Digital technology has transformed the listening experience. But there’s little in the way of physical artifacts of that act, and a diminished sense of humanized relationships to an individual being at the other end. From modern radio to Internet-streamed playlists, our listening world is DJed by automated robots in streams that flow through generic, mass-market speakers. The object and the content lack the design intention that imbued, for instance, the gorgeous radio sets of the early 20th Century and the personalities that narrated the programming.

Armed with a lasercutter, designer Matt Brown has a novel concept for how to redesign the act of listening. From the creator’s blog Real Tomato:

For this system, you would have a speaker with an rfid reader, and laser-cut paper radios with rfid chips inside. The radios themselves are designed by musicians, charities, brands, and designers. When the paper radio is placed over the speaker it changes the radio station to what the artist has chosen. Other noises and interactions can be programmed in too. Alec Baldwin’s radio for example could politely ask everyone to turn their lights off from time to time. People could have the paper radios around their house in different rooms. The supremes radio might be a better living room station. This system tries to add a little bit of fun to internet radio, and give people a connection with the artists they choose. The radios themselves would hopefully be cheap and collectible little sculptures, each one accessing unique stations.

The artist, D.A.R.Y.L., is a recent alumnus of Sweden’s Umea institute of Design.

I think we need a new, specialized Creative Commons license that describes “Great Concepts I Probably Won’t Get to Developer Further so Please Go Run with It With Some Credit to Me.” (Okay, maybe with a shorter name.) I love the possibilities this project suggests, if for no other reason than the beautiful sculptures created with the lasercutter.

The works themselves are printed out a single sheet and assembled. THat demonstrates some of the power lasercutters can provide, and the promise they hold for localized production of objects. (Use eco-friendly recycled paper and inks, and this is a consumer product that doesn’t deliver a dropkick to the planet.)

I just interviewed Owen Pallett aka Final Fantasy, and he told me saw a survey that showed some 80% of music journalists listen through music via the built-in speakers in their laptops. That would be terrifying if true – I’m not certain that it is – but regardless, I think there is a clear need to rethink listening processes and objects.

Check out the post and the blog for more inspiring images. Via the wonderful Saturn Never Sleeps blog by Rucyl Mills and King Britt.

On display in Chi-town: giant pods to fill rooms with sound, and a man in a sound-induced, hypnotic blizzard of milk. (Yes, they have winter in northern Illinois.)

Snowy Day at MGFest 2008 from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Octophonopod at MGFest 2008 from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Behind-the-scenes commentary is available on Mike’s site, not to be confused with the domain-squatting personals site that you get if you leave out the hyphen. (Will, someday, an entire romantic community be devoted to Una Love? I wouldn’t rule it out.)

One lesson learned: milk can be incompatible with electronics.

Looks can be a powerful agent for changing how we think about sound. Pairing liquid, organic speakers with equally fluid and dynamic visualizations, the launch of Muon last month in Italy made this principle readily apparent. I’m all about lo-fi, cheap gear here on CDM, but if you absolutely must launch luxurious aluminum speakers with spectacular animated visuals at a posh party in an Italian salon, I sure won’t complain. Pass the prosecco, please?

Muon Project Page, documentation videos at chrisoshea.org
See coverage at ze | d | esign, toxi’s project blog, MoCo Loco, elsewhere. (Yeah, CDM’s motto is: cover things last. Was a bit busy with Maker Faire!)
Created by Moving Brands

Details on the installation and how it was done:

Liquid-y Speakers: The speakers themselves were beautiful enough. Designed by UK speaker research center KEF Audio and Ross Lovegrove, a champion of organic, 21st Century design and one of the most respected designers on the planet, the key to the design is super-formed aluminum. The process does for metal something like what vacuum forming does for plastic: you heat sheets of aluminum so they can be molded into unique forms. The speakers themselves are formed out of single, 6-foot pieces of metal, into an acoustically-conceived, flowing form. I haven’t heard them, but we’ve already discussed (at a radically lower price point) why speakers really don’t have to be — or even shouldn’t be — rectangular.

