Introducing the H.I.V.E.

The H.I.V.E. is the Haptic Immersive Virtual Environment. At its core are 40 satellite speakers and 8 subwoofers arranged in a spherical geometry, to provide a full 3D periphonic audio experience. It is currently under construction in my loft space in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Specifications:

• The array speaker mounting structure will be based on a sphere, with 4 horizontal rings fabricated out of 2" steel tubing.
• The array radius is 7.885' (2.4m).
• The middle two rings will be 15' (4.57m) diameter.
• The top ring and bottom ring diameters will be 9.27' (2.82m).
• The four rings will be connected to each other via 4 curved vertical tube struts, equally spaced around the horizontal plane, and bent to the same radius as the array.
• The bottom-most ring will sit about 3" off the ground on adjustable 'feet' for leveling.
• The vertical distance between each ring will be (10.6' / 2) = 5.3'. Using this dimension will allow for exactly +/- 36 degrees of vertical spacing between each row.
• The listening area will be the size of the lower ring - pi*(10.6'/2)^2 = 88 sq. ft. This should allow for about 5 people to stand or sit comfortably in the array.
• The speaker positions will be flexible, but will be in a '8-12-12-8' configuration to begin with. This will allow for up to 5th order Ambisonic decoding in the horizontal plane. The system will allow for expansion up to 48 speakers, to implement a full 5th-order periphonic '4-8-12-12-8-4' configuration.
• There will be 8 subwoofers mounted in a cube configurtion.

Audio Components:

48 x KEF HTS3001SE satellite speakers with Uni-Q drivers
8 x KEF HTB2 subwoofers
8 x NAD 9060 6-channel amplifiers
6 x Aphex 141 8-channel DACs

Computers:

The front-end interface to the surround array will be a Mac Mini connected to an RME Fireface800. The Mac Mini will run Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Traktor, Max/MSP, Bidule, etc... and will be able to accept up to 8 analog inputs and 16 ADAT inputs.

The Linux PC will be an Intel 2.4 GHZ Core2Duo machine in a silent (fanless) case running a 64Studio Linux distro. Two RME Hammerfall HDSP9652 cards provide 56 channels of audio I/O.

Encoded Ambisonic audio is routed to the Linux PC via 2 x ADAToptical outs from the Fireface,

The Linux PC will interface to the speaker array via 6 x ADAT outputs from the installed HDSP9652 cards. These outputs will feed 6 x Aphex 141 D/A converters tied to the 8 x NAD 6-channel amplifiers and 8 powered subwoofers.