Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
On 05/23/2013 01:25 PM, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hello all, I want to start making a standalone 8 channel player (maybe more) - something that can be used in museums, festivals etc for sound installations that can just be turned on and will instantly start looping a multichannel composition on an sd card. At the moment I am using rather unwieldly setups of small computers and multi channel soundcards such as RME and motu. Cables can easily be jogged loose and it would be nice to have something more robust and that staff can easily just turn on and off. So I have looked into the arduino (only 12 bit audio) and the raspberry pi but neither seem suitable . Systems already avaailable are ludicrously expensive (1000s of euros) Has anyone got any ideas on the best way to go about this - is there something maybe Im missing with the raspberry pi/ arduino that could be customised ? Perhaps a custom made circuit board ? Ideas ? best, Gus i was thinking of looking into a raspberry pi combined with a usb 1.1 class compliant audio device such as the ESI Gigaport HD+. that's less than 200 euros in hardware for eight channels of output. the only downside to this setup is that the outputs are unbalanced rca. if necessary, two 4way DI boxes can be added at reasonable extra cost, but then those will be 10 times the size of the actual player unit... -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Hi Jörn, Thanks for making me aware of the unit - its a way better solution than buying a motu and a larger computer. do you think this will run all 8 channel on the rasberry pis version of linux ?I laid 20m long unbalanced RCA cables at the last installation wihout any problems so that should be ok. Im still going to have a crack at building my own standalone box eventually though , cheers, Gus On 27 May 2013 13:20, Jörn Nettingsmeier netti...@stackingdwarves.netwrote: On 05/23/2013 01:25 PM, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hello all, I want to start making a standalone 8 channel player (maybe more) - something that can be used in museums, festivals etc for sound installations that can just be turned on and will instantly start looping a multichannel composition on an sd card. At the moment I am using rather unwieldly setups of small computers and multi channel soundcards such as RME and motu. Cables can easily be jogged loose and it would be nice to have something more robust and that staff can easily just turn on and off. So I have looked into the arduino (only 12 bit audio) and the raspberry pi but neither seem suitable . Systems already avaailable are ludicrously expensive (1000s of euros) Has anyone got any ideas on the best way to go about this - is there something maybe Im missing with the raspberry pi/ arduino that could be customised ? Perhaps a custom made circuit board ? Ideas ? best, Gus i was thinking of looking into a raspberry pi combined with a usb 1.1 class compliant audio device such as the ESI Gigaport HD+. that's less than 200 euros in hardware for eight channels of output. the only downside to this setup is that the outputs are unbalanced rca. if necessary, two 4way DI boxes can be added at reasonable extra cost, but then those will be 10 times the size of the actual player unit... -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net __**_ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/**mailman/listinfo/sursoundhttps://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- 07580951119 augustine.leudar.com -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/68e1dca7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
I suspect it probably would run it if you don't use too high a sampling rate. Our old Unix based SGI O2's use to run 8 channels quite happily, even if the audio was sent over Ethernet using the server/client part of the TCL/Tk Snack audio toolkit. The processors in the Beagle boards are a bit quicker if the pi is just marginal. Dave On 27 May 2013 12:30, Augustine Leudar augustineleu...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Jörn, Thanks for making me aware of the unit - its a way better solution than buying a motu and a larger computer. do you think this will run all 8 channel on the rasberry pis version of linux ?I laid 20m long unbalanced RCA cables at the last installation wihout any problems so that should be ok. Im still going to have a crack at building my own standalone box eventually though , cheers, Gus On 27 May 2013 13:20, Jörn Nettingsmeier netti...