Telematic connection of two co-located venues using virtual microphone control

In this project, a spatially accurate, long-distance audio connection was developed between two collaborative spaces, Rensselaer’s CRAIVE-Lab and the Panorama Screen System at EMPAC. This talk focuses on the special requirements for music collaborations that result from simultaneously producing sounds at both remote ends. Unlike with the back-and-forth occurring speech, the latency between both parties has to be kept at a minimum to avoid temporal disruptions. We use a low-latency transmission software (Jacktrip) and a low-latency, time-based sound spatialization software package (Virtual Microphone Control, ViMiC) to mitigate this. ViMiC is based on the virtual simulation of traditional microphone techniques, where each virtual microphone in a multichannel array can be adjusted in directivity and 3-D orientation using delay lines and amplitude adjustments for auralization. A spherical microphone is used at each end to track the musical instruments and voices. The latency requirement for the tracking system is less strict because the additional latency only affects the spatial but not the temporal properties of the sounds. The two sites use immersive loudspeaker systems capable of accurately reproducing spatialized audio from the remote site. [Work supported by NSF IIS-1909229.]