Acoustics Lab’s Test no 1

After some frustation of the initial tests, the firt sound spatialisation setup at the Kings Buildings’ Acoustic Lab is running!!

There are 6 speakers around distributed on this room that is about 10.5 x 6.5 m. The sound of some thunders rumbling is moving within the room, with the aplitude changing between the speakers. The goal is to create the illusion of distant rumbling moving from left to right and then backwards… and its going good!

More sounds were working, but right now only the soothing sound of distant thunders and rain is left. The voice of cars, birds, machines, and planes was muted some minutes ago, after confirming they were working on a saturated manner, all of them with movement, a total of 8 sound sources.

The spatialisation system is acquiring shape, and functionality. The sounds’ movement is automated, on a primitive way.

Current issues:

-On the first 3 or 4 runs, the different sound sources wouldn’t work, sometimes only after configuring their position in space, sometimes not at all. Now this problem is gone, hopefully it was the computer getting used to my intentions!

-The sub-woofer is not connected, I tried to plug it to the sound card, it worked on simple tests with max msp on the 7th output, controled like that (7th output), whereas the other outputs were controlled differently: the 3rd as the 1st, 4th as 2nd and so on. And when configured to follow this behavior the system was not reproducing sound to the woofer.

-The issue with the woofer might be that it is not connected properly; right now I’m using a jack to jack cable, but the input I am usint at the woofer says “Remote Control(FootSwitch)”.

Next steps:

-Create circular movement, and try to sophisticate the current movement automation system.

-Modify max patches to add user interfaces, making everything easier for the person using the patches, that includes speaker positions, sources’ movement, reverb control, virtual microphones directionality.

-Get accurate measurements of the room and speakers position.

-Do checking on the speakers’ levels, to make them equal.

-Get a TRS to XLR cable to connect the woofer to the sound card