Re: [Sursound] Unpleasant things ...

[Dave Malham]

I quite like number four - "ruler on bottle"

Dave

On 12 October 2012 20:16, Michael Chapman  wrote:
>  A bit OT for surround (I think they work in mono;-)>, but
> maybe of interest to some:
>
> Noises off-putting: unpleasant sounds and science | Dean Burnett
> guardian.co.uk, 11 Oct 2012
> By Dean Burnett
> Dean Burnett: A study reveals which sounds humans find unpleasant and why,
> via interesting and often surreal means
> …Noises off-putting: unpleasant sounds and science … some sounds so
> unpleasant. For the record, I'm sure an announcement triggering news
> stories about unpleasant sounds coinciding with David … A recent study
> revealed the neurological ...
> 
>
> and
>
> Are these the five most unpleasant sounds in everyday life?
> guardian.co.uk, 10 Oct 2012
> Martin Wainwright
> Try the Newcastle University/Wellcome Trust test, which hopes to help in
> the understanding of conditions such as migraine which involve heightened
> sensitivity to noise
> …Are these the five most unpleasant sounds in everyday life?
> 
>
> Michael
>
>
>
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-- 
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'
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Re: [Sursound] Uniformity of hemispherical LS layout

[Fabio Kaiser]

There are hemispherical only systems out there. So layouts that use 
loudspeakers in the upper hemisphere only. 

Sorry for unclearness. 

Am 13.10.2012 um 08:57 schrieb Dave Malham:

> Hi Fabio,
>Did you actually mean that "there are only hemispherical
> ambisonics systems out there" or am I misinterpreting what you said?
> 'Cos that suggests that there are no full sphere systems
> 
> Dave
> 
> On 12 October 2012 16:02, Fabio Kaiser  wrote:
>> 
>>> In practice, to preserve the AMB nature of the decoding you need the
>>> first 'below the horizon' ring also for an hemisphere. For the 3rd
>>> order layout I described earlier, that means you need the ring of 6
>>> at -45 degress elevation.  At higher orders you would have more rings,
>>> the first one would be closer to the horizon, and you could leave out
>>> the others.
>> 
>> But there are only hemispherical ambisonics systems out there, not having a 
>> few below the horizon speakers.
>> What's the decoding secret for that?
>> 
>> I know one approach is to derive new basis functions for that geometry. Not 
>> so simple though.
>> 
>> Fabio
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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'
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[Sursound] Auro 3D

[Dave Hunt]

Hi,

I've never heard Auro 3D, though it does seem to have some adherents.

I haven't waded through all of their "Auro3D-Octopus-White-Paper" but  
found the first nine pages thought provoking.


http://www.auro-technologies.com/uploads/Auro3D-Octopus-White-Paper- 
v2-7-2017.pdf


It concludes that although 24-bit operation is advantageous for audio  
creation purposes it is inadvisable for playback purposes. This is  
also true for public address systems


Few venues have low enough noise floors to use the dynamic range of  
24-bit audio effectively. Apart from external noise (traffic etc.)  
there is noise from the audience, air conditioning, fans in audio  
amplifiers, lighting systems and video projectors.


The problems with D/A convertors, amplifiers and other electronics  
don't get much better in bigger pro-audio systems without making  
systems uneconomic. Due to the higher power of such systems the  
possibility of hearing damage increases.


I have long been dubious of the common practice of turning all PA  
amplifiers up to full and doing all level adjustments prior to that,  
often at the mixer. This increases the gain of system noise, hums  
etc. It can also mean that the mixer is working at a fairly low  
level, bad enough with analogue mixers but worse with digital ones as  
the final D/A conversion then throws away the highest bits.


Ciao,

Dave Hunt
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Re: [Sursound] [ot] new and interesting words

[Michael Chapman]

>
> as an aside (and without looking it up) ossuary clearly means some
official receptacle for bones, I would guess?
> Dr Peter Lennox
>

What I find fascinating is words that are either absent, or if present
rarely used but replaced by compounds.

Things like 'foot-fingers' (French) and 'hand-shoes' (German)
and by comparison 'sibling' (English) which is rare* (certainly,
compared with it's German equivalent (though I stand to be
corrected)).

Think, I might excuse Finnish for not having a word for ossuary,
though !

