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.