Multichannel audio?

msp

Hi all

I prototyped an a/v project using sample playback in stereo and now comes the time to spatialise the sound (3 channels, possibly concurrent playback). I thought this would be a bread-and-butter exercise but it seems either I'm missing something or it's not off the shelf?!

I'm running Processing 3 on OS X 10.10.5

I've reviewed Minim & Beads and not found an obvious example. I read this forum post where the solution seemed to be to run multiple stereo sound cards!

I've hacked around based upon this Minim example but I can't get any audio device to tell me it has more Lines available (Audio 8 DJ, Soundflower)

Line.Info allLines [] = mixer.getTargetLineInfo(); println(mixer.getMixerInfo()); println("MSP allLines: "+allLines.length);

Audio 8 DJ, version Unknown Version MSP allLines: 1 MSP open lines: 0 MSP lines: -1 MSP: com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectTDL@34339880

I started poking around in Java Sound directly based on this SO post and this gist but same deal, although I have verified I have a "Direct Audio Device" Mixer.

Minim states "Using setOutputMixer you can also create AudioOutputs that send sound to specific output channels of a sound card." but that method is deprecated and I can't figure out how to use it regardless!

I've read the Java Sound docs but can't see anything obvious telling me one way or the other if this is possible.

So..

Anyone out there running multichannel audio (from a single sound card) via Processing (or plain Java)? If so, please tell me what I'm missing!

Cheers

msp

Here's the output of my Java Sound MixerTest:

https://gist.github.com/msp/bc5e0f45318ade6d822eb4b6c39a3f30

msp

...this tool is very useful to understand how Java Sound sees your system: http://www.jsresources.org/apps/jsinfo.html

neilcsmith_net

Try using Beads with the JACK output rather than JavaSound. It'll give you better performance and access to all audio channels. Or switch to Linux, which is the only platform I know of where JavaSound reports all the channels of your soundcard as a single device.

I'm the author of the JACK and JavaSound backends used in Beads, which it inherited from Praxis LIVE, so ask away if you get stuck! :-)

msp

Thanks Neil ! I'd contacted Ollie @ Beads who just said the same thing. For completeness, here's the answer I got from Minim:

https://github.com/ddf/Minim/issues/56

Looks like my Audio 8 might be confusing things also.

msp

Thanks again to Neil & Ollie @ Beads. Here's the commit which used their suggestion:

https://github.com/msp/generative-projections-slg/commit/aa4df13fc42f6001e206bb82d2f1c622a222174c

mrjvijay

Hi neilcsmith_net, Can I record from multi-channels using mixer connecting to a computer? I am trying to record from multiple mics going into separate outputs so that I can control mics individually e.g., mute one or more mics while recording. Can I do that with Beads and JACK output? Thank you