Michael


*I remember being told there was no direct English translation,
when I first learnt German ;-(>




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Re: [Sursound] Something for the Weekend - Commerical 3D sound

[Stefan Schreiber]

Bo-Erik Sandholm wrote:


As this was in a session on next gen MPEG format, and header specification in 
MPEG among other things...
If I remembers correctly there was a possibility to specify that the audio format was 
- WFS
- 5.1 
- 7.1

- 22.1

No possibility to carry pure ambisonics using our defined Orders, as far as I 
could understand?

Maybe a few more defined to code which decoder to use to parse the sound 
streams, is it possible to squeeze in pure ambisonics within WFS decoding?

Here seems to be a lot of info from the ongoing standardization process, among 
other things a 3 D sound issue description.
http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents.php
 



1. The document is from Januay 2012, so unrelated to the about last two 
if not three Mpeg/ITU meetings...


2.


As this was in a session on next gen MPEG format, and header specification in 
MPEG among other things...
If I remembers correctly there was a possibility to specify that the audio format was 
- WFS
- 5.1 
- 7.1

- 22.1



But this is the < existing > Mpeg format, and with exception of 22.2 
(was used only for Super Hi-Vision demos, I guess) all "2D only".


Cos the standardization process for 3D Audio is just starting now, 
proposal phase...


http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents/mpeg-h/3d-audio/101-3D-AudioWorkshop.pdf


So: Part 3 of Mpeg-H, which includes HEVC but offers still more...(MMT, 3DA)


Maybe a few more defined to code which decoder to use to parse the sound 
streams, is it possible to squeeze in pure ambisonics within WFS decoding?


WFS is (at least currently, and FAPP) not 3D-Audio.


It is envisioned that MPEG-H 3D Audio will provide a highly immersive 
audio

experience using either a large number of loudspeakers or headphones with
binauralization, with the aim of rendering a realistic and compelling 
3D audio scene.



Sounds like me, by the way... :-)

Best,

Stefan



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Re: [Sursound] Something for the Weekend - Commerical 3D sound

[Stefan Schreiber]

Bo-Erik Sandholm wrote:

As this was in a session on next gen MPEG format, and header 
specification in MPEG among other things...
If I remembers correctly there was a possibility to specify that the 
audio format was - WFS

- 5.1 - 7.1
- 22.1

No possibility to carry pure ambisonics using our defined Orders, as 
far as I could understand?


Maybe a few more defined to code which decoder to use to parse the 
sound streams, is it possible to squeeze in pure ambisonics within WFS 
decoding?


Here seems to be a lot of info from the ongoing standardization 
process, among other things a 3 D sound issue description.

http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents.php
 



1. The document is from Januay 2012, so unrelated to the about last two 
if not three Mpeg/ITU meetings...


2.

As this was in a session on next gen MPEG format, and header 
specification in MPEG among other things...
If I remembers correctly there was a possibility to specify that the 
audio format was - WFS

- 5.1 - 7.1
- 22.1



But this is the < existing > Mpeg format, and with exception of 22.2 
(was used only for Super Hi-Vision demos, I guess) all "2D only".


Cos the standardization process for 3D Audio is just starting now, 
proposal phase...


http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents/mpeg-h/3d-audio/101-3D-AudioWorkshop.pdf 




So: Part 3 of Mpeg-H, which includes HEVC but offers still more...(MMT, 
3DA)


Maybe a few more defined to code which decoder to use to parse the 
sound streams, is it possible to squeeze in pure ambisonics within WFS 
decoding?



WFS is (at least currently, and FAPP) not 3D-Audio.


It is envisioned that MPEG-H 3D Audio will provide a highly immersive 
audio

experience using either a large number of loudspeakers or headphones with
binauralization, with the aim of rendering a realistic and compelling 
3D audio scene.




Sounds like me, by the way... :-)

Best,

Stefan

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[David Pickett]

At 05:51 13/10/2012, Dave Hunt wrote:


I have long been dubious of the common practice of turning all PA
amplifiers up to full and doing all level adjustments prior to that,
often at the mixer. This increases the gain of system noise, hums
etc. It can also mean that the mixer is working at a fairly low
level, bad enough with analogue mixers but worse with digital ones as
the final D/A conversion then throws away the highest bits.


Why would anyone do that?  The only sensible thing is to operate the 
console at its optimum level and then provide whatever amplification 
is necessary to turn that into sound at the desired level.


David

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[Michael Chapman]

> At 05:51 13/10/2012, Dave Hunt wrote:
>
>>I have long been dubious of the common practice of turning all PA
>>amplifiers up to full and doing all level adjustments prior to that,
>>often at the mixer. This increases the gain of system noise, hums
>>etc. It can also mean that the mixer is working at a fairly low
>>level, bad enough with analogue mixers but worse with digital ones as
>>the final D/A conversion then throws away the highest bits.
>
> Why would anyone do that?

