Hi all,
As I continue to explore the capabilities/best practices of spat5.spat~, I came across the following statement in spat5.tuto-alignment-1.maxpat
:
Only the angular directions (azimuth, elevation) of the loudspeaker are relevant.
This remark holds for all panning processors in Spat (e.g. spat5.pan~, spat5.spat~, spat5.pan, etc.) and for most panning techniques (vbap, angular, etc.)
However, there are some exceptions: the “knn” and “dbap” panning algorithms are fundamentally distance-based, and therefore the distance of the loudspeakers is taken into account.
What exactly does “the distance of the loudspeakers is taken into account” mean? Does it imply that alignment is not necessary for non-spherical setups when using knn/dbap? Or simply that the speaker locations are taken into account when computing the individual speaker gains?
My ultimate goal is to experiment with different panning algorithms (e.g. the various flavors of vector-based panning, knn, dbap, spcap, hoa) to find which methods provide the best results for our use case. Ideally, I’ll handle time delay, level compensation, and room correction externally, directly on the speakers using the genelec software (rather than using spat5.align~), so my concern is that I could end up accidentally correcting for these factors twice when using knn/dbap.
Thanks!
-eric