Dome of the day

Listening room 'Mozart' at Fraunhaufer Ilmenau

Holy surround arrays, Batman!

The view from above [H.I.V.E. Project]

Here's a 2D sketch of what the HIVE looks like from above, a sort of 'floor plan' i created to figure out how many people would fit inside of it. From the diagram, it looks like capacity will max out at seven individuals. Note the computers and projector sit to the back and are exterior to the main listening area. The two amp racks are to the sides. Little circles indicate speakers, big circles indicate subwoofers.

Cool chair for surround-sound listening

Ok, so i came across this today, and am thinking it would be the perfect listening chair to use in the H.I.V.E. sweet spot. Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you - it is in fact an exact replica of Captain Kirk's chair. But just look at it - A low seat back to allow for delivery of a full, unobstructed periphonic audio experience to both ears. A raised platform to move the listener up vertically into the array center. A useful swivel base. And authentic control panels that could be hacked and re-purposed for soundfield control.

Sensorama - The First H.I.V.E.

"The Sensorama was a machine that is one of the earliest known examples of immersive, multi-sensory (now known as multimodal) technology. Morton Heilig, who today would be thought of as a “multimedia” specialist, in the 1950s saw theater as an activity that could encompass all the senses in an effective manner, thus drawing the viewer into the onscreen activity. He dubbed it “Experience Theater”, and detailed his vision of multi-sensory theater in his 1955 paper entitled “The Cinema of the Future” (Robinett 1994). In 1962 he built a prototype of his vision, dubbed the Sensorama, along with five short films to be displayed in it. Predating digital computing, the Sensorama was a mechanical device, which still functions today.

Howard Rheingold (in his 1992 book Virtual Reality) spoke of his trial of the Sensorama using a short film piece that detailed a bicycle ride through Brooklyn, created in the 1950s, and still seemed quite impressed by what it could do more than 40 years later. The Sensorama was able to display stereoscopic 3D images in a wide-angle view, provide body tilting, supply stereo sound, and also had tracks for wind and aromas to be triggered during the film. Oddly enough in hindsight, Heilig was unable to obtain financial backing for his visions and patents, and the Sensorama work was halted and today remains primarily a curiosity in the expansive lore of Virtual Reality." [Source: Wikipedia]

Beautiful spherical object for nuclear fusion

Today i had the opportunity to take a guided tour of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory. This newly completed research facility is home to the world's more powerful laser and was constructed for a very specific purpose: to create the world's first self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction. At the core of the apparatus lies a large, hollow, and strangely beautiful spherical structure, an object that would not entirely seem out of place if one were to stumble upon it on the playa at Burning Man. This is the NIF's main reaction chamber, where 192 separate high-energy laser beams will enter through points on the sphere surface, and converge with unimaginable precision on a single small pellet of deuterium-tritium 'fuel' placed at the exact center. This in theory will trigger ('ignite') a fusion reaction, in effect creating a tiny little star for a brief moment. Imagine the NIF as a giant, $4 billion dollar zippo lighter.

Of course, after taking a look inside of the thing, the first thing i thought was "I wonder if you could put a bunch of speakers in it and re-purpose it for 3D sound?" The chamber interior walls were actually covered with something that looked to me like Sonex, the stuff recording studios use to deaden sound reflections. In fact, the material was designed to eliminate light reflections, as our tour guide explained. So this thing actually was an anechoic chamber, but one that was free of light-echos. In a 'deep thoughts' kinda moment, i realized something rather interesting-- that this ignition chamber's primary purpose is to focus light waves in a very specific and phase-controlled manner, using laser 'transducers'. In an Ambisonic array, you are focusing sound waves in a very specific and phase-controlled manner, using speakers as the transducers. however, the subjective experience of sitting in the 'sweet spot' of the NIF could prove to be....intense.





Some photos:

The VirtuSphere

A nice example of a small, haptic VR gaming pod:

Ambisonic cinema of the future?

