s o u n d　　　d o m e s

Final Thoughts

Overall the Sound Dome installation was well executed and well received. The last minuet decision to overhaul the system with larger speakers was the right thing to do. During the show there were times the ambient noise buried what was happening overhead but this was anticipated and expected. The choice to move to larger speakers let us increase the volume when necessary. Because there were so many visitors at the show, and because hundreds of interactive exhibits are noisy by nature, not everybody 'got it'. Those who did seemed to enjoy the experience thoroughly.

Regarding the physical form: The inverted silver bowls used to deflect the audio content downward not only looked good but did an amazing job of blending in with the light fixtures. The hidden nature of the physical form added to the sounds illusiveness and complimented the sounds spatial quality quite well. The detail of capping the speaker from the bottom with a silver dome made of plastic kept the speaker hidden from plain sight.

Regarding audio content: After literally hundreds of tests with different samples and patches, the abstract sounds worked much better. At first I couldn't figure out why. My inclination was that recognizable sounds were going to work better because they were just that: recognizable. However, the abstract rhythms, sounds and tones used in the installation worked much better. I've come to believe that the abstract sounds worked better because visitors did not have preconceptions as to what the sounds were. Visitors listened and took in the sounds for what they were instead of attempting to transpose know sounds from someplace else.

Way to go! Hope everybody is having a great winter break. Talk to you soon.

Winter Show 2005, Sound Domes

The show was a big success.
The first day, we noticed that the sounds were being completley washed out due to the crowd. With the consent of Michael Horan, we increased the volume a bit more on the second day of the show.

The group had done a really nice set up in the Residents' lab.

We had 8 domes in total and used 4 power amps.

MAX/MSP patch by Leif,

Overall, great show, great collab. I hope to work with you all again very soon! :)

Vid sample

Setup for Show

Red apparently wants to speak to us regarding our domes...

The Power Amps

Current patch for MAX/MSP

PushPull

Setup with New Speakers!

audio content

I feel that convolution and spectral morphing would make for interesting content to explore in our installation. Trevor Wishart is known for his work in this area, an example of his is at:

from RedBirds

I'm looking around for more of his stuff. I created a couple pieces in undergrad - using the Cappybara Kyma system, as well as in SoundHack, and Wishart's CDP software - SoundLoom - for spectral morphing. I'm not sure I still have anything, but i'll check tonight.

Power amps, MSP & Leif

Hi everyone,

My spatial project was declined, so I'm glad to lend my knowledge of audio and MSP to your project. I worked with Mike today on strategies for powering the speakers. I feel that real power amps would be better than headphone amps. We hooked up two power amps from the ER and to four of the speaker and started panning sounds with a MSP patch. It sounded great! We may not be guaranteed these amps for the show however, but home stereo receivers will also work. Does anyone have a home stereo receiver to contribute during show? Otherwise we may be able to rip the stereo amplifier out of some cheap computer speaker, like the MoPod group did for their project. I also made a Max patch that smoothly pans a sound between eight speakers. Check it out.

Peace,
LK~

]]> max v2;
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3rd presentation

We're all set for tomorrow's class presentation. We'll be using two domes and for the setup we need:

Quattro USB
Samson amplifier
1/4' stereo male - XLR male - XLR female - 2 1/8" mono male
2 1/4" mono - 1/4" mono

The sound is infintely better with the XLR connection- no more alligator clips.

We also went over some more content ideas. We like the idea of something that changes over time being projected through the space of the installation, or changes of sonic scenery. We're also still going to try splitting different tracks of the same recording. For tomorrow, we are going to use the following samples:

footsetps on glass
footsteps on gravel
bird sounds
radio traffic controller (this on esounds particularly good between two speakers- like a conversation

Thoughts regarding audio content

There seems to be a few patterns emerging regarding the audio content. I'm attempting to summarize conversations I've had with members of the Sound Dome team and with others outside the group.

Sounds that move - We began to get at this a bit with the horse and carriage track we were listening to the other night. Other ideas include a motorcycle, race cars, or anything else with a prominent doppler effect.

