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Open architecture DSPs have been a things for the past couple of decades in the installation audio space. Basically a 19” rack mount box loaded with FPGA’s, DSP

by _kb 3y ago

Open architecture DSPs have been a things for the past couple of decades in the installation audio space. Basically a 19” rack mount box loaded with FPGA’s, DSP chips and maybe some IO that you can adapt to whatever needs arise. Definitely not budget friendly for home hacking like this, but the tooling in those ecosystems is incredibly impressive.

ta988 3y ago
Do you have references for that?
- tcrenshaw 3y ago
  Looks into QSys and biamp DSPs. Folks run whole stadiums worth of dsp on them
  - ta988 3y ago
    Nice! Thanks
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> Open architecture DSPs have been a things for the past couple of decades in the installation audio space. Yeah, and for a variety of reasons have always failed to take off in the pro-audio/live-sound/music creation context. Still not entirely clear why this is, other than that apparently most of the people involved in those sort of workflows don't actually value "design your own DSP and run it in this little black 1U rack mount unit".
- atoav 3y ago
  From a manufacturer perspective having a device with too many possible ways of doing things is not attractive from various perspectives: - it takes away one parameter for product differentiation - testing all possible configurations is hard - it becomes hard to tell whether a fault is your responsibility or the responsibility of the user - support will become more important. Support for complicated things is expensive - mechanical I/O is typically one of the biggest cost factors in such products. If you want to support all possible I/O scenarios that is going to be a lot of connectors and thus prohibitively expensive - most customers will rather buy the mixer can do a lot than the multipurpose device that can be forced to be a mixer All in all there are not that many advantages for manufacturers. That being said, I run an Extron DMP 128 Plus with Dante at work. It is basically a 128bit channel mixer on 1HE with a ton of powerful DSP and many ways to control the DSP (RS-233, Telnet, Http, Web UI, ...) But it is not the cheapest device out there.
  - amias 3y ago
    these are good insights. As nerds we tend to only look at the specs and get bored when it comes to how the product is marketed and supported but this is a huge factor in development of these products. If they don't have clear obvious use cases they will be much much harder to sell. We are maybe 1% of the marketplace, the difference in revenues between 1% market coverage and 90% is massive, hardly anyone can run a business making perfect products for 1% of market
  - benji-york 3y ago
    Well put. I have summarized similar thoughts in the past as "People want to buy a clock, not a box of gears and springs."
- fragmede 3y ago
  I'm not sure how popular they actually are, but they make guitar stomp boxes that are DSP boxes with custom firmware. That 1U racks haven't caught on, I think, is a result of the 1U rack mount market, rather than anything else.
- _kb 3y ago
  Installation audio DSP's are great for systems that run without user interaction for the order of years. They are pinned to the acoustics and functionality of a specific environment and won't need to change unless either of these do. Live audio and production environments instead need to cater for changing acoustics and requirements on the order of seconds, minutes, or hours. There's a lot for dynamism required, and are often being interacted with by multiple people which warrants a different approach. Endless customisation here can be a hinderance rather than benefit. A modern digital console is absolute chockers with user tweakable DSP though. Venues may also have some racked up DSP's running speaker processing with a console in front. There's no hard line, just different tools built for different needs.
MartijnBraam 3y ago
I actually use one of those setups semi-regularly made from Xilica hardware. It does what it needs to reasonably well but that's only enableing/disabling some microphones in a converence hall basically. The interface is horrible, the feedback on the control surfaces is extremely slow, I don't want to see my meters and faders update at an ~1Hz rate... Added to that is the licensing costs to actually be allowed to change the DSP routing in the thing which makes me want to replace it with opensource software :)

by _kb 3y ago

ta988 3y ago

Do you have references for that?

tcrenshaw 3y ago
Looks into QSys and biamp DSPs. Folks run whole stadiums worth of dsp on them
- ta988 3y ago
  Nice! Thanks

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> Open architecture DSPs have been a things for the past couple of decades in the installation audio space. Yeah, and for a variety of reasons have always failed to take off in the pro-audio/live-sound/music creation context. Still not entirely clear why this is, other than that apparently most of the people involved in those sort of workflows don't actually value "design your own DSP and run it in this little black 1U rack mount unit".

atoav 3y ago
From a manufacturer perspective having a device with too many possible ways of doing things is not attractive from various perspectives: - it takes away one parameter for product differentiation - testing all possible configurations is hard - it becomes hard to tell whether a fault is your responsibility or the responsibility of the user - support will become more important. Support for complicated things is expensive - mechanical I/O is typically one of the biggest cost factors in such products. If you want to support all possible I/O scenarios that is going to be a lot of connectors and thus prohibitively expensive - most customers will rather buy the mixer can do a lot than the multipurpose device that can be forced to be a mixer All in all there are not that many advantages for manufacturers. That being said, I run an Extron DMP 128 Plus with Dante at work. It is basically a 128bit channel mixer on 1HE with a ton of powerful DSP and many ways to control the DSP (RS-233, Telnet, Http, Web UI, ...) But it is not the cheapest device out there.
- amias 3y ago
  these are good insights. As nerds we tend to only look at the specs and get bored when it comes to how the product is marketed and supported but this is a huge factor in development of these products. If they don't have clear obvious use cases they will be much much harder to sell. We are maybe 1% of the marketplace, the difference in revenues between 1% market coverage and 90% is massive, hardly anyone can run a business making perfect products for 1% of market
- benji-york 3y ago
  Well put. I have summarized similar thoughts in the past as "People want to buy a clock, not a box of gears and springs."
fragmede 3y ago
I'm not sure how popular they actually are, but they make guitar stomp boxes that are DSP boxes with custom firmware. That 1U racks haven't caught on, I think, is a result of the 1U rack mount market, rather than anything else.
_kb 3y ago
Installation audio DSP's are great for systems that run without user interaction for the order of years. They are pinned to the acoustics and functionality of a specific environment and won't need to change unless either of these do. Live audio and production environments instead need to cater for changing acoustics and requirements on the order of seconds, minutes, or hours. There's a lot for dynamism required, and are often being interacted with by multiple people which warrants a different approach. Endless customisation here can be a hinderance rather than benefit. A modern digital console is absolute chockers with user tweakable DSP though. Venues may also have some racked up DSP's running speaker processing with a console in front. There's no hard line, just different tools built for different needs.

MartijnBraam 3y ago

I actually use one of those setups semi-regularly made from Xilica hardware. It does what it needs to reasonably well but that's only enableing/disabling some microphones in a converence hall basically. The interface is horrible, the feedback on the control surfaces is extremely slow, I don't want to see my meters and faders update at an ~1Hz rate... Added to that is the licensing costs to actually be allowed to change the DSP routing in the thing which makes me want to replace it with opensource software :)