Liquid-y Visualization: And that’s just the speakers. Part of the beauty of digital media is that they can make the invisible and the impossible visible in a dynamic way. So Muon creators employed London’s responsive media firm Moving Brands, who in turn brought in two of our favorite people — responsive media guru Chris O’Shea (see his blog Pixelsumo, and artist and Processing ninja Toxi (aka Karsten Schmidt). Working with creative director David Eveleigh-Evans, the team created a dynamic animation on a huge LED screen that could visualize the sound coming from the speakers and reflect in motion what the speakers do in product design.

How They Did It

The animation isn’t just a pretty visualization; it organically reflects what’s happening with the sound. Performing a spectral analysis of the sound (via a Fast Fourier Transform or FFT), the software uses amplitude levels in different zones of frequencies to produce particle objects, which spring and bob based on polarity, turning the peaks in amplitude in sound into a pulsating pool of fluid. The model itself is actually 3D, but it’s squashed into 2D space (or you can imagine looking at the 3D space from above). The other essential element is that the software looks at a history of amplitudes over time, so that overall changes can be adjusted (a bit like the simple “peak” meter on a consumer stereo EQ).

If you imagine an EQ meter using a pool of mercury instead of simple bars, that’s the basic idea.

The implementation is, as I’d expect from this team, simple and elegant — a few basic elements are tweaked to produce a maximal effect. Here’s the gear (software and hardware) used to pull it off:

Processing, the open-source, Java-based, simple coding environment for graphics and multimedia. (Trust me. You can code in it. Even a 10-line sketch can often be interesting, though sound-related stuff tends to get a lot more involved fast.)

Ess, which is one of a few competing sound libraries for Processing based on the Java sound API. (See also the JSyn-based Sonia, though there seem to be some compatibility issues with that one, and the newer, tongue-twisting Mimin.)
traer.physics, a wonderful and easy-to-use physics library. (I’ve used it in a few projects — a must-download.)

Toxi’s own libraries.

ControlP5 for debugging, a library that places on-screen controls in your sketch. (I imagine it’d also be hugely useful for performance, and can’t believe I haven’t tried it before!)

And don’t forget the ginormous LED screen from Creative Technology, “containing 73,728 full colour LEDs over a 10 x 5 metre floor, using the Barco MiTrix system.” Yum. 73,000 LEDs.

More stuff from Chris on the way. If you’ve got a Processing project for sound, we’d love to hear about it. It’s better-known on the visual side (and a regular subject on Create Digital Motion), but there are still MIDI and audio tasks at which it excels, even if you have access to tools like Max/MSP/Jitter. Right tool for the right job, and whatnot.

While on the subject of Gallo Speakers, here’s about as far as you can get from the baby-sized A’Diva satellites: speakers that tower 78″ tall, pack some 12 4″ aluminum woofers each, and deliver nearly omni-directional sound. Micro speakers (5″ each), yes, but in a slender but tall enclosure.

The Reference 5LS speakers, due third quarter 2007 but shown recently at CES in prototype form, alternate mid-range spheres with tweeter cylinders vertically. The idea is to deal with phase and dispersion issues in a nearly (though not quite) omni-directional speaker. Gallo also showed off a reference amp that would couple with the speakers (the Reference SA).

Anthony Gallo Speakers

Click through for some drool-inducing photos. Now I need to make up a reason to build a sound art installation with these units. (I have until later 2007, after all.)

I never copy and paste press releases, but since people are already asking for more details and there’s nothing up on the Web yet, here’s an excerpt with more of the technical bits (and happily, Gallo tends heavier on actual technical specs in their PR than the usual marketing-speak!):

Scheduled to be released to the public in the third quarter of 2007, the towering speaker stands 78” tall, boasts an incredible 12 custom aluminum 4” woofers and features seven of AGA’s proprietary CDT II tweeters, which possess power-handling, off-axis response and efficiency that approach the textbook definition of ideal. In addition, the Reference 5LS has eight 4″ carbon fiber midrange drivers, each housed it its own 5″ spherical enclosure.

