Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch PLayer
Found a price indication on the other USB to I2S module, a bit high 250 Euro second hand :-) This is a bit more reasonable. http://www.amanero.com/ 79 Euro + vat and postage + Batches 60+ € 39 If we don't look in to assembling modules, then if someone does all the work for free, then the actual hardware cost could be low. Found I had not sent this... Bo-Erik ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
My two penny worth... On 15ips tape - yes, this is fairly limited in one way, that 20 k or less was often the cut-off frequency, that was the 3dB point, but the roll off was very slow, often only 6dB per Octave at first until near the first extinction point caused by the head gap so it doesn't have the artefacts of the brickwall filters on an apparently similar bandwidth 44/48 k digital system. As a result it generally sounds nicer even though less accurate. Used creatively this can be a positive boon, but it remains far more distinguishable from the original sounds from the mics than even a modest digital recorder like the original pcmf1. On what is needed - I am always dubious about things when people say this is all that is needed. I can't help remembering that every major advance in recording technology, cylinder-disk, mechanical-electrical, disk-tape, shellac-vinyl, vinyl-CD has been accompanied by claims of indistinguishable from the real thing. On the other hand, we do have more real scientific evidence these days. I'm quite happy to use 16/48 (properly dithered) in a concert situation (often had to in the past because we had to use Adat light pipe converters) but I would only use it for recording if I had absolutely no choice. I would normally go for 24/96 for that unless I was absolutely sure no processing would happen to the sound afterwards. incidentally, I'm surprised that the Beeb came up with Jazz as the worst case dynamic range - obviously never came up against electro-acoustic music! Anyway, I don't know why people worry any longer - memory is so ridiculously cheap so why not just do the best you can? The first digital audio workstation we had was based on a PDP11 16 bit computer running Music 11 and it had the grand total of 5 megabytes (yes, 5,000,000 bytes) on two RK05 hard drives. They cost over a thousand pounds second hand - I have several terabytes on my home machine which cost, in all, about half that. The great thing about earlier (analogue) systems is that the recording process generally captured more than the contemporaneous replay systems could reproduce - why save pennies on digital systems to reverse that? Dave On 28 May 2013 03:41, Ronald C.F. Antony r...@cubiculum.com wrote: 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 -- 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/20130528/b21b9acc/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Apparently the reason that above 48 khz is frowned on by some is nothing to do with niquist/the range of human hearing etc but rather distortions in reproduction equipment when using very high sample rates that can introduce artifacts and actually make things sound worse. This article makes this point and evewn includes some experiments and filesw you can use to test on your own eqwuipment to see if these artifacts are produced on your system : http://productionadvice.co.uk/high-sample-rates-make-your-music-sound-worse/ As for bit rate - well most people agree, especially in the mixing stages, a higher bit rate is a good thing. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130528/416522cb/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
At 02:03 28/5/2013, Dave Malham wrote: On 15ips tape - yes, this is fairly limited in one way, that 20 k or less was often the cut-off frequency, that was the 3dB point, but the roll off was very slow, often only 6dB per Octave at first until near the first extinction point caused by the head gap so it doesn't have the artefacts of the brickwall filters on an apparently similar bandwidth 44/48 k digital system. As Dave implicitly states, the frequency response of analog tape is limited by the playback gap length. However, while the peak of this response is usually around 15kHz, the first zero output is only an octave higher and thus the slope has to be quite steep. (I have no access to graphs at present.) But it does sound good! David ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
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
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch PLayer
