Hi all,
I'm currently working on the early stages of an audio installation featuring around 46 independent sound sources. I would like to have good control of each individual sound source. On the other hand, I don't plan to send different audio streams to each source. What I have in mind is have about 16 audio streams routed more or less how I want to the 46 speakers.
My question is : what's the biggest audio setup that's been made with PD? I have no doubt it can handle 16 streams of audio gratiously, but could some sort of audio routing matrix be implemented in PD efficiently that would route 16 in to 46 out?
If any of you has already done something with so many audio outputs, could (s)he tell me what kind of audio gear was used? I need no quality components, because the speakers will be rather cheap.
Thanks in advance.
Carl Seleborg
Carl Seleborg wrote:
Hi all,
My question is : what's the biggest audio setup that's been made with PD? I have no doubt it can handle 16 streams of audio gratiously, but
me: 52 audio streams (I/O). and i am pretty sure that when writing the RME-MADI drivers wini successfully had it running with pd (which is 64 channels I/O)
could some sort of audio routing matrix be implemented in PD efficiently that would route 16 in to 46 out?
yes, but if you want to do routing only, most multichannel cards have a mixer on board (all of the RME HDSP + MADI series), which would allow you to do the routing with now CPU-cost at all. the mixer could be remote-controlled via the alsa-API. (oh, i am assuming you are running linux)
If any of you has already done something with so many audio outputs, could (s)he tell me what kind of audio gear was used? I need no quality components, because the speakers will be rather cheap.
you do need quality components, because you will only get professional multichannel hardware. while in theory, pd can handle multiple soundcards at the same time, in practice things are a bit more complicated: the soundcards will have to be synched, in order to not drift apart which would produce clicks and which is surely going to happen if they are not synched to the same clock. you will find, that cheap soundcards cannot easily be synched. professional ones can (that's part of what you are paying for)
if i were you, i would use 2 RME-hammerfall cards (9652 or HDSP), each providing 24 ADAT-channels (3 lightpipes). and whatever ADAT-dac's are available...
mfg.asd.r IOhannes