff because it seemed easy to mitigate transformer core saturation issues with class-A push-pull designs that operated along the transfer characteristic as SE biasing. My point is this: I don't like too many things in the circuit path, and I only use EQ when absolutely necessary. However, measurements serve to "validate" my research findings, particularly when they're slated for publication or under scrutiny. If I use EQ, I try to use filter types that yield the best transient characteristics and minimal phase anomalies. I downloaded, as per your suggestions, the PowerPoint / PDF by J. Nettingsmeier. Looks like really good information. I will give it a thorough reading after Christmas. Thanks for recommending. RE MATLAB: Some of the cochlear implant (CI) simulations I do are simple phase vocoder scripts written in MATLAB. While in graduate school, my doc committee consisted of respected researchers (does W. Yost, M. Dorman, or S. Bacon ring a bell with anybody?) who were huge proponents of MATLAB. The general attitude was "if you can't do it in MATLAB, it isn't worth looking at; furthermore, if it requires hardware, we don't even want to look at it." Kind-of strange attitudes in my book, but I've always been more of a hardware person, whether it's digital or analog. I continue to do off-line wav processing in MATLAB because I can show the underlying math as well as the statistical outcome. More recently, I've been using Visual FORTRAN for projects. RE Linux: I'm mostly a PC (Windows) user, but I'm not one to argue about the superiority of one OS over another. I have a BIG investment in software, and I don't want to buy two versions of everything. It's bad enough keeping up with the latest Adobe media suite or incarnation of Windows. I've mostly stayed with PCs so that I get best support for my National Instruments DAQ hardware or other (legacy) devices. Because I have several computers, setting one up with Linux is no problem at all. I used to run Red Hat Linux on one machine, and I really did believe in the superiority of Macs when Windows 98 repeatedly crashed. Nowadays I'll use what works best or is accessible. So that I can experiment with Ambdec, I'll load Linux on a dedicated hard drive. My audio hardware consists mostly of MOTU FireWire interfaces, but I also have an Avid PC extension chassis that has four identical PCI SoundBlaster cards on it. I'm sure I can find ASIO drivers for Linux that will work with my MOTU gear. The SoundBlaster cards are generic enough to work with about any OS (maybe even OS2 Warp). I've been duly warned of the consequences of using more than six loudspeakers in a horizontal-only, first-order Ambisonic configuration. Thanks, Fons, for the very clear explanation. I do, however, want a flexible system because I'd like to move towards a 3-D setup (or higher-order Ambisonics via recordings made with an mh acoustics Eigenmic). Additionally, I have plans for an experiment that compares energetic versus informational masking of vocoded speech in the sound field, and I'll be using two quasi-independent 4-channel systems for this. When it comes to music enjoyment, I'll stick with your recommendation of six loudspeakers. Again, many thanks to all for the help! Sincerely, Eric -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20111222/dec78d4f/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
