On 14 March 2011 13:48, Matt Barber <brbrofsvl@gmail.com> wrote:

Ambisonics isn't necessarily overkill, but it only gets you direction,
not distance -- it's only a "1-dimensional" solution, in the sense
that you'd be panning around the outside of a circle but not to
locations within that circle. It's not terribly CPU expensive.
If you do want distance as well you can use some combination of delay,
low-pass filtering, and wet-dry mix of any reverb you happen to be
using (and if you want to get really ambitious, you can also simulate
individual room reflections). This starts to get CPU intensive
especially if you're going to be moving sounds around. If they just
stay in place, it's not as bad (and the [delwrite~] [vd~] model
doesn't actually model moving sources a certain distance from the
virtual "microphone" -- it models a moving microphone, so a simple Pd
solution isn't quite available).

Matt

> Hey all,
>
> So I'm still scratching my head with controlling audio panning in an x,y
> grid using 4 speakers.
>
> What, at first, seemed like a somewhat trivial problem, upon closer
> inspection ain't necessarily so.
>
> Does anyone have examples of panning with 4 speakers? About the only things
> I have found so far are:
> Building upon Hans' [pan_core~]
> [pan_quad~] from 'nSLAM', which seems to be unavailable for d/l
> The 'pd-tutorial' patch

> 3-9-3-1-spatial-quadro.pd<http://pd-tutorial.com/english/patches/3-9-3-1-spatial-quadro.pd>

>
> Anyone know about any others?
>
> My stereo panning is built upon the square root example in Andy Farnell's
> book, which I'm really happy with. Ideally I would like to expand upon
> that.
>
> Then of course there is the whole vbap/ambisonics/cubemixer (possible
> overkill) route too. My concerns before diving into this are threefold.
> 1. If it's only going to work for the 2 people in the 'sweet-spot' then
> what's the point? If it makes any difference I'm using some Bose 180
> degrees radiating speakers.
>
> 2. The piece is for a performer with electronics, with only the electronics
> coming out of the speakers. So I'm also wondering whether a 5.1 type setup
> with the performer as the front centre speaker (as such), may be preferable?
>
> 3. The piece requires 96 separate pan positions - how cpu intensive is that
> going to be? It currently works fine in stereo, which is why 2 lots of
> stereo in an x,y fashion seems initially preferable.
>
> I'm aware that it's pretty much impossible with this speaker setup to make
> everyone in the room have a similar audio experience, and also to map my
> visual masses from an msd swarm in the GEM window as audible points, but
> surely it is possible to do this as an x,y grid.
>
> I also admit that I don't understand the dsp theory necessary to make the
> x,y, grid idea happen so if anyone has some pointers regarding that I would
> be delighted.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jb