Because the knobs on the amp's are at the other end of the
room (or if not there, it would mean bending one's back).

Not a justification, just an explanation.

(See Jörn's posts of long ago about 'all channels panned to centre'.
I got upbraided once, when I got caught, for panning a stereo
recording to left and to right, rather than 'mixing it'   . . .
'like wat one is meant to do' ;-(>
The client is, of course, always right ...   )

Michael

> The only sensible thing is to operate the
> console at its optimum level and then provide whatever amplification
> is necessary to turn that into sound at the desired level.
>
> David
>
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Re: [Sursound] [ot] new and interesting words

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 01:56:04PM -, Michael Chapman wrote:
 
> What I find fascinating is words that are either absent, or if present
> rarely used but replaced by compounds.
> 
> Things like 'foot-fingers' (French) and 'hand-shoes' (German)
> and by comparison 'sibling' (English) which is rare* (certainly,
> compared with it's German equivalent (though I stand to be
> corrected)).
 
The French have real toes, called 'orteilles'. Italians OTOH don't
have toes, but foot-fingers, 'dita del piede'.

Hand-shoes also exist in Dutch, there's no other word for them.

What I've always found funny is the English way of using 
'a pair of' for what amounts to a single item...

Reminds me that I need a new pair of foot-gloves :-)

Ciao

-- 
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 05:26:57PM -, Michael Chapman wrote:
 
> Because the knobs on the amp's are at the other end of the
> room (or if not there, it would mean bending one's back).

Modern PA gear is remote-controlled and monitored. And even if
not, that's no excuse :-)

Ciao,

-- 
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[Jascha Narveson]

Yeah - can you name some venues that do this?  I want to know which ones to 
avoid!


On Oct 13, 2012, at 12:43 PM, David Pickett wrote:

> At 05:51 13/10/2012, Dave Hunt wrote:
> 
>> I have long been dubious of the common practice of turning all PA
>> amplifiers up to full and doing all level adjustments prior to that,
>> often at the mixer. This increases the gain of system noise, hums
>> etc. It can also mean that the mixer is working at a fairly low
>> level, bad enough with analogue mixers but worse with digital ones as
>> the final D/A conversion then throws away the highest bits.
> 
> Why would anyone do that?  The only sensible thing is to operate the console 
> at its optimum level and then provide whatever amplification is necessary to 
> turn that into sound at the desired level.
> 
> David
> 
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> 

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Re: [Sursound] [ot] new and interesting words

[Ralf R. Radermacher]

Michael Chapman  wrote:

> *I remember being told there was no direct English translation,
> when I first learnt German ;-(>

For 'sibling'? This is indeed true, if used as a singular. You may have
'siblings' (Geschwister) in German but if it's just one then it's either
a brother or a sister. For the time being, at least. ;-)

Ralf

-- 
Ralf R. Radermacher  -  DL9KCG  -  Köln/Cologne, Germany
Blog   : http://the-real-fotoralf.blogspot.com
Audio : http://aporee.org/maps/projects/fotoralf
Web   : http://www.fotoralf.de
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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[John Leonard]

Most commonly, I've come across this in PA systems hired in by performers: the 
most heinous being that of a concert for a friend of mine, where the balance 
engineer (a studio engineer, not a live sound one, which didn't help) could 
barely lift the faders without the system going into feedback. When I suggested 
to the chap who'd installed the sound system that he might turn the amplifiers 
down and let the balance engineer set the desk gains properly, I was told that 
everything had to be at maximum "or the speakers don't work properly." The same 
company also installed the PA at the second venue for the same concert and when 
I turned up (I was playing in some sound effects) the entire system was buzzing 
loudly. Same chap doing the engineering - his response? "No-one will notice 
once the music starts." After he'd gone for his tea, I did a little checking 
and found the stereo output leads from the desk neatly coiled up and placed 
over a mains distribution board into which the soun
 d crew's mobile phone chargers were plugged. Moved the cables, hum gone. 

This particular company seems to have the contract for jazz concerts at some 
very prestigious London venues and I'm always amazed at how they continue to 
get work.

John

On 13 Oct 2012, at 19:10, Jascha Narveson  wrote:

> Yeah - can you name some venues that do this?  I want to know which ones to 
> avoid!

