Audio Technology At InfoComm08

Hidden Audio

When one talks about trying to hide audio one often thinks of hiding speakers in products like rock or tree trunk speakers (left). However this year there was a lot of products that allowed one to embed audio in walls where it would be impossible to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. One really neat technology was from Holosonics. Their product allows one to embed a holophonic speaker that directs sound into a a tight beam. Their AS-16 and AS-24 Audio Spotlight Panels are unique to the marketplace. The technology means that only when you are in the beam can you actually hear the sound. It’s great for replacing ceiling tiles almost side-by-side to create a different acoustic environment under each tile.

Stealth Acoustics was showing their three-way, full-range loudspeaker system that becomes completely invisible after installation. The loudspeaker has a rigid frame and the technology includes a paintable active diaphragm face.

Automated Live Audio Capture

One area that’s growing in our work is the ability to capture live sound with limited manpower. We saw a few technologies at InfoComm08 that assists us in this area. Sabine’s series of Phantom Mic Rider microphones combines both DSP processing and an Infra Red detector that provides gated technology to turn microphone on and off as people approach the microphone. Depending on the series purchased the distance at which the microphone becomes active can be adjusted as can the amount of digital signal processing.

FullSound from the Conference Technology Group was another technology that impressed us. It’s a fully engineered system that employs embedded ceiling microphones, and can even work with speaker support systems in the room. It works in small conference rooms and can scale out to full sized classrooms. It can even follow peoples voices around the room as they change locations.
Headset Microphones

We’ve been thinking about implementing headset microphones for some of our audio work in the department. The problem is with these kind of microphones is that the high end versions are expensive ($500.00), can break easily and in some cases are actually fine pieces of jewellery or instruments depending on how one wants to classify them. We came across a series of these headset microphones at Galaxy Audio that are more affordable than some of the higher end models that we’ve been looking at.

Speciality Microphones

Earthworks Audio showed two specialty microphones that caught my attention. Earthworks PianoMic system. It has been designed to fit inside a grand piano. It’s part of Earthworks High Definition Microphone series which is explained at this link.

The other series of mics that looked really good was their Earthworks Flex Series microphones. Earthworks claims a patented pick-up pattern allows an orator to move up to 90 degrees off-axis and still be heard with intelligibility and sound quality. This is a real advantage for church, civic and corporate podium speech applications. The Flex Mics smooth off-axis response will provide more gain before feedback. The flexible neck has been designed for the adjustment of microphones positioning with no handling noise.

Handheld Recorders

In wandering around the floor at InfoComm08 we came across Samson’s Handy H4 and Handy H2 handheld recorders along with SONY’s PCM-D50 handheld unit. All these have been in the market for some time. New this year was Roland’s R-09HR handheld recorder. The R-09HR is a professional, high-definition recorder that records 24bit/96kHz fidelity.

While not a handheld Roland’s R-44 appears to be a great machine to replace most desktop recording devices. The Edirol R-44 is designed for professional capturing up to 4 channels of uncompressed audio with selectable bit depths (16-bit or 24-bit) and sampling frequencies of 44.1kHz/48kHz/88.2kHz/96kHz. For recording media the R-44 employs SD cards or large capacity SDHC cards while employing no moving parts to record audio.

Gilderfluke & Co. showed a unique series of products. Their Sd-10 is a complete stereo audio repeater. It can be used anywhere you need a solid state, high quality audio system that will play for years. The Sd-10 can be dropped right into an audio system in place of a CD player. Their product line also includes an amplifier that will operate with the Sd-10 and a combo unit that includes both the player and amplifier.

Speaker Systems

Anchor Audio’s Beacon Sound System

A number of manufacturers were displaying products using Array speakers as their base technology. Anchor Audio was showing their Beacon® Sound System line array tower can be opened and operational in less than a minute.

PHA - Pragmatic High Performance Array Speakers

We came across Pragmatic designs small, portable and wireless PA system in a briefcase. It uses a small PHA-4 array speaker that contains 4 high performance, full range drivers that has a well-defined dispersion pattern with no hot spots. When mounted vertically, the speakers offer a uniform sound field 360 degrees around the speaker.

Firewire Interconnectivity for Makie Onyx Mixer

The Onyx FireWire Card for an Makie’s Onyx mixer series is a user-installable 24-bit/96kHz card transforms the Onyx 1220, 1620 and 1640 mixers into digital audio interfaces capable of sending up to 18 channels of audio to a Mac or PC without the need for additional converter boxes or hardware.

The Onyx FireWire card contains two 6-pin FireWire connectors that each supply all 16 channels plus the L/R mix. With the dual connectors the Onyx mixer can be placed anywhere within a chain of FireWire-equipped devices. It’s possible to daisy-chain two 16-channel Onyx mixers via FireWire and send up to 32 mic signals right to your laptop.

Other Audio Links

QDP Invisible Motorized Speakers - http://qpdspeakers.com

NVIDIA’s new mobile platform Tegra

We’re all quite used to the miniaturization but the sheer size of NVIDIA’s Tegra platform is something to marvel at. The videos below take you through the system and I think they are worth watching…..

