Listening Room

The Listening Room is a 3D studio with multiple speakers (7 hang from the ceiling, 8 surround the listening area at ear level and 7 more are below an acoustically transparent grid floor).

All audio streams in the room are routed and controlled through a custom program called OpenMixer running on a dedicated computer. OpenMixer provides for multiple multichannel inputs to be routed simultaneously to any or all speakers in the room. OpenMixer can also decode Ambisonics multichannel streams from any of its inputs to the speaker arrangement of the room. Inputs available include a digital 24 channel i/o link from the Linux workstation, 16 analog inputs, 8 microphone inputs, 2 8 channel digital ADAT links, 4 ethernet ports that provide 24 channels of digital i/o each through Netjack, and the outputs of a DVD player installed in the equipment rack.

Please refer to the OpenMixer Manual page for detailed instructions on how to use the Listening Room audio routing facilities.

(this paper - presented in the Linux Audio Conference 2010 - explains the motivations and subsequent development of the OpenMixer hardware and software)

Please don't move the speakers or change their settings as the room has been calibrated for the current speaker positions and settings. Please don't rewire anything (signal or power cables), there is no need to do that.