“The Reference 5LS is really the ‘big brother’ of our flagship Reference 3.1,” states Anthony Gallo, award-winning speaker designer and founder of AGA. “While it’s not completely omni-directional, it is the closest any line source has ever come to being omni-directional. This loudspeaker is the culmination of more than 25 years of loudspeaker design research. After a lengthy development cycle, we’re extremely excited to unveil our new flagship to the public at the CES show.”

Many line sources horizontally offset their various drivers, but AGA alternates tweeter cylinders with mid-range spheres – one atop the other – in perfect vertical alignment. Because of this, the phase and dispersion problems caused by driver offset are entirely eliminated.

Capable of being driven by a single, capable amplifier, the 5LS offers the options of bi- or tri-wiring, as well as bi- or tri-amping. Although capable of handling massive power, the crossover-less design and high efficiency of both the CDT II tweeters and carbon-fiber midrange drivers are perfect matches for low-powered, high-performance amplifiers. The first-order low-pass filter used for the bass drivers (The only crossover employed in the 5LS) can be bypassed, enabling the LF enclosure to be driven from the LFE output of a processor, or from a separate amplifier.

At 7” wide by 11” deep, the Reference 5LS sports quite a slender profile. The twelve 4” woofers fire out the back and equal the cone surface of a 15” subwoofer, while offering speed and transparency that a large single driver cannot match. In addition, the Reference 5LS features AGA’s patented S2 Technology, as well as their trademark spherical enclosure, which eliminates any external diffraction.

For even more groundbreaking performance, the company’s optional Reference SA amplifier, which features volume, phase and crossover adjustments, is ideal for this application. The Reference SA allows the speaker to be placed for optimal imaging and soundstaging performance, and then fine-tuned for bass using the SA’s control facilities.

For many of us, our studio and our home are one and the same. The speakers we use to monitor mixes are the ones we use for rehearsals, improvisations, and casual listening. I first got interested in the Anthony Gallo A’Diva series speakers partly because I’ve long admired Gallo’s home speaker products, but also because the Gallos seemed to be comfortable walking this home/studio line.

Normally, engineers steer far clear of home audio equipment when it comes to monitoring. But producer Neal Pogue has been using the A’Diva speakers for just that, including five songs on the new Stevie Wonder album, and projects for Nelly Furtado, Indie Ari, Earth Wind and Fire, and Outkast. (See studioexpresso profile, or a 2004 interview in Electronic Musician for more about Pogue’s production background.) That’s pretty unusual for speakers aimed at the home market.

Having lived with a 2.1 set of the A’Diva Ti satellites for a while, I’m impressed, as well. The sound is uncolored and clear, with really gorgeous high-frequency definition. It makes these speakers sound both much larger than they are (you can fit them in your hand), and much more expensive. (They run just over US$200 a speaker, but you could easily fool someone into thinking they went for more.) That could make these ideal for complementing your existing set of monitors. I got to talk to Anthony Gallo, the speaker’s creator, about his background and, most importantly, why the speakers are spherical in the first place.

A’Divas on Test

First, if you’re like me, you’ve probably had some less-than-amazing experience with small speakers. There are plenty of small speakers that sound great at lower levels, but become harsh as you drive them. I was able to crank my A’Diva Ti setup to nearly painfully-loud levels without losing any clarity. It’s actually a little spooky: normally, “transparent” sound refers to the acoustic properties of speakers, but in the case of these two little spheres sitting on a shelf, there’s something unnerving about little tiny speakers making so much sound.

The drivers on the speakers are a combination of titanium and paper, hence the name and greater treble extension performance. There’s a 1″ voice coil for greater dynamic range, and to me, part of the reason these sound so good has to do with dynamic range and not just frequency range. I moved them around my living room studio and tried them both as traditional monitors and in a home stereo setup, and was pleased with the results for both. They’re small enough, as well, that you could easily mount them even in close quarters. Normally, that would allow you to set up a home theater, but it also happens to make them ideal as a secondary set of monitors for a studio.

