Hello all,
I am assisting a professor right now with building a multi-speaker programmable "grid" where sound events can be triggered at certain locations on the grid and programmed in various configurations, controlled (hopefully) from Pd. The model right now involves two large metal frames where speakers will be hung in different shapes and clusters. We are looking to create a sort of "organism" structure that will allow the piece to react to itself based on parameters set up in Pd - microsound sort of self-sustaining structures and sound models are of great interest to us.
We're in the phase right now of gathering information about what we will need to build this - I'm assuming some kind of interface (sound card?) with multiple outs for each "cluster" of speakers on the grid, but is there another way we could do it and still make it fully programmable? We have experience with electronics as well, so we could conceivably build an interface if anyone knows of available schematics or ideas. Environment will be Linux, preferably.
I would really like to avoid purchasing a USB sound device as I hear that many of them don't do very well with Linux, but in the event that we do need to do this, can anyone recommend a good one supported under Linux?
Also, are there other artists doing similar things? Any info at all is MUCH appreciated. We are excited to be using Pd and other freedom software for this.
Thanks, Kevin
Hallo, Kevin McCoy hat gesagt: // Kevin McCoy wrote:
I am assisting a professor right now with building a multi-speaker programmable "grid" where sound events can be triggered at certain locations on the grid and programmed in various configurations, controlled (hopefully) from Pd. The model right now involves two large metal frames where speakers will be hung in different shapes and clusters. We are looking to create a sort of "organism" structure that will allow the piece to react to itself based on parameters set up in Pd - microsound sort of self-sustaining structures and sound models are of great interest to us.
We're in the phase right now of gathering information about what we will need to build this - I'm assuming some kind of interface (sound card?) with multiple outs for each "cluster" of speakers on the grid, but is there another way we could do it and still make it fully programmable? We have experience with electronics as well, so we could conceivably build an interface if anyone knows of available schematics or ideas. Environment will be Linux, preferably.
I would really like to avoid purchasing a USB sound device as I hear that many of them don't do very well with Linux, but in the event that we do need to do this, can anyone recommend a good one supported under Linux?
USB works very well with Linux, if you avoid M-Audio USB cards, but because the bandwidth is limited to basically 8 channels at 44.1kHz/16bit in one direction, it is not really useable for works that require more channels. PCI always is easier and better than USB, so if you don't need to run from a Laptop, you should prefer PCI anyways. It also is cheaper. M-Audio PCI cards are great, RME is popular for more channels.
If you need really many channels, but don't have much money available, Netjack may be a good place to check out: http://netjack.sourceforge.net
Netjack is an amazing piece of software to combine many soundcards into one big multichannel soundcard through a network (UDP) connection. The soundcards even can be in different machines.
Ciao
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__
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Frank Barknecht -
Kevin McCoy