I have a project that has 16 channels of surround sound. It is going to be a permanent installation. I wonder if there is a Multichannel hardware player that I could use instead of a computer. Something that I can loop a 24 hour wav file. So it is the same for every day from now until eternity . (it is ok if it goes out of sync every few months. and a minute out of sync is fine)
I found joeco blackbox player but it is very expensive. I would like something around 500 to 800 pounds.
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound...
(But generally posting my own personal views and not necessarily those of SOS, the company or the magazine!)
In my world, things get less strange when I read the manual...
Other demos of high channel count surround sound that I've attended have used Reaper as the source because it handles multi-channel files well. You could almost certainly set up a turnkey system based on Reaper running on an embedded computer or Raspberry Pi with something like the Behringer UMC1820 and ADA8200 combination handling the audio at a cost of around £500.
One thing to consider about continuous play from flash memory is that it wears out. That happened with a system I installed with a constant playlist. Dropouts, crackles and pops appeared after a few months of use.
They use a proprietary disc format in which the only limit on the file size, hence audio duration, is the capacity of the drive. I did use them a few times to record or play back continuously for 24 hours or more so I know that works fine. The machine can also can be set up to loop endlessly in playback.
As far as sync goes, the internal clocks on all the HD24XRs I used to have were pretty much spot-on at 48kHz but rather out of whack at 44.1kHz however the units can be externally clocked by wordclock (or ADAT clock/MTC) so could perhaps be locked to whatever they need to sync with to reduce/eliminate drift.
I don't know how well they'd like running 24hrs a day for months on end but I certainly gave mine a lot of hours use, often pretty intensively, and they never really failed other than occasionally being picky when initially mounting a hard drive.
One snag might be availablity of suitable drives. They're made for IDE drives and there were some issues to do with a limit on the biggest dives they could handle (mostly electrical things rather than file formats etc.) and some compatibility problems, particularly with higher current drives which restricted them to a small subset of drives once capacities got higher but some helpful people came out with modified drive caddies which could take SATA drives at which point the size limitations were largely resolved. I used a load of 1TB and 2TB drives quite happily, and also found some SSDs that worked.
They can be found pretty easily and well within budget on the used market.
Back in the day I seem to remember some installations where Microsoft did a 'kiosk' version of Windows where a media loop was played over and over. The machines using this version of the OS were used where 24 hour displays were used, shop displays for example, so it seems that the humble PC/laptop were up to the task, and why not of course seeing as there are any number of uses - industry etc where a PC is plugged in and just left, servers are the most obvious example.
You mention in your original post 'played for 24 hours' do you mean a single file that loops every 24 hours? or a smaller file that is played 24 hours a day?
OneWorld wrote: ↑Sun Jan 15, 2023 4:00 pm
You mention in your original post 'played for 24 hours' do you mean a single file that loops every 24 hours? or a smaller file that is played 24 hours a day?
It is a single file that loops every 24 hours.
I will check the LP-16 Live Player if I can find it in my country.
I as
Hugh Robjohns wrote: ↑Sat Jan 14, 2023 5:13 pm
At that budget, you're probably looking at a tablet and USB 8 channel interface supplemented with an ada8200 for the extra outputs.
yes that is more or less what I thought. Getting a laptop with a Behringer UMC1820 and an ada8200.
You could get a s/h mac mini with an interface. Even a ten year old model should do what you need and can be had for £30-50. You could get two at that price and have a back up in case the first one fails.
. (it is ok if it goes out of sync every few months. and a minute out of sync is fine)