Grid Computing - A Big Part Of the Future

Grid Computing is not something all that far off. In fact it’s widely in use in Academia today. Two of my co-workers were away last week at an Access Grid conference and, as some of you know, we at Ryerson belong to the CineGrid. Both of theseare examples of Grid computing in action. Just in case you are wondering what Grid Computing is I placed a 5 minute video (below) on the subject of Grid computing.

Gartner Identifies Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012

Not being one to be in a position to ignore Gartner, their report on the Top Ten Disruptive technologies for 2008 to 2012 is of interest. They identify social networking technologies, web mashups, multicore and hybrid processors and cloud computing amongst the ten most disruptive technologies that will shape the information technology landscape over the next five years.

The report talks about the value of Scocial Networking as “added value for businesses is being able to collect this feedback into a single point that reflects collective attitudes, which can help shape a business strategy” and that by 2010, web mashups, that mix content from publicly available sources, will be the dominant model 80 percent) in the creation of new enterprise applications.

Its list is as follows;

1. Multicore and hybrid processors
2. Virtualization and fabric computing
3. Social networks and social software
4. Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
5. Web mashups
6. User Interface
7. Ubiquitous computing
8. Contextual computing
9. Augmented reality
10. Semantics

You’ve got to wonder where Open Source is but it’s still interesting reading at http://www.itpro.co.uk/applications/news/201978/gartner-top-10-disruptive-technologies.html

High fidelity Canopy, the “New Media” Canopy Bed

The High Fidelity Canopy bed (video below) is a bed where you can not only watch TV, but you can surf the internet, play your computer games or listen to your music, control all the functions of your room without ever getting up.

Open Source Big Buck Bunny Movie Released

The Amsterdam based ‘Blender Institute’ has released the short 3D animation movie ‘Big Buck Bunny‘. The 10 minute animated short is a comedy about a well-tempered rabbit “Big Buck”, who finds his day spoiled by the rude actions of the forest bullies, three rodents. In the typical 1950’s cartoon tradition Big Buck then prepares for the rodents a comical revenge. It follows a production period of over six months. According to Institue Director Ton Roosendaal the primary intent of the movie was to stimulate the development of open source 3D software demonstrating that the quality is what you would expect from large animation studios. The 1080p version that I downloaded played back beautifully on my iMac.

The movie differentiates itself mostly by its totally open character. Open source tools such as the 3D suite ‘Blender’ were used to create the movie and the movie itself - including all materials as used in the animation studio - are freely accessible for everybody to reuse, to learn from it or just to enjoy it. The promotion of Open Content creation and distribution is one of the main goals of the Creative Commons, the organization that created the ‘Creative Commons’ licenses, which have been widely adopted by artists, musicians, and other creative individuals who wish to freely share their creative endeavors.

Blender Institute in Amsterdam is one of the first companies worldwide exploiting Open Content professionally and commercially. Currently 14 people are working full-time in the Institute, wrapping up Big Buck Bunny and working on an Open Game based on the characters from the movie. The creative team for the movie were brought together by the Blender Institute from all over the world, including the USA, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia. The music has been composed by Jan Morgenstern, who also provided the sound track for the previous Blender production; “Elephant’s Dream”.

Google I/O Show’s First Android Prototype

Google I/O underway in San Francisco with the sessions focusing on next generation web apps built with open technologies and some of Google’s technology. Android is one such development. It’s an software platform and operating system for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system, developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. Today at Google I/O the first working handset based on the platform was demonstrated. It even plays Pacman… Pretty impressive… Video below….

SSD’s Are Here! Solid State Drive Speed And Market Adoption

Samsung Electronics announced that it has developed the world’s fastest, 2.5-inch, 256 Gigabyte (GB) multi-level cell (MLC) based solid state drive (SSD) using a SATA II interface. It’s also the thinnest drive with the largest capacity to be offered with a SATA II interface.What marks this SSD is t’s speed. With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speed of 160MB/s, Samsung’s MLC-based 2.5-inch 256GB SSD is about 2.4 times faster than a typical HDD.

According to a Q1 2008 report by the semiconductor market research firm iSuppli, the SSD market will grow at an annualized average of 124 percent during the four-year period from 2008 until 2012. iSuppli now projects SSD sales to increase by an additional 35 percent in 2009 over what it projected last year, 51 percent more in 2010, and 89 percent more in 2011, and continue to show dramatic increases in subsequent years.

Direct Manipulation Video Player Makes So Much Sense

The Direct Manipulation video Player outlined in a paper by students from the University of Toronto,allows for browsing video by directly dragging content. The system works by automatically extracting motion data from the video and employing a new technique called relative flow dragging that lets users control video playback by moving objects of interest along their visual trajectory. It’s something new and something to really think about….

Samsung demos 82” 2160p HDTV

I first came across these 2160p TV sets at NAB 2008 this year and didn’t quite realize that a standard had been built around this kind of display. I saw them in the SONY booth where they were calling it QFHD. According to Wikipedia “2160p is also called “Quad HDTV” since it displays four times the number of pixels of the highest HDTV standard resolution, 1080p.” According to the manufacturer, the TV integrates a red/green/blue LED backlight, which raises the color saturation to 150%. The image refresh rate is 120 Hz. Boy, just when I was seriously thinking about purchasing a 65″ 1080p set, I had to find out about this.

More later….