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Speakers Pointing Outwards

Spat
#1

Hi there,

I’m designing some spatialisation with Spat for a performance in a venue set in the round, with the speakers in a central location and pointing outwards in a circle towards the audience. There are multiple speakers, both on the floor and hanging from a circular truss (also pointing outwards).

After reading other posts I gather that the panning algorithms are designed with a central sweet-spot in mind, with all speakers assumed to be pointing to the centre of the space. Of course, I don’t expect to guarantee any sort of accuracy when inverting this situation, but I wondered the following:

  • Is it possible to give speakers a rotation/direction message to point them outwards?
  • Is there a way of mocking this up using a different panning algorithm?
  • Any other things that might assist in setting something like this up?

Until I get in the space I’m taking spat5.spat~'s output and downmixing to binaural using spat5.virtualspeakers~.

Thanks for any help on this,

Ben

#2

Hi Ben,

Well, this is kind of an odd situation, where panning algorithms are irrelevant.
I presume the audience will be all around the circular stage, so you want sound to be dispatched (almost evenly) in all directions (otherwise there would be ‘holes’).
The least bad option might be KNN panning. The speaker directions is not relevant for KNN; only their positions.

Similarly, all downmixing/monitoring strategies (in spat) are not able to cope with such a use case.
I dont really see how spat5.virtualspeakers~ can be useful.

Sorry I cannot be more helpful, but spat is ill-suited to such scenario.

Good luck !
T.

1 Like
#3

Apologies for the delayed reply. Thanks for the info!