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[Dan]

It is standard practice to have 0db attenuation on the amplifiers driving a
PA system. Level control will be done on the DSP managing the speakers. In a
system with multiple amplifiers, driving different components, this is the
only way to adjust the overall  level accurately and quickly. 

Dan Andrews


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]
On Behalf Of John Leonard
Sent: 13 October 2012 19:53
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

Most commonly, I've come across this in PA systems hired in by performers:
the most heinous being that of a concert for a friend of mine, where the
balance engineer (a studio engineer, not a live sound one, which didn't
help) could barely lift the faders without the system going into feedback.
When I suggested to the chap who'd installed the sound system that he might
turn the amplifiers down and let the balance engineer set the desk gains
properly, I was told that everything had to be at maximum "or the speakers
don't work properly." The same company also installed the PA at the second
venue for the same concert and when I turned up (I was playing in some sound
effects) the entire system was buzzing loudly. Same chap doing the
engineering - his response? "No-one will notice once the music starts."
After he'd gone for his tea, I did a little checking and found the stereo
output leads from the desk neatly coiled up and placed over a mains
distribution board into which the soun  d crew's mobile phone chargers were
plugged. Moved the cables, hum gone. 

This particular company seems to have the contract for jazz concerts at some
very prestigious London venues and I'm always amazed at how they continue to
get work.

John

On 13 Oct 2012, at 19:10, Jascha Narveson  wrote:

> Yeah - can you name some venues that do this?  I want to know which ones
to avoid!

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[John Leonard]

Non-existent on the systems I'm talking about.

John

On 13 Oct 2012, at 20:16, "Dan"  wrote:

> Level control will be done on the DSP managing the speakers. 

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Re: [Sursound] [ot] new and interesting words

[Michael Chapman]

> On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 01:56:04PM -, Michael Chapman wrote:
>
>> What I find fascinating is words that are either absent, or if present
>> rarely used but replaced by compounds.
>>
>> Things like 'foot-fingers' (French) and 'hand-shoes' (German)
>> and by comparison 'sibling' (English) which is rare* (certainly,
>> compared with it's German equivalent (though I stand to be
>> corrected)).
>
> The French have real toes, called 'orteilles'.

Agreed, but I don't think it is the commoner usage (or not round here).
But I'm on the border of French and Savoyard numbering (70, 80, 90)
... so we may not be typical ... or normal ;-)>

One of my daughters who has an acute ear for language once
did 'badly' with the school doctor ... for "talking like a fifty year
old" ... she rhetorically asked me if she (the doctor) would
have preferred playground slang  Ah well.

Michael

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Re: [Sursound] Somting for the Weekend - Commerisal 3D sound

[Richard Lee]

> well, depends. iirc, theile's argument is that a two-speaker phantom source 
> should be a mess in terms of spectrum, but isn't (as two-speaker stereophony 
> demonstrates). so for some reason, the brain is able to sort it out. more 
> than two correlated sources, and things go awry, e.g. L/C/R 
with too much crosstalk is a pitiful mess.

Err.rrh!  Actually two speaker stereo IS a mess in terms of spectrum.  Just 
compare a mono signal panned to CF with it panned to hard left or right.  It's 
one of the things which draws attention to the speakers & spoils the illusion.

One reason for the seamless performance of 1st order Ambi is that, even with 
just 4 rather unevenly spaced speakers, it alleviates this effect and helps 
make the speakers disappear.
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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[Michael Chapman]

> On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 05:26:57PM -, Michael Chapman wrote:
>
>> Because the knobs on the amp's are at the other end of the
>> room (or if not there, it would mean bending one's back).
>
> Modern PA gear is remote-controlled and monitored. And even if
> not, that's no excuse :-)
>

No, no, no 

I've worked with classical musicians. Happy to try electronic violins,
happy to try way out things like ambisonic recordings (even very
bizarre microphone placements 'for research').

But (a part of) the 'amplified music' boys are real traditionalists,
they are trying to re-enact something all the way down to
mixing and sono. It has to 19?0, or else. (with ? being some
numbe such as 5, 6, or 7). To use the remote control would
be as much as an anaethma as a character in Shakespeare
using a mobile phone.

I hyperbolise, I know ;-)>
(But I managed o do it without using 'analogue' or 'valve'/'tube' ;-)>

Regards,

Michael

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 10/13/2012 06:43 PM, David Pickett wrote:

At 05:51 13/10/2012, Dave Hunt wrote:


I have long been dubious of the common practice of turning all PA
amplifiers up to full and doing all level adjustments prior to that,
often at the mixer. This increases the gain of system noise, hums
etc. It can also mean that the mixer is working at a fairly low
level, bad enough with analogue mixers but worse with digital ones as
the final D/A conversion then throws away the highest bits.


