[Original at https://www.turborebop.net/borut_galerija/index.php?folder=electronics/mixer]
Pseudo-quadro stereo mixer
This audio mixer is a bit special. It has the ability to add and subtract each of the six stereo channels and the resulting (L+R, L-R, 2xL, 2xR) outputs are sent to four amplifiers and loudspeakers. It can be used as normal stereo mixer also. I finished it in 1997.
It was put to good use in SOUND BIOTOPE installation two years later:
https://www.3via.org/records/index.php?opt=item&id=8
The knobs are for treble, bass, balance – it is doubled for the sum and subtraction of the stereo channel. Each of the six modules can be used as two independent monophonic channels also.
The white fader is for sum, the black for subtractions. Volume control and panning can be done with control voltages also – via midi interface and computer. The small black pushbuttons in the middle serve as functions’ selectors.
/associated text from 1998/
Virtualizing the Acoustic space even further…
Acoustic space (as a project) translated into the physical acoustic space by means of a psycho-acoustic set-up. A nice way to put some chaos in the real space (is there not enough of it?).
Virtualizing…
Is this the old debate on ‘virtual’ versus ‘real’ and the omni-present trauma of technical means being only the imperfect media-tor (media door?) between people wanting to communicate?
Surely not! The thesis from the very beginning is that activities of human minds and bodies are inseparable and when possibilities of bodily expressions are progressively reduced – the mind forms it’s own imaginary structures – equal in energetic content to the missing bodily structures.
Therefore: while translating the remote (‘virtual’?) spaces to the physical acoustic space (and vice-versa) we will not be bothered with the above questions but will virtualize it even further! Is this already an artistic concept?
The acoustic space…
A special (matrix) mixing set-up focuses the sound sources into 4 main acoustic areas. By arranging the loudspeakers in two concentrical squares (one within the other) an even larger number of acoustic sub-areas appear.
The triangle-shaped elements are the basis of such a system (-> pseudo-quadraphonic system).
Manual and/or computer control can focus any incoming sound to any position on the XY axis. The outer square of loudspeakers forms this XY axis.
The inner square is not necessary but when each of the 4 loudspeakers is fed with the difference signal of the opposing two loudspeakers in the triangle, all kinds of phase differences have effect on sound position.
Inputs to the mixer are stereo or mono from the computers (net receivers, net transmitters), sound producing computers, live actions, audio equipment, etc…
Even further…
A further development – a MIDI control of source focusing/de-focusing (by way of computer) can contribute to our wish – ‘dehumanizing’ – virtualizing the acoustic space even further.
