Introducing D⁴: An Interactive 3D Audio Rapid Prototyping and Transportable Rendering Environment Using High Density Loudspeaker Arrays

With a growing number of multimedia venues and research spaces equipped with High Density Loudspeaker Arrays, there is a need for an integrative 3D audio spatialization system that offers both a scalable spatialization algorithm and a battery of supporting rapid prototyping tools for time-based editing, rendering, and interactive low-latency manipulation. D⁴ library aims to assist this newfound whitespace by introducing a Layer Based Amplitude Panning algorithm and a collection of rapid prototyping tools for the 3D time-based audio spatialization and data sonification. The ensuing ecosystem is designed to be transportable and scalable. It supports a broad array of configurations, from monophonic to as many as hardware can handle. D⁴’s rapid prototyping tools leverage oculocentric strategies to importing and spatially rendering multidimensional data and offer an array of new approaches to time-based spatial parameter manipulation and representation. The following paper presents unique affordances of D⁴’s rapid prototyping tools.