nwolek / vbap

Legacy objects for Vector Based Amplitude Panning in Max authored by Ville Pullki.

VBAP package for Max

Legacy objects for Vector Based Amplitude Panning in Max authored by Ville Pullki and adapted by Nathan Wolek.

About

This GitHub project is a package for Cycling74's Max, versions 6.1 or higher. It provides newly compiled, 64-bit versions of Ville Pullki's objects for vector-based amplitude panning that were originally developed in 1998.

Vector-based amplitude panning is a technique for spatializing sound across multiple loudspeakers. It is flexible enough to define an arbitrary number of speakers in 2D or 3D space. After speaker positions are defined, the user can move a single sound source through the configuration by adjusting its apparent azimuth and elevation.

Additional resources:

• AES paper on VBAP by Ville Pullki, published originally in 1997 by Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
• Legacy website for research group at Helsinki University of Technology
• Distinct implementation of VBAP for PD by Pierre Guillot of CICM
• 3D Sound Primer by Gary Kendall, published originally in 1995 by Computer Music Journal

Installing

If you have Git installed, you can install via the Terminal using the following commands for Max 7:

cd ~/Documents/Max\ 7/Packages
mkdir vbap
cd vbap
git clone https://github.com/nwolek/vbap.git

For Max 6.1, replace the first line above with the following, and then proceed with the remainder:

cd ~/Documents/Max/Packages

If you do not have Git installed, you can download the latest release here. After decompressing the zip archive, the resulting folder can be placed in one of the following folders:

• ~/Documents/Max\ 7/Packages
• ~/Documents/Max/Packages

Bug reporting

If you feel that you have found a bug, please report it via the Issues section of this GitHub project site.

vbap's Issues

resize help patch to fit smaller screens

patch does not fit on my MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) screen

Documentation needs updates

@bltzr @jln-

I am contacting you because I seem to remember one or both of you having use Ville Pullki’s VBAP external during our work on Jamoma. Someone recently contacted me after seeing my 64-bit update of the old externals. They wanted a Windows build, so I contacted Ville and got permission to set up this repository.

Everything compiles for both platforms now. The trouble is that the documentation is original and untouched. I personally don’t have much experience with the externals. Ville is too busy to update the documentation. Without some updates, it is of limited use for new people who are unfamiliar with the external.

Would either of you have time and interest in helping with this? No deadline really. I just would rather finish this off into a usable package.

wrong address in documentation for vbap

the "installig" section refers to the LowkeyNW package, while it should refer to the vbap repository.

Should all inlets be hot?

It seems like there is a lot of extra patching needed to generate output from vbap with trigger objects (see attached screenshot). Would it be better to just make all inlets hot so that they generate output? Is there ever a situation when you would not want output?

Since this is a function change, we want to be careful. Making it an option is more difficult than just changing them to be hot.

And depending on the difficulty, I may need to tackle it later.

misspelled Ville's last name - Pullki should be Pulkki

add support for arm64 builds

The CMake auto-compile setup should be updated to support arm64 platform.

This request came via Klaus Filip:

https://twitter.com/klaus_filip/status/1506244704471502858

https://cycling74.com/forums/help-compiling-c-source-code-for-windows-64bit-version-of-vpab-by-ville-pulkki/replies/1#reply-6241bfd60830332c3e0310c7

Create initial help patch for define_loudspeakers object

Can be a simple stub, but it would be good to have something here.

Change initial vbap arguments to be floats

The object takes two arguments for azimuth and elevation. There is a conflict in the source code that is limiting user to integers, but this could be easily updated so that it takes floats. This would help it to match the inlets.

Remove extra seealso items

I only see the matrix~ object in my list even though @jln- listed 4 items here:

https://github.com/nwolek/vbap/blob/master/docs/vbap.maxref.xml#L154

I believe this is because the cross references only work when the other objects have an XML entry for themselves. Are there other standard Max objects that should be referenced instead?

Error building standalone in Max 8 with vbap

When building a standalone in Max 8 I get errors "can't open vbap" and "can't open define_loudspeakers". Using 1.1beta2.

All works fine in a normal patch.

Should the 2D v 3D examples be in different tabs?

I wonder if the initial tab for the help file should just show the 2D define_loudspeakers message, then we move the 3D message to a new tab. There may not be much to demo there other than the fact that users can define them, but it would simplify the presentation on the main page.