Zirkonium: Non-invasive software for sound spatialisation

Abstract

Zirkonium is a flexible, non-invasive, open-source program for sound spatialisation over spherical (dome-shaped) loudspeaker setups. By non-invasive, we mean that Zirkonium offers the artist spatialisation capabilities without forcing her to change her usual way of working. This is achieved by supporting a variety of means of designing and controlling spatialisations. Zikonium accommodates user-defined speaker distributions and offers HRTF-based headphone simulation for situations when the actual speaker setup is not available. It can acquire sound sources from files, live input, or via the so-called device mode, which allows Zirkonium to appear to other programs as an audio interface. Control data may be predefined and stored in a file or generated elsewhere and sent over OSC. This paper details Zirkonium, its design philosophy and implementation, and how we have been using it since 2005. © Cambridge University Press, 2009.