We’ve been developing the idea of using the monome to position and trigger up to 8 sounds within the Illustrious 3D-AudioScape facility… and Martyn Ware is up for it…

The Illustrious Company’s 3D-AudioScape surround-sound system                      

Built by Paul Gillieron Acoustic Design and refined by Illustrious, the 3D-AudioScape surround-sound system comes closer than any other to the holy grail of ultra-realistic sound. It achieves this through two rings of speakers, one high and one at ground level to create a three-dimensional (X,Y and Z) virtual sound space. Illustrious’s unique visualisation/spatialization software positions up to sixteen separate sound channels within this virtual space which are then are able move in any direction, including up and down, in real-time. 

(Ant Lewis)

As discussed (with a couple of slight changes) the basic procedures are:

• Left column selects a sound – OK
• right column sets volume – hold left button for specific sound – OK
• any button not in far left or far right starts the sound or re-positions the sound at that coordinate (overhead view of the floor) – by limiting this to a central 6×6 square excluding not just the far left and right columns but also the top and bottom rows you not only maintain the square grid but release 6 buttons both top and bottom for additional functionality – I don’t actually think from working with the system that loosing the 8×8 resolution will actually make a difference to what you hear – it needs to be quite coarse…
• press and hold a left hand column button and tilt to control horizontal plane movement – OK but still within the 6×6 grid
• press and hold a right hand column button and tilt to rise/drop a sound – OK but still within the 6×6 grid – and does it at least indicate the X (L-R) position of the sound in the grid while doing this?
• (this way you can hold down multiple buttons simultaneously and make several/all sounds move around together) – I can see this – a bit like bends 0.1 – though the problem is you loose ‘sight’ of sounds once they align on the same point on the grid.

There may also need to be a calibration thing. I agree – and Tehn’s bends 0.1 calibration set-up seems pretty considered and solid as an example to draw from…

It’s going to be PC only – hope that’s OK? Actually no – Martyn, Asa and the 3D-AudioScape software are all OS X. Is this a problem? What software are you planning to use – MaxMSP or Director?

This all good… but I have a few additional thoughts… mostly just thinking about extending functionality… I understand thse might not be possible to implement within the resources… but thought it best to expand ideas at this conceptual stage…

– can there be a mode where you can see all 8 sounds simultaneously? how can you differentiate between them? by flashing once for sound 1, twice for sound 2 etc? by flashing in order sound 1 – sound 8? by flashing at different speeds – sound 1 slowest – sound 8 fastest?

– how do you represent Z axis position in this mode? by per led intensity? (requires the per led intensity hack to work – though this is somewhat doubtful) can a second button press flash all sounds on the same Z axis position from lowest to highest in turn? as above?

– how do you mute a sound – or all sounds? or reset position/s?

– can a button depress arrange all or some of the sounds in a pre-determined spacial arrangement? – corners of a cube, apices of a cross etc… or switch between these arrangements? can a particularly pleasing arrangement of spatialised sounds be saved to a preset?

– can a button depress (top row perhaps) have a built in sequence that triggers sounds 1-8 in a set order/pattern – and can the 6 top buttons each have a different pattern – or at least tempo?

– can the app only load one bank of 8 sounds – or can you have more than one bank (either in a different ‘bank’ folder in the ‘data’ folder – or by numbering each sound file 01-08, 09-16 etc… can a button depress switch banks? 

OSC into Director on a Mac – Web research

emailed Garry Kling re the much cited
OSCar (dead link)

alternatively
Director Xtra – OSC-communicator

possibly
asUDP xtra by Antoine Schmitt

on a tangent
FLOSC