The A’Diva Ti 2.1 setup I received for testing was mated with a 250-watt TR-2 subwoofer. Subwoofers are where home equipment tends to really reveal itself as a home product, but the TR-2 sounds terrific: rather than sounding boomy, it retains dynamic clarity right through the low end. (It’s good enough, in fact, that it revealed all kinds of nasty low-end mastering errors in my DVD collection, particularly with TV shows. Some disturbing up-mixing and down-mixing tends to happen when shows get tossed on DVD.) And, of course, those 250 watts are powerful in a way that’s incompatible with Manhattan living; after some brief fun in the middle of the afternoon, I decided I had to turn the level down as much as I could just to avoid getting evicted. (+6 dB boost? Uh, no, thanks, say the people on the fourth floor.) I think the 100-watt TR-1 would probably be fine if you’re in an 850 square-foot apartment. But if you want theater-sized bass and happen to live in the suburbs, you might look at the TR-2.

Just as with the satellites, the subwoofer eschews a rectangular design for a cylindrical enclosure. Unlike most subwoofers, the result feels well-crafted and looks quite lovely on its own. I was also pleased to find some decent options on the TR-2: low- and high-level I/O, plus EQ and a continuously-variable knob for phase.

Back to the original question, though: why am I bothering talking about “home theater” speakers on CDM in the first place? I can see a number of reasons why these would make sense. First, while I wouldn’t rely on them as my only studio monitors, they make a perfect second set, particularly when you want to experience what a 2.1 setup will do to your mix — but without the added coloration and, frankly, poor performance of a lot of inexpensive home speakers. Second, their size and shielding are perfect any time you need flexible placement. I’ve been looking for good speakers to use for installations, so I’m interested in them even for that. But when you’re in cramped quarters, even studio placement becomes an issue. Lastly, a lot of us have limited budgets and need speakers for our home setups. You want those to sound as good as your studio monitors, and you want them to be able to occasionally do double-duty. For me, at least, the A’Diva Ti’s fit the bill.

Now, I’m a fan of a very simple monitoring philosophy: listen in as many different ways as possible. I wish I still had my old Volvo 240 so I could try out mixes on its blown-out cassette and stereo system; if a mix worked there, it worked anywhere. “Mastering” is a pretty misleading concept because it suggests you know what people will listen on, when you don’t. So, I’m still going to hook up mixes — especially anything I’m considering for surround delivery — to some low-end setups, as well. But having the A’Diva setup to hear what’s going on across the frequency and dynamic range in more detail, and hear it the way it will sound in a 2.1 or 5.1 configuration, and have the setup for listening for enjoyment — that, to me, is the ideal.

I would never make a speaker recommendation blind (or is that deaf?); Gallo gets wide distribution so odds are you may have a set nearby you can go hear for yourself, and compare to some of the other available offerings. I will, however, stand by my feeling that you need more than one set of speakers to give your mix a good listening. And I’ll say, as well, more affordable surround setups like the Gallo could be just what we need to dip into surround, which has largely remained elusive to the home musician.

Of course, the one major downside of the A’Diva line is that they are configured as 2.1, which may rule them out as your primary monitors. Gallo is aware of this feedback, though, so perhaps we’ll see speakers geared for the studio in the future.

A’Diva Speaker Series Product Page (I evaluated the slightly higher-end Ti series with titanium drivers)

TR-2 subwoofers; Full surround line

Conversation with Anthony Gallo

Anthony Gallo Acoustics really is the result of the designs of an engineer named Anthony Gallo. I always enjoy talking to the people who actually design the stuff, so I was pleased to get to talk to Anthony a bit about his background and the thinking behind his designs.

Anthony began building sound equipment early in his teenage years, designing speakers as young as 13. He told me that his early work with electrostatics had a big influence on his current designs. (He notes in the company history that he got a “shocked a zillion times.” Well, they are electrostatics, after all.) I’ve found most designers I’ve talked to got started with childhood tinkering, all the more reason to encourage Make Magazine-style experimentation in the next generation of young men and women.

A brief excerpt from our conversations:

Peter: It seems like there’s a resurgence of DIY electronics, after a long lull. Do you see more people becoming interested in DIY electronics?