Why would anyone do that?  The only sensible thing is to operate the
console at its optimum level and then provide whatever amplification is
necessary to turn that into sound at the desired level.


a somewhat convoluted line of reasoning, if i may, rooted deeply in 
years of sound grunt work experience:


1. p.a. is expensive.
2. very rarely is there more amplification than strictly necessary
3. therefore, you will almost always use the power amps at close to max.
4. rocknroll is _very_ dynamic
5. headroom is actually used.
6. for safety reasons, always mix away from your limbs and torso (aka 
"the only way is up").
7. mosh pit crowds are nice to look at, but often not so nice to be in, 
let alone to wade through in a hurry.
8. depending on the concert, the distance from f.o.h. to the ampracks 
can easily be 30-100m.
9. you don't necessarily want to be wading through 30-100m of mosh pit 
in order to bring the amp gains up to be able to deal with the upcoming 
grand finale of the tune.

10. even if you are, you will very likely be late :)
10. therefore, amp gains are all the way up, right from the start. 
because they would be anyway, by the end of the concert.



--
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
Tonmeister VDT

http://stackingdwarves.net

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Re: [Sursound] Auro 3D

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 10/14/2012 01:09 AM, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:

On 10/13/2012 06:43 PM, David Pickett wrote:

At 05:51 13/10/2012, Dave Hunt wrote:


I have long been dubious of the common practice of turning all PA
amplifiers up to full and doing all level adjustments prior to that,
often at the mixer. This increases the gain of system noise, hums
etc. It can also mean that the mixer is working at a fairly low
level, bad enough with analogue mixers but worse with digital ones as
the final D/A conversion then throws away the highest bits.


Why would anyone do that?  The only sensible thing is to operate the
console at its optimum level and then provide whatever amplification is
necessary to turn that into sound at the desired level.


a somewhat convoluted line of reasoning, if i may, rooted deeply in
years of sound grunt work experience:

1. p.a. is expensive.
2. very rarely is there more amplification than strictly necessary
3. therefore, you will almost always use the power amps at close to max.
4. rocknroll is _very_ dynamic
5. headroom is actually used.
6. for safety reasons, always mix away from your limbs and torso (aka
"the only way is up").
7. mosh pit crowds are nice to look at, but often not so nice to be in,
let alone to wade through in a hurry.
8. depending on the concert, the distance from f.o.h. to the ampracks
can easily be 30-100m.
9. you don't necessarily want to be wading through 30-100m of mosh pit
in order to bring the amp gains up to be able to deal with the upcoming
grand finale of the tune.
10. even if you are, you will very likely be late :)
10. therefore, amp gains are all the way up, right from the start.
because they would be anyway, by the end of the concert.


oh, and because amp knobs are not usually active gain stages, but 
attenuators. most amps will always have their 28 or 36dB of 
amplification, and that's it.



--
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
Tonmeister VDT

http://stackingdwarves.net

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Re: [Sursound] Hybrid Hi-Fi (HyFi?), IRs, etc.

[Sampo Syreeni]

On 2012-10-05, Richard Furse wrote:

To be honest, low order hasn't been a massive priority for gaming/VR - 
on most modern boxes we're rendering and decoding at fourth order, so 
all the cool new stuff is enabled.


Tell me... In games most of the individual sound sources, apart from 
general ambience, seem to be well placed monophonic ones, fed from a 
single channel. So in essence, they are "encoded" at infinite order. Has 
anybody done any work on how to overlay such sources optimally against a 
lower order, perhaps recorded, background?


There has been some talk about mixed order playback in the past, and 
it's always ended up with somebody saying that different orders don't 
really mesh too well. So, how well *can* they mesh, given that the stuff 
games put out are grossly higher sampled in direction than any realistic 
playback rig? Any ideas of how to efficiently spatially sample them back 
to the rig geometry, and regularize the decoding problem?


That said, IMHO single-band decoding is practical/robust at low 
orders; there's not really enough spatial information to do anything 
too clever, unless you're happy with a rather small sweet spot.


And yet, there is usually but a single listener for a single game. If 
there are multiple, several ones, then you could potentially optimize 
for each of them at the same time, at least in the direct sound FX, if 
not the rolling ambience -- which will tend to be phase randomized in 
any case so that it sounds the same even off-centre. Is there any 
research anywhere in that vein?


