Merging Places: A Real-Time Distributed Live Reverberation Chamber

Paper in proceeding, 2024

We present Auxtrument, a prototype instrument that allows audiences to experience the acoustic qualities of remote locations. Using the metaphor of a reverberation chamber, artists send signals from the mixers, bus, or aux via the Auxtrument's network connections from a concert hall to a few different locations. At each location the signal is played through loudspeakers and captured, colored by the acoustics and noises of the place, via a stereo or ambisonics microphone. The signal is sent back and played for the audience in a surround sound system conveying the spatial qualities of the places. The Auxtrument allows us to merge and layer the different locations in the concert hall. However, this arrangement places great demands on the network. The audio signals need to be high-resolution to preserve the inherent quality of the sounds, which creates large streams. The system must be equipped to work over different types of networks, and to enable any location, the system must work with mobile devices. After ruling out several commercial and opensource solutions, we built the Auxtrument with web technologies: mainly node.js, WebSockets, WebRTC, and WebAudio.