For info, some approx prices ( inc uk vat); Beaglebone£36 AM3359 CPU £30 ADAU1966 DAC (16 channel 24 bit balanced out, 200kHz £13 (yes that's thirteen...) The evaluation board for the DAC is around £250 so not a viable option for production but a good way of trying it out as it goes to a standard loom with D type connectors at one end and xlr's at the other. Particularly in terms of the DAC, I don't think daisy chaining of cheaper stereo units could possibly be cheaper, though if you wanted to go for 8 channel chunks there's the AD1933/4 at about half the price of adau1966. Dave On 24 May 2013 09:36, Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com wrote: Sampo à écrit: Seriously, if even this kind of a list really wanted to make something happen, we could easily forget about PLAs, FPGAs, Arms, Intels and everything else. The price of a pure pedal-to-the-metal ASIC is so low, and it's allure so great to major hardware manufacturers (if done right), that we could actually jump to that final semiconductor technology right now. Seriously. :) ___ I'm usually negative about IP (patents, registered designs, ...), but an anecdote: Knew a zoologist who invented a wonderful gadget. Published the design. Then went to a manufacturer. They agreed it was wonderful, but said that tooling up to make it did not make commercial sense, as once they'd 'created the market' they would be undercut and they'd lose out. So if you want to be sure of a manufacturer you may need to be able to licence it. Sure you can insist on sensible pricing as part of the licence (and not take any revenue oneself ...). Michael PS Minor point,not worth responding at the time: But my 'daisy-chaining' argument did involve a 'chain', i.e. a bit of wire between boxes ... for the synch, the clock, whatever ... MC ___ 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/20130524/5faf7979/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch PLayer
Sampo, the problem with ASIC is you have to spend millions to get a working chip. FPGA is much, much more flexible and basically the stepping stone to designing ASIC (i.e. a lot of the tools are the same, but if you screw up you can just reflash instead of having to order a new chip). So its worth creating FPGA before going to ASIC; it is still much cheaper (and obviously more flexible) if you will be making less than 100,000 (?) chips. That's why people like Studer or Digico use FPGA in their mixers. In the case of Studer, you can reflash the whole desk and exactly choose the number of buses, channels, processing, etc... Also for what its worth, none of these configurable chip technologies are quite as simple as you make them out to be. Yeah, you can write code, but you need to take a lot of other stuff into account before your design will run. Like timing. For example, if there is some sequence of logic operations (multipliers, memory reads, etc...), can it actually complete in the period of one clock cycle? Sometimes that period can be as small as 1ns. Compile time can be 45 minutes even for simple stuff. Sometimes modules will simulate fine but not actually run in hardware (requiring more equipment to debug). Although its way easier than EE/old-school IC design, you still can't be 'just' writing code (for that you may as well use ARM/x86). You can get an FPGA dev board with plenty of oomph and high speed USB for $60, but you'll have a hell of a time squeezing any complex C-compiled code on there. If you are interested in higher level FPGA design tools, check out Bluespechttp://csg.csail.mit.edu/pubs/memos/Bluespec/chipdesign.pdf (also here http://www.bluespec.com/high-level-synthesis-tools.html). I haven't used it myself, but it is supposed to be pretty useful. Otherewise, VHDL or Verilog are the way to go. Intel has some cheap Atom dev boards with both FPGA and 1.6Ghz Atom, network, PCI, etc... I haven't had great experience putting audio on ARM platforms if anything else is happening at the same time (like control, network streaming, etc...). But most of our ARM experiments have been on phones and raspberry pi, so that's probably not the best platform. Digging up code from 4 years ago for those who are (still) interested, will try to get it up beginning of next week if I can track it all down. Ben On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 7:21 AM, Dave Malham dave.mal...@york.ac.uk wrote: For info, some approx prices ( inc uk vat); Beaglebone£36 AM3359 CPU £30 ADAU1966 DAC (16 channel 24 bit balanced out, 200kHz £13 (yes that's thirteen...) The evaluation board for the DAC is around £250 so not a viable option for production but a good way of trying it out as it goes to a standard loom with D type connectors at one end and xlr's at the other. Particularly in terms of the DAC, I don't think daisy chaining of cheaper stereo units could possibly be cheaper, though if you wanted to go for 8 channel chunks there's the AD1933/4 at about half the price of adau1966. Dave On 24 May 2013 09:36, Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com wrote: Sampo à écrit: Seriously, if even this kind of a list really wanted to make something happen, we could easily forget about PLAs, FPGAs, Arms, Intels and everything else. The price of a pure pedal-to-the-metal ASIC is so low, and it's allure so great to major hardware manufacturers (if done right), that we could actually jump to that final semiconductor technology right now. Seriously. :) ___ I'm usually negative about IP (patents, registered designs, ...), but an anecdote: Knew a zoologist who invented a wonderful gadget. Published the design. Then went to a manufacturer. They agreed it was wonderful, but said that tooling up to make it did not make commercial sense, as once they'd 'created the market' they would be undercut and they'd lose out. So if you want to be sure of a manufacturer you may need to be able to licence it. Sure you can insist on sensible pricing as part of the licence (and not take any revenue oneself ...). Michael PS Minor point,not worth responding at the time: But my 'daisy-chaining' argument did involve a 'chain', i.e. a bit of wire between boxes ... for the synch, the clock, whatever ... MC ___ 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:
[Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
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 -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/a1018ada/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/46a19a71/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Hi Michael , been there done that - I synced up multiple stereo players that automatically start playing on power on on many occasions - however I dont want to do that anymore partly because the SD card players that start playing on powerup are expensive and because I dont trust the timing and partly becuase I dont want to mess around with lots of boxes and power supllies etc - I just want to have one box not lots synced together - thus this post. If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ 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/20130523/3efce1af/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Hi Alexis, yes the box would need DA converters if thats what you mean. I am thinking 8 outputs to start with min 16 bit 44.1 but it would be nice to have something that could be easily customisable for more On 23 May 2013 14:08, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com wrote: Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/46a19a71/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/20130523/92db3b54/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 am working on a system that can drive 40 or so channels based on a zynq 7020 processor. The zedboard which is the dev kit i am working with costs 320 for academics and ~400 for commercial uses. This will then drive a series of dac boards that I am working on. They are likely to cost about 200 each for 8 channels (ESS). Cheaper dac boards could be invisiged, or even direct driving digital class D modulators. I am mainly working on the player-control hardware. Regards. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hi Alexis, yes the box would need DA converters if thats what you mean. I am thinking 8 outputs to start with min 16 bit 44.1 but it would be nice to have something that could be easily customisable for more On 23 May 2013 14:08, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com javascript:; javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/46a19a71/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; 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/20130523/92db3b54/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/f309bbc8/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 have some FPGA code to drive 4 and 8 channel Burr Brown DACs (PCM3168a, PCM1608) I could pass along. It's quite messy and I haven't worked on it in a while (4 years) but it also implements a 3rd order ambisonic encoder/decoder and streaming input via USB. The coefficients are all stored in a LUT in onboard memory to avoid lots of multiplication/trig. It wouldn't be too hard to modify it to grab wavs from an SD card. I've been using the Nexys2 platform from digilent. FPGALink is a pretty cool USB library that does highspeed IO. PCM3168 is a tough chip to solder though... Ben On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com wrote: I am working on a system that can drive 40 or so channels based on a zynq 7020 processor. The zedboard which is the dev kit i am working with costs 320 for academics and ~400 for commercial uses. This will then drive a series of dac boards that I am working on. They are likely to cost about 200 each for 8 channels (ESS). Cheaper dac boards could be invisiged, or even direct driving digital class D modulators. I am mainly working on the player-control hardware. Regards. