4 ms·

It seems like there's no reason for this use case for the speakers to be individually addressable, and that would probably add significant complexity.

moffkalast 4y ago
That would be pretty nuts, sending out a digital signal and have a built-in DAC for each emitter. Probably way too much bandwidth for any of the standard busses though.
- oblio 4y ago
  The thing is, don't we have a ton of higher bandwidth buses already available? I can't imagine the audio interfaces being faster than HDMI 2.0, USB 4/Thunderbolt, DisplayPort 3, etc.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    I was thinking more in the line of i2c, i2s, spi, uart, since I think all of those that you listed require very extensive circuitry to parse. (At least that's the motherboard makers' excuse to only include like 2 USB 3.0s and 1 USB 3.1 port and like two bazillion 2.0 ports)
- boomlinde 4y ago
  As an example, a thousand channels of 16-bit samples at 48 kHz adds up to 768 Mbits/s, which is well within USB3 bandwidth many times over. 1000 channels is a rather small array, though. 5000 is still not too much.
  - robbedpeter 4y ago
    A lot of the signal is going to be identical, so a hierarchical distribution with in-place modification based on location would be better than calculating the modification of the sound and sending to thousands of channels.
voxadam 4y ago
Maybe you could do something like Holoplot[1] does with their full size beamforming speakers. [1] https://holoplot.com/technology/ https://holoplot.com/technology/
throw0101a 4y ago
> speakers to be individually addressable Modern audio codecs/standards (Dolby Atmos, DTS:X) have moved 'beyond' individual speakers, and are now using object-based sound: > Audio becomes an object when it is accompanied by metadata that describes its existence, position and function. An audio object can, therefore, be the sound of a bee flying over your head, the crowd noise, commentary to a sporting event in any language. All this remains fully adjustable on the consumer’s end to their specific listening environment, needs and liking, regardless of the device. * https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/16347/object-based-audio-mixing-a-new-way-to-personalized-listening https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/16347/objec... > Think about this: imagine the sound of a race car speeding around a track. You can see the car approaching in the distance, off on the right side of the screen. As it gets closer, it gets louder and zooms across the screen from right to left, with the resulting Doppler shift of the sound as it goes past you. It screams off the left edge of the screen and continues down the left wall until it disappears into the distance behind you. > A sound designer could, in theory, pan this sound carefully from the Right speaker, through the Center speaker, to the Left speaker, and on down to the Left side surround and the Left rear surround before it faded out entirely. That would be the channel-based way of thinking about the task at hand. > Alternatively, the same designer could associate the sound of that race car with locations (coordinates) that move smoothly across the front of the room and then down the left side of the room. It is the same sound, but now with metadata telling the playback system where it should be from one moment to the next. […] > The second, object-oriented way, is scalable. It doesn’t care how many speakers you have in your room because it is not referencing a specific speaker – just relative locations. Importantly, these locations can include the space above you and around you, enclosing you in a “bubble” of sound. * https://www.trinnov.com/en/blog/posts/what-is-immersive-sound/ https://www.trinnov.com/en/blog/posts/what-is-immersive-soun... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_(sound_system_company)#DTS:X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_(sound_system_company)#DTS... Given the (x, y, x) co-ordinates of an audio signal/object, the codec algorithm figures out which speaker(s) should get what signal: if the system only has two speakers then you'll generally only have stereo, if you have a 7.1.4 setup (four overhead / in-ceiling speakers) it will probably be more immersive: * https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guides/7.1.4-overhead-speaker-setup-guide/ https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guid... * https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guides/7.1.4-dolby-atmos-enabled-speaker-setup-guide/ https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guid...

moffkalast 4y ago

That would be pretty nuts, sending out a digital signal and have a built-in DAC for each emitter. Probably way too much bandwidth for any of the standard busses though.

oblio 4y ago
The thing is, don't we have a ton of higher bandwidth buses already available? I can't imagine the audio interfaces being faster than HDMI 2.0, USB 4/Thunderbolt, DisplayPort 3, etc.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  I was thinking more in the line of i2c, i2s, spi, uart, since I think all of those that you listed require very extensive circuitry to parse. (At least that's the motherboard makers' excuse to only include like 2 USB 3.0s and 1 USB 3.1 port and like two bazillion 2.0 ports)
boomlinde 4y ago
As an example, a thousand channels of 16-bit samples at 48 kHz adds up to 768 Mbits/s, which is well within USB3 bandwidth many times over. 1000 channels is a rather small array, though. 5000 is still not too much.
- robbedpeter 4y ago
  A lot of the signal is going to be identical, so a hierarchical distribution with in-place modification based on location would be better than calculating the modification of the sound and sending to thousands of channels.

voxadam 4y ago

Maybe you could do something like Holoplot[1] does with their full size beamforming speakers. [1] https://holoplot.com/technology/ https://holoplot.com/technology/

throw0101a 4y ago

> speakers to be individually addressable Modern audio codecs/standards (Dolby Atmos, DTS:X) have moved 'beyond' individual speakers, and are now using object-based sound: > Audio becomes an object when it is accompanied by metadata that describes its existence, position and function. An audio object can, therefore, be the sound of a bee flying over your head, the crowd noise, commentary to a sporting event in any language. All this remains fully adjustable on the consumer’s end to their specific listening environment, needs and liking, regardless of the device. * https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/16347/object-based-audio-mixing-a-new-way-to-personalized-listening https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/16347/objec... > Think about this: imagine the sound of a race car speeding around a track. You can see the car approaching in the distance, off on the right side of the screen. As it gets closer, it gets louder and zooms across the screen from right to left, with the resulting Doppler shift of the sound as it goes past you. It screams off the left edge of the screen and continues down the left wall until it disappears into the distance behind you. > A sound designer could, in theory, pan this sound carefully from the Right speaker, through the Center speaker, to the Left speaker, and on down to the Left side surround and the Left rear surround before it faded out entirely. That would be the channel-based way of thinking about the task at hand. > Alternatively, the same designer could associate the sound of that race car with locations (coordinates) that move smoothly across the front of the room and then down the left side of the room. It is the same sound, but now with metadata telling the playback system where it should be from one moment to the next. […] > The second, object-oriented way, is scalable. It doesn’t care how many speakers you have in your room because it is not referencing a specific speaker – just relative locations. Importantly, these locations can include the space above you and around you, enclosing you in a “bubble” of sound. * https://www.trinnov.com/en/blog/posts/what-is-immersive-sound/ https://www.trinnov.com/en/blog/posts/what-is-immersive-soun... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_(sound_system_company)#DTS:X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_(sound_system_company)#DTS... Given the (x, y, x) co-ordinates of an audio signal/object, the codec algorithm figures out which speaker(s) should get what signal: if the system only has two speakers then you'll generally only have stereo, if you have a 7.1.4 setup (four overhead / in-ceiling speakers) it will probably be more immersive: * https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guides/7.1.4-overhead-speaker-setup-guide/ https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guid... * https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guides/7.1.4-dolby-atmos-enabled-speaker-setup-guide/ https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guid...