A good compromise might be to provide an extra, more "Classic" decode 
option, which we've actually been meaning to spend some time on this 
year, but various other things have jumped the queue...


Sounds cool. (And sorry, I'm working through one *nasty* backload of 
posts. Once again.)

--
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

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Re: [Sursound] Take a Load off Intel (and put the Load on IC)

[Sampo Syreeni]

On 2012-10-05, Eric Carmichel wrote:

(Ville, once again the reason why I linked you in is to be found lower 
down the post.)


Surround controllers, on the other hand, are generally limited in 
their number of channels or become expensive. One solution to my 
'dilemma' was to use a DAW surface controller. The simplest 
implementation of this idea was an attempt to use a MIDI volume 
controller to remotely control the Master fader.


Early vector synths possess joysticks well integrated with MIDI. What 
you'd need then is a counterpart which can parse the serial MIDI stream 
and make it into a) a continuous stream of panning points and b) into go 
interpolation between them, despite c) the two separate controller 
value updates arriving at different times, with no other time 
information to connect them together.


I've never seen a controllee which could do this sort of stuff. If you 
want to get somebody to implement this stuff, in a production level 
thingie, I'd seriously consider contacting Charlie Richmond.


A kit available from midikits.net23.net provided an easy to build and 
flexible solution. This is a hardware device with a USB interface that 
serves to control the (software) Master fader.


Over MIDI the best solution would prolly be the standard pan controller 
used for a mid/Y channel, combined with a proprietary controller for 
X/side channel. Two more if you're dealing with full W-format, for 
W'==W-X-Y, and W-Z. Roughly speaking.


But by building my own preamp, I achieved a large channel count by 
using serially-connected Burr Brown PGA2311 ICs.


Why not go all-digital, with something like the (Cirrus derived, I 
belive) Crystal CS4234 or the like? Those puppies can be coaxed to work 
in full tandem as well, or at least synched to analog-kind perfection.


A single rotary pulse encoder controls all channels, but now I have 
the added benefit of software control.


A Gray coded knob works pretty well with digital electronics.

Thanks to all who wrote. The info on Richard Furse's site helped 
immensely.


They always do. I'd very much like to have a zipped or otherwise 
compressed representation of every site out there, for preservation, as 
well. Not always because I want to redistribute the stuff as part of the 
Motherlode, but simply because I believe in offline preservation of the 
Good Stuff as well.


Regarding my 6th (or roaming speaker): This channel stands alone for a 
few reasons that I didn't explain but will comment on here: First, my 
current study involves SNRs in reverberant environments. The primary 
noise source is talkers and room reflections... specifically, talkers 
at a distance. The signal is speech from a nearby talker. This 
represents a scenario found in restaurants, and a listening condition 
that is difficult for cochlear implant users. [...]


That's a research application. Do you already have a format in which to 
present/preserve both your source data and your conclusiosn? I could 
help select a few, or then participate in developing yet another one. 
(I'm a data representation freak even above my capacity as an ambisonic 
and relational database one.)


This way, I use a handheld response box containing, say, 8 words 
written on push-buttons, and the subject simply pushes the buttons in 
the order the words are heard.


As a hearing deficited person who knows a bit about auditory tests and 
statistics, I believe that design is a bit dangerous on multiple 
fronts...


(Keyboards or word recognition software to collect responses becomes 
unwieldy and unreliable). When the listener makes x consecutive 
mistakes, the SNR is automatically improved to make listening easier 
(or decreased to make it more difficult in the case of consecutive 
correct responses).


Optimally you'd do an interpolation search over the whole SNR range, for 
speed, and with stochastic backrack, in order to get tighter error bars.


The noise is surround noise via an Ambisonic set up and auralizaton/or 
live recordings of restaurant noise.


In here, I'd seriously suggest you compare your notes with what Ville 
Pulkki and his research team did with DirAC. It is *highly* doubtful 
whether background noise played over a low order ambisonic system 
actually masks direct sounds the way real life noise does. In fact it's 
almost certain it doesn't -- once you rerandomize the nondirectional, 
"noise" component, even via computational means starting with a 
soundfield recording, suddenly the soundfield takes on a much more 
natural and extended quality. Over which I at least, as a hearing 
impaired person, compensate my problem much better than over a low order 
ambisonic noise field. I've never seen the end result measured in a 
proper fashion, but if they were, I'd guess the difference between a 
fully randomized disperse ground and a one played back via first order 
ambisonic could be as much as 10-15dB, at least for people like me.


Although reverberant noise is generally diffuse, localiza