Dodecahedral speaker – nearly finished

12 pentagonal faces, 12 speakers

These speakers are generally used scientific purposes and testing architectural acoustics. In this project I wanted to address a problem of working with sound in the studio, then actually going to a performance space to work with an entirely different sound system. By working with my own sound source the only variable is the spatial acoustics.

I have had the opportunity in the past to work with a 10.2 surround sound system; although the sound was fantastic, I found this problematic. People will talk endlessly about emulating ‘realistic’ sound, but generally there is only a small sonic sweet spot, [in the centre of the room] so you are not totally immersed in the sound unless you occupy that spot. Personally I find stereo is equally problematic. After getting quite excited about working with loads of channels I went back to working in mono so I could concentrate on the sound output and be more confident about knowing what it was sounding like on the outside. I also wanted to work with something that had its own inherent sound quality. With the dodecahedral speaker, the idea is that the sound you hear comes from one spot. The dodecahedron emulates a spherical sound source or point, which propagates sound around the space to fill it.

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Filed under: acoustics, MAX MSP, performance