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hi Alexis, yes the box would need DA converters if thats what you mean. I am thinking 8 outputs to start with min 16 bit 44.1 but it would be nice to have something that could be easily customisable for more On 23 May 2013 14:08, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com javascript:; javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/46a19a71/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; 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/20130523/92db3b54/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/f309bbc8/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/7d26099c/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'm working on having this implement a 4th order ambisonic decoder. The cool thing here is that there is a dual core arm processor on board that can run linux, so I can have a 40 or more channel hardware interface and have it act as an output that takes a 4th order ambisonic signal from software. Or at least that is the idea. There actually seems to be enough io to output to well over 100 channels. And there Is a heap of DSP resources on this thing. I don't know how popular this would be or how much time it will take, however there Is a huge amount that can be done here. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Ben Bloomberg wrote: I have some FPGA code to drive 4 and 8 channel Burr Brown DACs (PCM3168a, PCM1608) I could pass along. It's quite messy and I haven't worked on it in a while (4 years) but it also implements a 3rd order ambisonic encoder/decoder and streaming input via USB. The coefficients are all stored in a LUT in onboard memory to avoid lots of multiplication/trig. It wouldn't be too hard to modify it to grab wavs from an SD card. I've been using the Nexys2 platform from digilent. FPGALink is a pretty cool USB library that does highspeed IO. PCM3168 is a tough chip to solder though... Ben On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.comjavascript:; wrote: I am working on a system that can drive 40 or so channels based on a zynq 7020 processor. The zedboard which is the dev kit i am working with costs 320 for academics and ~400 for commercial uses. This will then drive a series of dac boards that I am working on. They are likely to cost about 200 each for 8 channels (ESS). Cheaper dac boards could be invisiged, or even direct driving digital class D modulators. I am mainly working on the player-control hardware. Regards. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hi Alexis, yes the box would need DA converters if thats what you mean. I am thinking 8 outputs to start with min 16 bit 44.1 but it would be nice to have something that could be easily customisable for more On 23 May 2013 14:08, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.comjavascript:;javascript:; wrote: Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com javascript:;javascript:; javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:; javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130523/46a19a71/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:; 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/20130523/92db3b54/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:;
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Hi I would love to get any code, schematics or any other information you can release on this. I would some day like to try and combine low cost FPGA chips and many channels of DA chips to build simple multiple of 8 channel sound cards that could receive channels over adat, i2s or just a multichannel pcm stream. Preferably avoiding going via expensive intermediate interfaces. I thing a RPi as a multichannel player with simple interface to a FPGA based ambisonic decoder with loadbale speaker configurations would be a very neat thing. Best Regards Bo-Erik Sandholm -Original Message- From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Ben Bloomberg Sent: den 23 maj 2013 15:28 To: Surround Sound discussion group Subject: Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player I have some FPGA code to drive 4 and 8 channel Burr Brown DACs (PCM3168a, PCM1608) I could pass along. It's quite messy and I haven't worked on it in a while (4 years) but it also implements a 3rd order ambisonic encoder/decoder and streaming input via USB. The coefficients are all stored in a LUT in onboard memory to avoid lots of multiplication/trig. It wouldn't be too hard to modify it to grab wavs from an SD card. I've been using the Nexys2 platform from digilent. FPGALink is a pretty cool USB library that does highspeed IO. PCM3168 is a tough chip to solder though... Ben On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com wrote: I am working on a system that can drive 40 or so channels based on a zynq 7020 processor. The zedboard which is the dev kit i am working with costs 320 for academics and ~400 for commercial uses. This will then drive a series of dac boards that I am working on. They are likely to cost about 200 each for 8 channels (ESS). Cheaper dac boards could be invisiged, or even direct driving digital class D modulators. I am mainly working on the player-control hardware. Regards. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hi Alexis, yes the box would need DA converters if thats what you mean. I am thinking 8 outputs to start with min 16 bit 44.1 but it would be nice to have something that could be easily customisable for more On 23 May 2013 14:08, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com javascript:; javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/2013052 3/46a19a71/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; 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/2013052 3/92db3b54/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