@stackingdwarves.net wrote: On 05/23/2013 01:25 PM, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hello all, I want to start making a standalone 8 channel player (maybe more) - something that can be used in museums, festivals etc for sound installations that can just be turned on and will instantly start looping a multichannel composition on an sd card. At the moment I am using rather unwieldly setups of small computers and multi channel soundcards such as RME and motu. Cables can easily be jogged loose and it would be nice to have something more robust and that staff can easily just turn on and off. So I have looked into the arduino (only 12 bit audio) and the raspberry pi but neither seem suitable . Systems already avaailable are ludicrously expensive (1000s of euros) Has anyone got any ideas on the best way to go about this - is there something maybe Im missing with the raspberry pi/ arduino that could be customised ? Perhaps a custom made circuit board ? Ideas ? best, Gus i was thinking of looking into a raspberry pi combined with a usb 1.1 class compliant audio device such as the ESI Gigaport HD+. that's less than 200 euros in hardware for eight channels of output. the only downside to this setup is that the outputs are unbalanced rca. if necessary, two 4way DI boxes can be added at reasonable extra cost, but then those will be 10 times the size of the actual player unit... -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net __**_ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/**mailman/listinfo/sursound https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- 07580951119 augustine.leudar.com -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/68e1dca7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- As of 1st October 2012, I have retired from the University, so this disclaimer is redundant These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer Dave Malham Ex-Music Research Centre Department of Music The University of York Heslington York YO10 5DD UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/28c27690/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
I should have pointed out that the output boards were connected via the O2's PCi bus and were only 16 bit/48k - but then the processor's clock was only 180 MHz (iirc) in the machines we had. Dave On 27 May 2013 12:30, Augustine Leudar augustineleu...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Jörn, Thanks for making me aware of the unit - its a way better solution than buying a motu and a larger computer. do you think this will run all 8 channel on the rasberry pis version of linux ?I laid 20m long unbalanced RCA cables at the last installation wihout any problems so that should be ok. Im still going to have a crack at building my own standalone box eventually though , cheers, Gus On 27 May 2013 13:20, Jörn Nettingsmeier netti...@stackingdwarves.net wrote: On 05/23/2013 01:25 PM, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hello all, I want to start making a standalone 8 channel player (maybe more) - something that can be used in museums, festivals etc for sound installations that can just be turned on and will instantly start looping a multichannel composition on an sd card. At the moment I am using rather unwieldly setups of small computers and multi channel soundcards such as RME and motu. Cables can easily be jogged loose and it would be nice to have something more robust and that staff can easily just turn on and off. So I have looked into the arduino (only 12 bit audio) and the raspberry pi but neither seem suitable . Systems already avaailable are ludicrously expensive (1000s of euros) Has anyone got any ideas on the best way to go about this - is there something maybe Im missing with the raspberry pi/ arduino that could be customised ? Perhaps a custom made circuit board ? Ideas ? best, Gus i was thinking of looking into a raspberry pi combined with a usb 1.1 class compliant audio device such as the ESI Gigaport HD+. that's less than 200 euros in hardware for eight channels of output. the only downside to this setup is that the outputs are unbalanced rca. if necessary, two 4way DI boxes can be added at reasonable extra cost, but then those will be 10 times the size of the actual player unit... -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net __**_ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/**mailman/listinfo/sursound https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- 07580951119 augustine.leudar.com -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/68e1dca7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- As of 1st October 2012, I have retired from the University, so this disclaimer is redundant These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer Dave Malham Ex-Music Research Centre Department of Music The University of York Heslington York YO10 5DD UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/f87363e9/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
On 2013-05-27, Dave Malham wrote: I should have pointed out that the output boards were connected via the O2's PCi bus and were only 16 bit/48k - but then the processor's clock was only 180 MHz (iirc) in the machines we had. If I'm not wrong, the O2 had a pretty decent I/O architecture apart from its processor, too. That makes a big difference for data heavy and latency sensitive operations like pushing multichannel around, and obviously power efficiency too, if we're talking about the modern situation. I dunno what the situation is with pi, there, but provided it does anything comparable to standard PC practice, it'll have even more powerful DMA and bus mastering facilities than anything in the earlier SGI arsenal. Not necessarily in too clean of a design, but still with plenty of autonomous bandwidth to go around. -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - de...@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front +358-50-5756111, 025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
