The Virtualmonium emulates the classical loudspeaker orchestra, or Acousmonium, in higher-order ambisonics.

Features

  • Graphical interface for setting up a virtual acousmonium of up to 30 virtual loudspeakers.
  • Additional sends to sub-bass speakers as separate input channels or routed from the main source.
  • Room model and virtual-loudspeaker rotation options.
  • User selected settings for virtual speaker modelling including dynamic response and impulse responses.
  • 2-D and 3-D array possibilities.
  • Presets for multiple users (array layouts can be changed mid-concert).
  • Flexible fader to virtual-loudspeaker mapping.
  • Options for distributing multichannel sources and performing stereo diffusion in the same setup.
  • Direct ‘real-speaker’ sends as well as ‘virtual-speaker’ sends.
  • Off-site rehearsal possibilities over headphones (binaural).

The Virtualmonium is built in MaxMSP and uses IRCAM’s higher-order ambisonics Spat MaxMSP objects for spatial encoding and decoding. When using the Virtualmonium, sound diffusion is performed in the traditional way, but instead of mixing desk faders, MIDI faders are used.

The Virtualmonium manual can be downloaded here: Virtualmonium user manual
The software is available on request (admin [at] electricaudiounit.no / nlb [at] natashabarrett.org)