I’m exploring experimenting with surround sound for a shamanic trance dance class.
I only require something fairly basic to start such as panning 4 audio sources between 4 speakers; it will be a 4.0 speaker setup.
I’d have to build a setup for mobility based on my current equipment which is desktop based but this would be my starting point:

Dell Vostro V131, dual core (Sandy Bridge), USB 2 & 3
Cakewalk Sonar X1 Producer
Akai APC20 - comes with a version of Ableton Live
Line 6 UX1 - USB stereo interface

Sonar X1 Producer supports surround sound so that is my starting point. I will likely need to pay for the encoder; I just checked and the SurCode DD 5.1 encoder is $600 and seems to not be real time so no good for live work.
Is there a fairly inexpensive way to create surround sound mixes in real time?
If I can find the right software what would be required in terms of hardware, would it need to have 6 channels or can I get away with less? It will be easier to output via digital to an AV receiver I figure.

How about using an audio interface with 4 or more outputs? Then just feed this to a multi-channel amp, or two stereo amps/4 speakers. No need for any encoding/decoding for using this live.

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

We’re on the same wavelength as I realised yesterday that this makes more sense.
Not sure how commercial software would handle that though as I do want to get creative with the panning so it’s not just a matter of using static assignments.
I’ve written Windows software that accesses the audio drivers at a low level before so it shouldn’t be too difficult to knock something up.
As I’m only going to be panning I don’t need very low latency so I can get away with using the standard Windows drivers rather than having a crack at ASIO. Wonder how hard it is to work with ASIO? I use Delphi for development. The Widows audio driver model has changed a lot since my last excursion in this area so it might be a learning curve.

I wrote my own Windows MP3 player and it does spoil you when you can add any feature you like; well within the limits of your skill and commitment.
So it would be good to have my own DJ mixing and panning utility as I fancy adding automation presets such as the ability to pan a channel around all 4 speakers in a circular fashion. I’ve even started thinking that a speaker on the ceiling in the middle of the room would be fun.

Doesn't Sonar have automated panning for 5.1? I wouldn't hesitate to use it live. I have used Cubase 6 with several tracks in a live theatrical production with no problems whatsoever. And a midi track for the light console.

Rick

Quote artzmusic:

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Doesn't Sonar have automated panning for 5.1? I wouldn't hesitate to use it live. Rick

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Hi Rick. I’ll probably write my own software as that way I can write panning presets and can have an interface that is focussed purely on the simple tasks that I want to use it for.
Having presets will be useful as I can then quickly cue up a track and a panning preset and let it run. I don’t want to be panning live so much as there’s a class to interact with.
I can also add functionality to save each session as a string of cue lists which might be useful to analyse afterwards what worked and what didn’t. I haven’t had a programming project for quite a while so it will be fun.
I’ll take a look at Sonar though after I have reinstalled it; I had some issues although not with the main program.