That would be fine - there seems to be considerable debate amongst engineers as to whether higher sampling rates than 48k are worth using anyway On 27 May 2013 16:00, Dave Malham dave.mal...@york.ac.uk wrote: I should have pointed out that the output boards were connected via the O2's PCi bus and were only 16 bit/48k - but then the processor's clock was only 180 MHz (iirc) in the machines we had. Dave On 27 May 2013 12:30, Augustine Leudar augustineleu...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Jörn, Thanks for making me aware of the unit - its a way better solution than buying a motu and a larger computer. do you think this will run all 8 channel on the rasberry pis version of linux ?I laid 20m long unbalanced RCA cables at the last installation wihout any problems so that should be ok. Im still going to have a crack at building my own standalone box eventually though , cheers, Gus On 27 May 2013 13:20, Jörn Nettingsmeier netti...@stackingdwarves.net wrote: On 05/23/2013 01:25 PM, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hello all, I want to start making a standalone 8 channel player (maybe more) - something that can be used in museums, festivals etc for sound installations that can just be turned on and will instantly start looping a multichannel composition on an sd card. At the moment I am using rather unwieldly setups of small computers and multi channel soundcards such as RME and motu. Cables can easily be jogged loose and it would be nice to have something more robust and that staff can easily just turn on and off. So I have looked into the arduino (only 12 bit audio) and the raspberry pi but neither seem suitable . Systems already avaailable are ludicrously expensive (1000s of euros) Has anyone got any ideas on the best way to go about this - is there something maybe Im missing with the raspberry pi/ arduino that could be customised ? Perhaps a custom made circuit board ? Ideas ? best, Gus i was thinking of looking into a raspberry pi combined with a usb 1.1 class compliant audio device such as the ESI Gigaport HD+. that's less than 200 euros in hardware for eight channels of output. the only downside to this setup is that the outputs are unbalanced rca. if necessary, two 4way DI boxes can be added at reasonable extra cost, but then those will be 10 times the size of the actual player unit... -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net __**_ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/**mailman/listinfo/sursound https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- 07580951119 augustine.leudar.com -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/68e1dca7/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- As of 1st October 2012, I have retired from the University, so this disclaimer is redundant These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer Dave Malham Ex-Music Research Centre Department of Music The University of York Heslington York YO10 5DD UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/f87363e9/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- 07580951119 augustine.leudar.com -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130527/b8ccddd3/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
On 2013-05-27, Augustine Leudar wrote: That would be fine - there seems to be considerable debate amongst engineers as to whether higher sampling rates than 48k are worth using anyway In that debate, I'd take a look at the Acoustical Reneissance for Audio position paper, aimed at influencing the rates and bitdepths of DVD-A, at the time. (http://www.meridian.co.uk/ara/araconta.htm) The limits it sets out says 48k is mostly enough, 56k is most certainly okay for anything and everything, so that of the commonly used rates at least 88.2kHz minimally covers it all with a large margin. It also makes it clear that 24 bits at that rate would be much more than necessary. Many fewer bits suffice, and if you think about the final distribution format, where you can apply in-band noise shaping willy-nilly, as few as 12 bits might just suffice. That paper then came from a bunch of pretty believable people. Not only ambisonically knowledgeable people, but folks recognized by e.g. the AES as being knowledgeable about PCM tech; it ain't under Meridian's site for no reason... So, do take a look at their analysis every time you choose PCM rates and depths, and if you doubt the analysis, read through their references and all of the papers within the audio literature which have since referred them. I mean, I for one consider their rationale pretty much the best that is out there, and few have seriously disagreed with the total body of work around theirs, even to date. -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - de...@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front +358-50-5756111, 025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Are you familiar with the JoeCo Blackbox Player? http://www.joeco.co.uk/main/BBP_models.html Len Moskowitz (mosko...@core-sound.com) Core Sound LLC www.core-sound.com Home of TetraMic ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
