Spatial Audio in the Continuum Environment

May 22nd, 2018 - May 22nd, 2019

Categories: Applications, Software, Sound Art, Tele-Collaboration, Remote Collaboration

About

The Continuum environment is a high-resolution computer-enhanced group collaboration workspace, consisting of large format 2D touch-enabled and 3D tiled displays, and instrumented with arrays of ambient sensors, enabling users to collaborate with local and remote colleagues and their data more effectively by giving the room itself the ability to anticipate their needs, improve their interaction, and focus their time on discovery rather than the technology.

EVL’s SAGE2 middleware enables teams of users to manage their data, documents, images and media on the Continuum display walls as if the room were one seamless canvas. SAGE2 lets users post and manipulate information, visualizations and animations across the Continuum displays. EVL REU Sean Walker developed a spatial audio system that ties audio playback from SAGE2 media content directly to the media’s (i.e. video) location on the display wall.

Additionally, any audio playback in the Continuum environment can be played back from any of the X number of speakers in the space. The spatial audio functionality was implemented using AVB (Audio Video Bridging) to connect all of the speakers positioned throughout the room coupled with SuperCollider (a functional programming language for audio) to pan the sound around the space.