That sounds awesome and very useful. This system was intended to be very, very low cost with home-theater grade DACs. The whole thing including processing and DACs is intended to be under $200 for up to 32 channels to put this stuff in the hands of high school and academic theaters, who could buy this and use it instead of an audio interface. FPGA are great for this kind of thing because much of the heavy lifting can happen in parallel on the chip. Anyway, then I started doing larger scale stuff and sort of dropped the project. But all the pieces are still there... Ben On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 9:38 AM, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com wrote: I'm working on having this implement a 4th order ambisonic decoder. The cool thing here is that there is a dual core arm processor on board that can run linux, so I can have a 40 or more channel hardware interface and have it act as an output that takes a 4th order ambisonic signal from software. Or at least that is the idea. There actually seems to be enough io to output to well over 100 channels. And there Is a heap of DSP resources on this thing. I don't know how popular this would be or how much time it will take, however there Is a huge amount that can be done here. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Ben Bloomberg wrote: I have some FPGA code to drive 4 and 8 channel Burr Brown DACs (PCM3168a, PCM1608) I could pass along. It's quite messy and I haven't worked on it in a while (4 years) but it also implements a 3rd order ambisonic encoder/decoder and streaming input via USB. The coefficients are all stored in a LUT in onboard memory to avoid lots of multiplication/trig. It wouldn't be too hard to modify it to grab wavs from an SD card. I've been using the Nexys2 platform from digilent. FPGALink is a pretty cool USB library that does highspeed IO. PCM3168 is a tough chip to solder though... Ben On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: I am working on a system that can drive 40 or so channels based on a zynq 7020 processor. The zedboard which is the dev kit i am working with costs 320 for academics and ~400 for commercial uses. This will then drive a series of dac boards that I am working on. They are likely to cost about 200 each for 8 channels (ESS). Cheaper dac boards could be invisiged, or even direct driving digital class D modulators. I am mainly working on the player-control hardware. Regards. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hi Alexis, yes the box would need DA converters if thats what you mean. I am thinking 8 outputs to start with min 16 bit 44.1 but it would be nice to have something that could be easily customisable for more On 23 May 2013 14:08, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com javascript:;javascript:; wrote: Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.comjavascript:;javascript:; javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:; javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Cool I'll put things on Github ! Ben On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Bo-Erik Sandholm bo-erik.sandh...@ericsson.com wrote: Hi I would love to get any code, schematics or any other information you can release on this. I would some day like to try and combine low cost FPGA chips and many channels of DA chips to build simple multiple of 8 channel sound cards that could receive channels over adat, i2s or just a multichannel pcm stream. Preferably avoiding going via expensive intermediate interfaces. I thing a RPi as a multichannel player with simple interface to a FPGA based ambisonic decoder with loadbale speaker configurations would be a very neat thing. Best Regards Bo-Erik Sandholm -Original Message- From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Ben Bloomberg Sent: den 23 maj 2013 15:28 To: Surround Sound discussion group Subject: Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player I have some FPGA code to drive 4 and 8 channel Burr Brown DACs (PCM3168a, PCM1608) I could pass along. It's quite messy and I haven't worked on it in a while (4 years) but it also implements a 3rd order ambisonic encoder/decoder and streaming input via USB. The coefficients are all stored in a LUT in onboard memory to avoid lots of multiplication/trig. It wouldn't be too hard to modify it to grab wavs from an SD card. I've been using the Nexys2 platform from digilent. FPGALink is a pretty cool USB library that does highspeed IO. PCM3168 is a tough chip to solder though... Ben On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com wrote: I am working on a system that can drive 40 or so channels based on a zynq 7020 processor. The zedboard which is the dev kit i am working with costs 320 for academics and ~400 for commercial uses. This will then drive a series of dac boards that I am working on. They are likely to cost about 200 each for 8 channels (ESS). Cheaper dac boards could be invisiged, or even direct driving digital class D modulators. I am mainly working on the player-control hardware. Regards. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Augustine Leudar wrote: Hi Alexis, yes the box would need DA converters if thats what you mean. I am thinking 8 outputs to start with min 16 bit 44.1 but it would be nice to have something that could be easily customisable for more On 23 May 2013 14:08, Alexis Shaw alexis.s...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: Do you need internal dacs. How many channels do you need implemented. I am working on a solution to the same problem at the moment. On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Marc Lavallée wrote: That's an interesting idea: clustering Raspberry Pis with cheap 8 channels usb modules and jackd2. -- Marc Michael Chapman s...@mchapman.com javascript:; javascript:; a écrit : 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 If you are thinking of wider applications I would really encourage you to go modular ... that is daisy chainable devices: 2+2+2+2 = 8 4+4 = 8 2+2+2+2+ ... = maybe more even if it is 8+ ... = maybe more Good hunting, Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/2013052 3/46a19a71/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu javascript:; https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- 07580951119 augustine.leudar.com -- next part -- An HTML
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch player
Thanks Ben and Alexis ! Great info - Ben I would definitely be interested in that code - Alexis your project sounds amazing (; best, Gus ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch PLayer
then a breakout box to take the 8 channels of audio to analogue? Simon Edmonds Logic Workshop Limited | Strategic, Technical Creative Marketing Services Ty Llwyd House | Nantyderry | Abergavenny | Monmouthshire | NP7 9DG | UK M: +44 (0)7740 194680 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch PLayer
Ooops - I'll try that again Raspberry Pi has HDMI HDMI supports 8 channels of HD digital audio then a breakout box to take the 8 channels of audio to analogue? Simon Edmonds Logic Workshop Limited | Strategic, Technical Creative Marketing Services Ty Llwyd House | Nantyderry | Abergavenny | Monmouthshire | NP7 9DG | UK M: +44 (0)7740 194680 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch PLayer
On 23/05/2013 17:17, Simon Edmonds wrote: Ooops - I'll try that again Raspberry Pi has HDMI HDMI supports 8 channels of HD digital audio I wasted a lot of time trying. I think the RPi only supports two channels on HDMI, or did six months ago. Jackd also seemed to be broken, although some sort of fix emerged. BruteFIR worked though :-) then a breakout box to take the 8 channels of audio to analogue? Simon Edmonds Logic Workshop Limited | Strategic, Technical Creative Marketing Services Ty Llwyd House | Nantyderry | Abergavenny | Monmouthshire | NP7 9DG | UK M: +44 (0)7740 194680 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Making a standalone 8ch PLayer
I looked into this a year ago and the RPi unfortunately is crippled for this because the processor used only supports two channels of audio - HDMI iirc actually only allows for multichannel though it mandates stereo. The BeagleBoard (or rather the BeagleBone) is a better choice though slightly more expensive. I have one and a multichannel audio board which I've been meaning to hook up since last year. The DAC is on an evaluation board for the ADAU1966 (which has 16 outputs ) I also have a sample of the AD1934 which I will need to make a pcb for. The eventual end result (as a product) would be a board with an Arm, a dac and an SD card interface, nowt much more. Given the ridiculously low cost of Arms (and similar processors) these days I'm very dubious about using arrays for anything but a mass market product with large sales (or something that needed to be thoroughly copy protected) - 10 years ago I would have said the opposite. Dave On 23 May 2013 18:31, dw d...@dwareing.plus.com wrote: On 23/05/2013 17:17, Simon Edmonds wrote: Ooops - I'll try that again Raspberry Pi has HDMI HDMI supports 8 channels of HD digital audio I wasted a lot of time trying. I think the RPi only supports two channels on HDMI, or did six months ago. Jackd also seemed to be broken, although some sort of fix emerged. BruteFIR worked though :-) then a breakout box to take the 8 channels of audio to analogue? Simon Edmonds Logic Workshop Limited | Strategic, Technical Creative Marketing Services __**__ Ty Llwyd House | Nantyderry | Abergavenny | Monmouthshire | NP7 9DG | UK __**__ M: +44 (0)7740 194680 __**_ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/**mailman/listinfo/sursoundhttps://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound __**_ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/**mailman/listinfo/sursoundhttps://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/20130523/75d67804/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 2013-05-23, Dave Malham wrote: I looked into this a year ago and the RPi unfortunately is crippled for this because the processor used only supports two channels of audio - HDMI iirc actually only allows for multichannel though it mandates stereo. BTW, this discussion brings to my mind an old low level hardware question of mine. Namely, how about making your own A/D/A? What's really the absolute minimum in hardware cost for a de novo design you can think of, for outputting and/or inputting each incremental channel count required by the successive ambisonic orders? Those (n+1)^2 channels, for each successive, realistic n? N=0 and n=1 are trivial, because whatever they use for 5.1 already carries it. But how about n=2..4? That's 9 to 16 channels. What's the cheapest means of getting at least CD quality on each of them, without undue burden in software development, and an undue penalty in things like (hardware, software?) synchronization capability? Presuming any and all circuit topologies are allowed? Has anybody thought of this kind of amateur approach of late, on the digital side of things, as they once did on the analog frontier? By the back of my envelope, at least third order could be done reliably at CD quality at very low cost, even as a (separately powered) USB peripheral. It's 16*16*44.1e3 bps, yielding ~26mbps, so that it's roughly 1/4 of the total bandwidth of 100mpbs Ethernet. It isn't too much magic to fit that into the newer versions of USB either, and in particular a simple packing of the bits into an Ethernet frame buys you everything you need for it. Then, an external power source (one of the ultracheap Chinese ones for mobile phone charging?), maybe some synch logic around them individual multichannel (Crystal/Analog?) chips, and you're game. I think. What's the minimum cost? I'd argue that it's in the vicinity of $10-20 at cost, and perhaps $50 after all is said and done. For sixteen phase coherent, CD-like, line-level, unbalanced, analog output channels which are then usable at will for not only ambisonic, but for whatever you want. Maybe $70-80 if you want a strictly synchronized A/D set as well. It wouldn't look pretty with all of those cords and connectors running off the thing, but it'd royally get the thing done. You could instrument your granny with something like that. I might well be wrong since I'm no hardware guru. But still, has anybody else thought about revisiting the early (quad era or so) DIY-thinking, with a view towards the current digital age? Instead of picking the cheapest valves and/or transistors for an analog circuit design and vice versa, now picking the densest multichannel converter chips on the same kind of cost/benefit curve? If they have, where do people twiddle those particular kinds of bits? I'd like to see it done and perhaps contribute. Maybe the new breed of SDR minded radio amateurs might be of help, since the ham circuit certainly retains the DIY mindset, even in an explicitly legally sanctioned form. Those folks know their DSP and their hardware by necessity. Who else? If nobody minds low tech, multiband, nerd audio band I/O appliances, do we need a new forum for such work? Is anybody interested in such a thing now/yet? The BeagleBoard (or rather the BeagleBone) is a better choice though slightly more expensive. As you can imagine, I hate it when people talk about named products instead of talking about the technology underlying them. Beagle doesn't tell me anything, apart from the fact that I'm not getting it any time soon. By this, I mean more or less three things: 1) I'm an exemplar of a person who cannot afford most of the high software or hardware which we talk about (and I very much like to talk about, and dream of having some day yet), so that I can maybe speak a bit for the great unwashed, 2) eventhough I'm just a wannabe engineer, I still like to return the discussion to the most basic/basest of things, in order to cut away the bullshit/hype/extraneous complexity, and 3) I thus like to remind the list of the humble quad beginnings and seamless scalability promises of ambisonic, because that's where the adoption necessarily has to begin with; not with e.g. Ralph Glascal's better-than-best setup. It has to start with the greatest common denominator, even if we scheme for world domination. Of late, I haven't seen too much analysis of the simplest things on-list. So I complain. :) I have one and a multichannel audio board which I've been meaning to hook up since last year. The DAC is on an evaluation board for the ADAU1966 (which has 16 outputs). Strike me dead, they now really integrate it all the way upto third order capability. So, how expensive is that in small numbers, and what sort of support circuitry (mostly buffer amps and power delivery) does it require in order for it to reliably drive an external analog chain*16? Can the same be done cheaper
