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Zirkonium: Non-invasive software for sound spatialisation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan
Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan*
Affiliation:
Native Systems Group, ETH Zürich, Clausiusstrasse 59, CH-8006 Zürich, Switzerland
*
E-mail: cramakrishnan@acm.org
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Abstract

Zirkonium is a flexible, non-invasive, open-source program for sound spatialisation over spherical (dome-shaped) loudspeaker setups. By non-invasive, we mean that Zirkonium offers the artist spatialisation capabilities without forcing her to change her usual way of working. This is achieved by supporting a variety of means of designing and controlling spatialisations. Zikonium accommodates user-defined speaker distributions and offers HRTF-based headphone simulation for situations when the actual speaker setup is not available. It can acquire sound sources from files, live input, or via the so-called device mode, which allows Zirkonium to appear to other programs as an audio interface. Control data may be predefined and stored in a file or generated elsewhere and sent over OSC. This paper details Zirkonium, its design philosophy and implementation, and how we have been using it since 2005.

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Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 14 , Issue 3: ZKM – 20 Years , December 2009 , pp. 268 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

*

The Klangdom project was generously funded by the Zunkunftsoffensive initiative of Baden-Württemberg.

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