On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Rick Snow <ricksnow@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Andr?s,

By Independent audio I meant audio generated from a pd patch or other computer application and diffused across the array of speakers, ie. not having all the speakers limited to playing the same sound like a PA system in a roller skating rink.

In general I was asking more of a hardware question: madi cards etc.  

As for software I've just learned that pd is limited to 32 channel dacs.  I guess networking several instances of pd will give you all the channels you need.

cheers,
Rick

OK, seems IOhannes already mentioned this in more comprehensive context: Wave Field Simulation. There are lots of papers out there, like this one from last year's AES conference: http://www.mattmontag.com/media/2011/10/AES-131-e-brief-Montag-Wave-Field-Synthesis-by-Multiple-Line-Arrays.pdf

I also doubt that Pd would be the best tool for this... networked computers may have a latency that just messes up all the precise timing. I guess you will need something timecoded, and/or low latency hardware, the latter possibly being so called "processors" or "speaker drivers" which are DSPs specifically designed to drive speaker arrays.

András