"Visionary French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée designs his Cenotaph for Newton, a giant sphere punctured by holes that create the illusion of suspended stars. He writes, “O Newton! … I conceived the idea of surrounding thee with thy discovery, and thus, somehow, surrounding thee with thyself. … From whatever side we look at this shape, no trick of perspective can alter the magnificence of its perfect form … as soft and as flowing as it is possible to imagine.” Similarly believing that the sphere represents the most perfect expression of the sublime, fellow French architects Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Jean-Jacques Lequeu, and Leon Vaudoyer all design spherical buildings during this period" (Cabinet :: A Minor History of Giant Spheres)

Étienne-Louis Boullée (February 12, 1728 — February 4, 1799) was a visionary French neoclassical architect whose work greatly influenced contemporary architects and is still influential today (Wikipedia)

Some conceptual drawings [H.I.V.E. Project]

Visio scale illustration (my weak attempt at 3D perspective) showing a 6-12-6 speaker arrangement:



Visio scale drawing of the planned truncated sphere-based structure, with dimensions:


Sketchup conceptual drawing showing scale of human in a 15' diameter sphere:



Sketchup model of base frame structure:

The Sound Bulb [Audio Tech]

Although this is just a CG mock-up, wouldn't it be perfect for creating surround arrays?

Or how about this one ?

Unbelievable deal on NAD 6-channel amps! [Audio Tech]

The NAD-9060 lists for $1600 new, and is currently available from Audio Advisor for $499.

I've purchased four of these for use in the H.I.V.E., they seem to be quite suitable for doing many-speaker surround installations.

Note that the 12-channel version, the NAD-9120, is still listed for $2799 from the same vendor.

Introducing the H.I.V.E. [H.I.V.E. Project]

The H.I.V.E. is the Haptic Immersive Virtual Environment. At its core are 24 speakers and 4 subwoofers arranged in a spherical geometry, to provide a full 3D periphonic audio experience. It is currently under construction in my loft space in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Specifications:

• The array speaker mounting structure will be a 'pod'-type design, with 3 horizontal rings fabricated out of 3" steel tubing.
• The array radius will be 7.5' / 2.3m.
• The middle ring will be 15' diameter.
• The 'above' ring and 'below' ring diameters will be (15' * 0.7071) = 10.6' / 3.23m
• The three rings will be connected to each other via 4 curved vertical tube struts, equally spaced around the horizontal plane, and bent to the same radius as the 15' middle ring.
• The bottom-most ring will sit about 3" off the ground on adjustable 'feet' for leveling.
• The vertical distance between each ring will be (10.6' / 2) = 5.3'. Using this dimension will allow for exactly +/- 45 degrees of vertical spacing between each row.
• The listening area will be the size of the lower ring - pi*(10.6'/2)^2 = 88 sq. ft. This should allow for about 7 people to stand or sit comfortably in the array, and at least 3 folks can be within the smaller sweet spot.
• The speaker positions will be flexible, but will be in a '6-12-6' configuration to begin with. This will allow for up to 5th order Ambisonic decoding in the horizontal plane. The system will allow for expansion up to 28 speakers, to implement a full 4th-order periphonic '8-12-8' configuration.
• There will be 4 subwoofers which will sit on the floor initially, but may eventually be mounted on the metal frame at some point.

Audio Components:

24 x KEF HTS3001SE satellite speakers with Uni-Q drivers
4 x KEF HTB2 subwoofers
4 x NAD 9060 6-channel amplifiers
4 x Aphex 141 8-channel DACs

Computers:

The front-end interface to the surround array will be a Mac Mini connected to an RME Fireface 800. The Mac Mini will run Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Traktor, Max/MSP, Bidule, etc... and will be able to accept up to 8 analog inputs and 16 ADAT inputs.

The Fireface will connect to an RME RayDat card installed a Linux-configured PC, via 2 x ADAT optical outs, for a total of 16 routable channels.

The Linux PC will be an Intel 2.4 GHZ Core2Duo machine in a silent (fanless) case running a 64Studio Linux distro.

The Linux PC will interface to the speaker array via 4 x ADAT outputs from the installed RayDAT card. These outputs will feed 4 x Aphex 141 D/A converters tied to the 4 x NAD 6-channel amplifiers and powered subwoofers.