the IEM-Cube

Johannes M. Zmoelnig
Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics
email:zmoelnig@iem.kug.ac.at

Abstract

Traditional multichannel-reproduction systems are mainly used for recreation of pantophonic soundfields. Fully periphonic reproduction has been limited by computational power to manipulate large numbers of audio-channels as well as needed speaker-layouts. Since in the last years digital hardware has become fast enough to meet the computational requirements, a medium-sized concert-hall for reproduction of periphonic electro-acoustic music, the so called IEM-Cube, has been installed at the the IEM. The room is equipped with a hemisphere consisting of 24 loudspeakers, that allows reproduction of three-dimensional soundfields following ambisonic principles of at least 3rd order. To make use of this, a linear 3D-mixing system on PC-basis has been developed. The system may be used as a production-tool for periphonic mixing into a set of ambisonic-channels, as a reproduction-environment for recreating a 3D-soundfield out of such set of ambisonic-encoded channels, and as a live-instrument that allows free positioning and movement of a number of virtual sources in real-time.