Birds (or other nature sounds with emphasis of location and/or space) - Bird conversations evoke spatial idea. Using the sound domes, we would be emphasizing the spatial relationship of the bird to one another, making visitors of the installation more aware of the space they are in. Birds and nature in general is also contradictory to what people might be expecting to hear inside a building in Manhattan.

Laughter - Often when people hear laughing, they want to know what is going on, or what they are missing. Laughter, would make visitors look twice and examine the the space they are in more carefully. Additionally, laughter often makes people laugh and puts them in a good mood. Part of this should be fun, right?

Audio deconstruction - The idea would be to deconstruct an audio performance intended to be heard at one time. Each musician part of the performance would be played at the same time simultaneously, each out of a different speaker. Visitors would become more aware of the audio components and would need to move through the space in order to hear all each of them. A dialog and narrative is formed in the visitors mind as they move through space learning about the audio composition as they traverse the hallway. The irony is that they would never be able to hear all of the at once. Personally I like this idea, however it's probably the most difficult to pull off.

Xin, I know you had an in at a recording studio. Do yo know where we could get audio content that still recorded to the independent tracks, before its been mixed down? Is recording something way out of the achievable scope fro this project?

I hope this helps stimulate some thinking. I envision the audio program will most likely be a combination off all of the above. Thoughts? Ideas?

Installing

We tried out a hardware preamp from the ER. Sound quality did improve. Samson C-que 8.

Audio Tech update

As it stands, the best solution for consistent acceptible-quality audio outputted to the maximum amount of domes seems to involve Zach's audio-interface and all four Samson headphone amps. If we do this, we need to build four splitters — essentially single stereo quarter-inch male to two eighth-inch (mini-phone jack) male. This system provides 8 independantly max-controllable outputs with consistent audio quality.

Other solutions involve multiple different speaker amps, mixers, building a better amp circuit (att: Min)...

MAX MSP people working hard.

]]> Below is the MAX code for 12 domes:

max v2;
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#P setbglock 1;
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Parts from Radio and 269

Thomas and I headed over to RadioShack, only to find that these parts really add up when you're trying to purchase about 40 of them.
We were able to get o 269 Electronics on Canal St and get our parts a little bit cheaper.
Our buy

Jacks for the stereo and mono. Mono plugs.

Joon Ho Phang is working on a similar project for his Pcomp instrument and was able to give us some help when we tested out Christin's recordings. Initially, it sounded quite bad. A 1uF cap that goes in between pins 2 and 3 made the sound less "scratchy" and "tin-y" This makes sense since these are the pins for the sound inputs from the computer.

First installment

I did a quick recording of some music that would make sense with a four speaker setup, and Min and I checked out the quality of the sound dome. The cello sounded a bit tinny, especially the low stuff, but I did a seperate recording of some high stuff which is much more suitable. Some adjustments to the board helped, but the quality of the recording itself was mostly at fault. I'm going to try again and/or make some adjustments to see if we can make it sound presentable for Friday's presentation.

high cello abridged

We also tried out some sound effects. Rain sounded pretty good, especially once the speaker was placed inside of the bowl. I'm going to keep running through different sounds and see what will work best. The goal right now is just to get something that will work with the four speaker panning we are trying to do for Friday's presentation. Also, it turns out that MAX supports wav files as well as AIFF.

rain splattering

Big group meeting, Tues 11.29.05

We all met up tonight to talk about where we are with the final.
I was able to finally test with 4 separate speakers, feeding it 4 separate sounds. And learned a few about stereo to mono.
T=Tip (left), R=Ring (right), S=Sleave (Ground)

They all worked!

Close up of the preamp circuit for Thomas D

We got a lot accomplished and have a solid plan of building our project box that would include all our 12 preamps and outs to the speakers.

Diagram of how this would work and the materials needed for tomorrow. Thank you Mike B!

Max MSP people working on how this will all work on the computer.

Hard at work

More to come tomorrow.

s o u n d d o m e s