Anthony: It’s harder to know if there are more DIY’ers out there today. It seems like there are because of the internet. You notice a lot more of them, but to say it’s a trend I’m really not sure. I’m glad to see there are a lot of people out there that have the same passion as I do.

Peter: Did those early experiments impact your work today?

Yes it does. However, when I was experimenting on my own over 20 years ago I didn’t have the resources to develop drivers or even enclosures that I knew in my heart would sound much better than wood. Such as utlra-rigid spherical structures and enclosures with curves. They are inherently much more rigid.

Peter: There’s a lot of confusion, it seems, about speaker wire. I know you sell your own wire for your speakers. What kinds of differences do you hear between different speaker wire; what differentiates yours?

Anthony: For every person you ask, everyone will have a different opinion on the sound of wire. I have selected a wire that is cost-effective and sounds excellent with our products. And in general, I tend to like solid core wire, rather than a lot of the stranded alternatives.

Depending on the type of wire, it could range from a grungy, bloated sound quality, to a crisp, clear transparent on the other extreme. And then there is every variation in between.

Peter: For the layperson, why spheres? And can you talk about how you personally came across spherical cabinets?

Anthony: Firstly, it is the lowest coincidence of external diffraction. External diffraction is what occurs when sound leaves the driver and wraps itself around the enclosure. If there are sharp projections, such as edges on a box speaker, it will interfere with the propagation of the driver and projects different frequencies. Also, the sphere is the most rigid enclosure and since it’s so rigid, the wall can be made very thin, which saves internal air volume and allows the speaker to be smaller than wooden/plastic boxes.

I read about it back in the 70’s, however it’s been well documented as early as the 30’s, that the sphere is the optimal shape for sound. (See attached the graph with frequency response for various enclosure shapes). Since I discovered this, I started seeking out hollow round structures that could be used.

Finding this graph in a textbook was an “ah-hah” moment in his own designs, Anthony says.

I know some readers here build their own loudspeakers, so I’ll be curious to see your own non-commercial designs, as well — and if we now have Anthony as a CDM reader, you can share them with someone who’s well-known in the business!

We’ll keep an eye on the new designs coming from Gallo in the future, as it sounds as though they’ve become more interested in the audio/music production market as well as home theaters. In the meantime, as usual, I expect there are many of you who know more about this than I do, so we welcome comments as always.

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/01/29/gallos-right-round-adiva-ti-speakers-and-a-chat-with-the-designer/feed/ 6 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/02/01/hemispherical-loudspeaker-ultimate-performance-speaker/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/02/01/hemispherical-loudspeaker-ultimate-performance-speaker/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2006 05:00:00 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/02/01/hemispherical-loudspeaker-ultimate-performance-speaker/ If you frequent experimental music concerts and performance art events, you might have seen them: mysterious, spherical and polyhedronalish speaker arrays, looking a bit like an unmanned space probe or an alien soccer ball.

Now you can have one of your very own: Electrotap has announced they’re shipping the Hemisphere speaker array. And forget the odd looks of other speakers for a second: this sounds downright practical. It weighs just 17 lbs., but contains six Polk Audio db525 fullrange drivers. It sits on a surface. Sound fills the space, but it actually comes from the location where you’re playing. And at US$599, many of you can afford it.

Most importantly, with the flat base on the new model, you can finally discourage alien beings attending your gigs from trying to play interdimensional space hockey with it. I get kicked out of more clubs that way . . .

(Don’t miss the history of the device assembled there, with shots like the 1997 model shown below — bless those Princeton sound wizards!)

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/02/01/hemispherical-loudspeaker-ultimate-performance-speaker/feed/ 1 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/07/11/edirol-new-midi-audio-gear-portable-usb-speakers/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/07/11/edirol-new-midi-audio-gear-portable-usb-speakers/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2005 05:00:00 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/07/11/edirol-new-midi-audio-gear-portable-usb-speakers/

Edirol, the audio/video gear folks that are part of Roland Group, have a trio of announcements about new hardware. Let’s deal with them all at once, because Roland model numbers make my head hurt:

New MIDI: Yes, new MIDI interface hardware. (MIDI will never die, folks.) What’s groovy about them? The US$89 UM-3EX has a built-in USB hub — chain them and/or rack mount them(!) and you’ve got some serious multi-port MIDI. Sure, some will be building a monster studio with this using lots of vintage keyboards . . . I’ll be building some weird interactive setup with sensors. Don’t mind me, though; I’m insane.

