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The SoundScape Renderer
- © Q&U
The SoundScape Renderer (SSR) is a versatile software framework for real-time spatial audio rendering. The modular system architecture allows the use of arbitrary rendering methods, e.g. Wave Field Synthesis, Higher-Order Ambisonics and binaural techniques. The SSR is currently available for Linux and Mac OS X and has been released as open source software under the GPL.
The SSR has moved: http://spatialaudio.net/ssr/
news
- 01.02.2012: Version 0.3.3 released, including Razor AHRS support
- 06.09.2011: Version 0.3.2 released, including the source code for the Android SSR Remote
- 04.05.2011: Version 0.3.1 released both for Linux and Mac OS X
- 24.11.2010: A brand new video about our Android Client for the SSR: http://vimeo.com/17159650
- 08.10.2010: Talk about SSR at ITG Fachtagung Speech Communication, see blog entry.
- 21.05.2010: initial Open Source Release (Version 0.3)
Download/Documentation
The SSR can be downloaded in the files section of its project page. There you can also find the current version of the SSR user manual.
You should also have a look at known issues and some documentation about the MacOS X version.
Rendering Modules
Several rendering modules are currently availble:
- Wave Field Synthesis (WFS)
- Vector Base Amplitude Panning (VBAP)
- Ambisonics Amplitude Panning
- Binaural Synthesis
- Binaural Room Synthesis (BRS)
- and others
New rendering algorithms can be implemented quite easily using the SSR framework.
Interfaces
- The Qt interface of the SoundScape Renderer in "binaural" mode replaying a 3 person telephone conference.
- © Q&U
Interaction with the SSR can happen either using its Graphical User Interface (written in Qt) or its network interface (based on TCP/IP sockets). The latter allows for connecting any interface of your choice to SSR.
An example for such interfaces is our Android Client. Click here to see it in operation. You can obtain it from the project page or via the following QR code:
Software Architecture
The SSR is written in C++ under massive use of the Standard Template Library (STL). It is compiled with g++ (the GNU C++ compiler) and runs under Linux. The JACK Audio Connection Kit (http://jackaudio.org) is used to handle audio data which makes it very easy to connect several audio processing programs to each other and to the hardware. This way any program that produces audio data (and supports the JACK) and any live input from the audio hardware can be connected to the SSR and can serve as source input.
Head Tracking
Binaural resynthesis works best with head tracking. Therefore, the binaural renderers of the SSR have built-in support for the following tracking devices:
- Razor AHRS, a high-quality, low-cost, do-it-yourself tracker solution with USB and/or Bluetooth support. Open Source firmware and documentation is available at our development site: https://dev.qu.tu-berlin.de/projects/sf-razor-9dof-ahrs/wiki/Tutorial
- Polhemus Fastrak, which works out-of-the-box (but is not so cheap).
- InterSense InertiaCube3 (and maybe other InterSense trackers), which needs a proprietary library from their website (and is also not so cheap). Due to licensing terms, we cannot provide InterSense support in the MacOSX AppBundle, you have to compile it on your own: https://dev.qu.tu-berlin.de/projects/ssr/wiki/SSR_for_MacOSX.