HyperSpace is to be though of as a way to control the panning of sound using various techniques and to let the user work with his/her favourite DAW to control the spatialization of sound over any multi channel system ranging from 4 to 48 channels. Since MIDI control data is being used to store the panning information it is easy to edit and fine tune the movement and positioning of sound using standard MIDI manipulation of data. It also becomes an integrated part of the project file and can later be redistributed through another system with a completely different configuration of loudspeakers and distribution technologies (for instance VBAP, DPAP or Ambisonic). In this way controlling panning of sound in large scale systems (up to 48 loudspeakers) becomes almost as straight forward as panning in stereo.

HyperSpace is built with Max/MSP the multimedia programming environment from Cycling74 (www.cycling74.com) and the actual ambisonic encoding/decoding along with some interface objects are part of the ICST objects for Max/MSP. The VBAP distribution used in this version of HyperSpace uses Ville Pullkis VBAP object for Max/MSP.

How it works

HyperSpace sits between the DAW and the outside world translating the MIDI data representing the position of a channel of sound (also coming from the DAW) or places the sound in space directly using various control functions. It also enables use of some panning controls not normally found in DAWs. It is also very easy to use it as a real time controller device for live diffusion of a piece of music as well as live input from instruments. Data from HyperSpace can either be used "as is" in real time or recorded into the DAW as MIDI data. Ther is also an iPad control surface avaiable using TouchOSC (an app that you can get from www.hexler.com very cheap)