Updated Audio: Edirol’s UA-1EX is simple, but it’s got a lot going for it: super-small, cheap (US$99), and now 24-bit / 96 kHz and ASIO-compliant.

Portable USB Speakers: Here’s the cool announcement — USB-powered, portable speakers. The MA-1EXare perfect for portability: there’s even a cable wrap for wrapping up the USB cord, and you’ll never need to plug in power. No pricing yet.

So, will you be adding those portable speakers to your bag? Key question is how they sound. Check the specs: they deliver a whopping 0.75 Watts of power! (Hint: you’re going to want the bass enhancement, because that’s basically nothing.) Then again, they may be tiny, and they’ve got digital outputs in case you want to . . . uh . . . well, I don’t really know why they have those. Anyway, could be nifty in a pinch; I’ll let you know once they’re out. And I’ll certainly be grabbing that new MIDI interface.

More hardware coming: Unless no one told Edirol the huge NAMM show is still a couple of weeks away, I think you can expect bigger announcements later on this month. Stay tuned, MIDIskateers!

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/07/11/edirol-new-midi-audio-gear-portable-usb-speakers/feed/ 1 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/05/25/jaws-soundtrack-remixed-underwater/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/05/25/jaws-soundtrack-remixed-underwater/#comments Wed, 25 May 2005 05:00:00 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/05/25/jaws-soundtrack-remixed-underwater/

Artist Abinadi Meza has created a remixed composition of the “lighthearted” sounds of the movie Jaws (think drunken sailor sounds and off-key clarinet blasts), into a piece that wlll only be played underwater. To hear the output of the submerged speakers, you have to strip to your skivvies and float in the ocean. Title: Soft Jaws. Details of the project plus an MP3 for landlubbers are available from PS122 Gallery’s Artwurl zine.

Speaking of this, have any of you experimented with underwater speaker placement? (or simulating it digitally?)

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/05/25/jaws-soundtrack-remixed-underwater/feed/ 0 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/04/14/sonic-garden-music-from-giant-blobs/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/04/14/sonic-garden-music-from-giant-blobs/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2005 05:00:00 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/04/14/sonic-garden-music-from-giant-blobs/

How do you get a group of people in Milan to lounge atop, cuddle with, and hump a bunch of soft cone-shaped blobs?
Easy: feed a channel of synthetically-generated music to each blob so,
as they rock and move, soothing interactive music fills the air. The
result, says visitors, ranges from "very comfortable" to "very erotic."
But everyone from kids to adults looks like they're having a laugh riot
– the sign of a very successful installation. The Sonic Garden has video and photos, though not many construction details. (via Ektopia)

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/04/14/sonic-garden-music-from-giant-blobs/feed/ 0 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/03/31/balloons-as-speakers-and-microphones/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/03/31/balloons-as-speakers-and-microphones/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2005 05:00:00 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/03/31/balloons-as-speakers-and-microphones/

Here in the blogosphere, we only care about up-to-the-minute technology, right?

On the contrary. We still find these talking balloons pretty damn cool. (via a huge post on the MIT Media Lab from Make:blog — go ahead, waste the rest of the afternoon)

State-of-the-art 1995 technology, so get cracking: a piezo sensor
mounted to the front face of the balloon lets the ballon's aluminized
mylar body act as both microphone and speaker. In layman's terms: the
balloons can talk to each other. (Don't say "I invented talking
baloons" and expect to get far in academia, though. The proper term, as
in creator Joseph Paradiso's article for the IBM Systems Journal –
fine bathroom reading, by the way — is "The Interactive Balloon;
Sensing, Actuation and Behavior in a Common Object.")

Yes, that's right, they don't talk to each other, they actuate each
other. Now go, read the paper, and build yourself some baloon speakers
for your next gig.

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