On 2013-05-27, David Pickett wrote: Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that the reference in this documents to 12 bits concerns an already packed signal, which needs to start off at a higher bit rate. That's right. What they talk about is the final distribution format, where you can do willy-nilly in-band noise shaping. If you don't do that, but try to just go with a rectangular rate-depth window, then it's going to be something like 56kS/s times 19-20b/S. That is what you pretty much have to do in any case in intermediate formats where you expect that your signal will be processed again, because otherwise you'll *certainly* end up with recodig artifacts and noise accumulation even with this sort of plain, minimal, PCM. (I've been coding a little something in the subtractive dither vein, which might help here. But even that doesn't fully take away the basic problem. Subtractive dither can take away all of a single quantized PCM channel's distortions, but it can't negate all of the noise accumulation over multiple requantizations.) The BBC did a study years ago and I seem to recall that they decided that the worst case was the dynamic range of big band jazz which, they determined needed 20 bits of linear PCM. The numbers I'm citing are for the absolute worst case. That is, so that the loudest sound you are able to reproduce breaks your eardrums, and the softest sounds are just below the hearing threshold. Be that as it may, somethin likeg 24/96, as a simple rectangular window, is always and everywhere just perfect. The only reason we ever need over 16 bits is if we want to cater to those with anechoic rooms. The only reason we would ever want to sample at over 40kHz is because certain very young individuals at some point in their life apparently can just hear upto 25kHz, momentarily, and so we need 50kHz sampling plus a small relative margin of error so as to do the anti-aliasing filters right. 24/96 is already twice as much even as a non-shaped format, but perhaps has to be chosen evenso if we want to be sure it's transparent; as the next common format which includes both sufficient sampling rate and sufficiently low self-noise to truly cover even the most nastiest of circumstances. If nothing else, we can be fully sure nothing above that will *ever* be needed even if we just treat it as a naively, TPDF-dithered, somewhat frequency limited at the upper end channel. As far as sample rate is concerned, I agree about 48kHz before sampling, but there are a lot of 15ips tapes that sound excellent but which hardly made it to 20kHz. Yes. And I repeat: the above numbers are the absolute, awesomest, most special case which covers the best known cases of child prodigy put in a below-measurement-floor-quiet room as well. For every practical application something like 36kHz/20bits would already suffice, even in a rectangular channel, and in-band noise shaping could bring that back into 40/14 or so. The above numbers are the absolute worst case ones for a rectangular, non-shaped channels. -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - de...@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front +358-50-5756111, 025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
On 27 May 2013, at 21:23, Sampo Syreeni de...@iki.fi wrote: 24/96 is already twice as much even as a non-shaped format, but perhaps has to be chosen evenso if we want to be sure it's transparent; as the next common format which includes both sufficient sampling rate and sufficiently low self-noise to truly cover even the most nastiest of circumstances. If nothing else, we can be fully sure nothing above that will *ever* be needed even if we just treat it as a naively, TPDF-dithered, somewhat frequency limited at the upper end channel. One notable exception: pitch processing e.g. in a sampler when sort of slow down playback, or digital spinning of disks by DJs etc. Also, digital volume controls may benefit from higher than 20-bit word length. But one would think capture at 96/24 should cover 98% of all scenarios, particularly since DJs rarely spin chamber music. Different story with scientific recordings of sound, think bat or whale studies, but that an entirely different game. Sent from my mobile phone ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] Brahma2 recordings
this is for people to know that I have posted a recording made with my modified ZoomH2N. The A format recording was processed with Angelo's Brahmavolver (with filters designed for another 14 mm microphone array) and David McGriffy's VVMic to convert to stereo. The file is on soundcloud, in my name, and called Mana Lijo. it is also a nice piece of music. (I made a mistake in my previous recording with this set up, which made the image uncertain.) umashankar -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130528/35331f0b/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
