Hello all

I'm helping my daughter (a final year Arts student) put together an audio installation with eight speakers using this device:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/106540

using Pd running on a Windows XP machine.

I thought it might be as simple as selecting it as the sound device (via Media->Audio Settings), ensuring the number of channels is set to 8, and then creating a dac~ object with 8 channels, [dac~ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8], connecting the various sound sources to one of the 8 channels.

I'd test this out but she is in Reading and I am hundred miles North, so instead I browsed through the documentation and help files to see if that understanding is correct.

In the Help file [pd multi-channel_audio] I found some information on using ASIO drivers (via "portaudio"), and now I am not sure whether my initial simplistic understanding still applies!

Any help to use all 8 channels this external soundcard easily would be much appreciated!

Many thanks in anticipation

Koenfucius

Noob question.

I am helping my daughter, a final year Arts student, with a sound installation that needs to play sound to several speakers. Some of the sound sources are treated recordings of actual sounds.

I'm looking for a good reference or example on how to read in a WAV file and play it back - I've trawled through the tutorials and manuals I've found, but there is little specifically about this, and I would be very grateful for a simple example from which I can then work further.

Many thanks in anticipation!

K

Hello - I am totally new to Pure Data and to this topic.

My daughter is a final year arts student, and she wants to make a sound installation in which different sounds should be heard from 8-10 different speakers positioned around a room.

A colleague of hers has suggested investigating Pure Data, and I've just been playing around with it for the last hour. While I've barely scratched the surface, I love it!

However, I was wondering what approach I could take to drive 8-10 speakers independently. Someone else has suggested a device like this

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/106540

which seems to have eight independent outputs. It comes with a driver disc, so I presume that will allow Windows somehow to access the different channels.

How would I go about mapping the [dac] objects in Pd onto such an external device?

Secondly, my daughter would like some aspects of the sound to be modified by external events - she's thinking of pressure pads (to sense the presence of people in the room and indeed the *number* of people in the room) or a microphone (to sense the sound people make when entering the room).

I can imagine using a microphone as an input and using its sound level to do something with it; but is there a simple way in which a pressure pad or a proximity sensor could be interfaced with the PC (and then on with Pd)?

Many thanks in anticipation!

Koenfucius

Hello

Sorry - I've not been looking at this forum for some time. Yes, the project was completed. Are you still interested?

Thanks, M.

I spoke to my daughter yesterday and she reports doing exactly as you suggested, but only getting sound out of two speakers (one stereo channel).

I'm intrigued by your comment about the ASIO drivers on the installation disc, though - she's not the most computer literate person in the world, and she has undoubtedly just run the installation program for the device, which may or may not have installed the ASIO drivers.

I'll try to speak to her today again, and investigate further to see if I can find out why there's only sound on two channels.

Thanks again!

K

Oh, that's excellent - many thanks!

K

@sonsofsol: thanks!

@sonsofsol said:

hi!
i did something like this with that device
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb05/articles/firepod.htm
on winXP
it worked perfect, [dac~ 1] means, that a audiostream is outputed on channel 1, [dac~ 6] on Chn 6 and so on.

Perfect - I didn't realize that little box had been around for such a long time. But at the price it's hard to beat - certainly on a student budget.

There is a chance that she might get an old desktop computer (running Linux) with multiple sound cards - I guess that would be even easier to interface to - simply specifying multiple output devices?

@sonsofsol said:

for pressurepads or any other switch, you would use an arduino and the pduino object to get the data in pd
dont do all your daughters work .

Wonderful - and again, I think her budget should stretch to a simple arduino board.

It'll be hard to not get carried away - thankfully she's already done some of the hard work in creating the soundscape (it will be mostly processed pre-recorded sound, hacked into small sound files), but the possibilities Pd offers for making real-time modifications are tempting!

K

@Nau: thanks!

@nau said:

first of all don't forget those eight speakers will have to be "active", in other words embed an amplifier. Or you could use 8 "home speakers" together with 4 stereo amplifiers ... this was just a technical remark.

Yes - good point. That's already in hand: she picked up five pairs of powered computer speakers.

@nau said:

I don't want to discourage you, but usually newcomers to PureData need "some time" to be able to "deliver a robust working installation" ... hope you have some time
Nau

Oh, I'm taking advantage of the glut of bank holidays in the UK to take some time off work next week, and I used to do a fair amount of programming in a previous life, so getting to grips with the logic should be fine, and learning all the capabilities of Pd sounds like a lot of fun!

K