From 2fed13faea42a7ff6db918d6d5203da55a69bf92 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: David Runge Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2016 15:07:39 +0100 Subject: Adding first version of expose and thesis, including help. --- thesis/thesis.tex | 265 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 265 insertions(+) create mode 100644 thesis/thesis.tex (limited to 'thesis/thesis.tex') diff --git a/thesis/thesis.tex b/thesis/thesis.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b1d78b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/thesis/thesis.tex @@ -0,0 +1,265 @@ +\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,oneside,titlepage]{report} +\usepackage[english]{babel} +\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} +\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} +\usepackage{textcomp} % Sonderzeichen, z.B. € +%\usepackage{citep} +\usepackage{listings} +\lstdefinelanguage{Ini}{basicstyle=\ttfamily\tiny, + columns=fullflexible, + tag=[s]{[]}, + tagstyle=\color{blue}\bfseries, + usekeywordsintag=true +}[html] +\lstdefinelanguage{bash}{basicstyle=\ttfamily\tiny} +\usepackage{ulem} +\usepackage{lmodern} +\usepackage{multirow} +\usepackage{url} +\usepackage{graphicx} % for PDF scaling +\usepackage{pdfpages} +\usepackage{float} +\floatstyle{boxed} +\restylefloat{figure} +\usepackage{color} +\usepackage{bbding} +\usepackage{hyperref} +\usepackage[font=scriptsize]{caption} +\usepackage[numbers]{natbib} +\graphicspath{{images//}} + +\begin{document} + \title{Master Thesis: SoundScape Renderer Networking} + \author{David Runge\\ + Audiokommunikation und -technologie\\ + Fachgebiet Audiokommunikation\\ + Technische Universität Berlin\\ + \href{dave@sleepmap.de}{dave@sleepmap.de} + } + \date{\today} + \maketitle + \begin{abstract} + Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) as a technological concept has been around for + many years now and all over the world several institutions run small and + some even large scale setups ranging from single speaker lines to those + facilitating a couple of hundred loudspeakers respectively.\\ + The still evolving implementations are driven by several rendering + engines, of which two free and open-source ones, namely sWONDER and + SoundScape Renderer, have (partially) been developed at TU Berlin.\\ + The latter due to its current design is not yet able to render for large + scale setups, ie.\ those using several computers to render audio on a + loudspeaker setup, due to the high amount of channels.\\ + Its solid codebase however, which additionally offers a framework for many + more renderering types, and the ongoing development, deems further work on + this application a good future investment.\\ + This work is about the extension of the SoundScape Renderer's functionality + to turn it into a networking application for large scale WFS setups. +\end{abstract} + \section{Introduction} + Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) describes a spatial technique for rendering audio. As + such it aims at synthesizing a sound field of desired acoustic preference + in a given listening area, assuming a planar reproduction to be most + suitable for most applications.\\ + WFS is typically implemented using a curved or linear loudspeaker array + surrounding the listening area.\\ + Several free and open-source renderer applications exist for WFS + environments, with varying stages of feature richness.\\ + The proposed work will focus on one of them and its extension towards WFS + on large scale systems. + + \section{Free and open-source wave field synthesis renderers} + To date there exist three (known of) free and open-source Wave Field + Synthesis renderers, which are all \href{http://jackaudio.org/}{JACK Audio + Connection Kit (JACK)} \citep{website:jackaudio2016} clients: + \begin{itemize} + \item \href{https://sourceforge.net/projects/swonder/}{sWONDER} \citep{website:swonder2016}, + developed by Technische Universität Berlin, Germany + \item \href{https://github.com/GameOfLife/WFSCollider}{WFSCollider} \citep{website:wfscollider2016}, + developed by \href{http://gameoflife.nl/en}{Game Of Life Foundation} \citep{website:gameoflife2016}, + The Hague, Netherlands + \item \href{http://spatialaudio.net/ssr/}{SoundScape Renderer (SSR)} \citep{website:ssr2016}, + developed by Quality \& Usability Lab, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories + and TU Berlin and Institut für Nachrichtentechnik, Universität Rostock + \end{itemize} + Currently only WFSCollider and the SSR are actively maintained and + developed, thussWONDER, although used in some setups, loses significance. + Generally it can be said, that different concepts apply to the three + renderers, which are about to be explained briefly in the following + sections. + + \subsection{WONDER} + sWONDER \citep{baalman2007} consists of a set of C++ applications that provide binaural and + WFS rendering. In 2007 it was specifically redesigned + \citep{baalmanetal2007} to cope with large scale WFS setups in which + several (computer) nodes, providing several speakers each, drive a system + together.\\ + In these setups each node receives all available audio streams (which + represent one virtual audio source respectively) redundantly and a master + application signals which node is responsible for rendering what source + on which speaker.\\ + It uses Open Sound Control (OSC) for messaging between its parts and for + setting its controls. Apart from that, it can be controlled through a + Graphical User Interface (GUI), that was specifically designed for it. + Unfortunately sWONDER has not been actively maintained for several years, + has a complex setup chain and many bugs, that are not likely to get fixed + any time soon. + + \subsection{WFSCollider} + WFSCollider was built on top of + \href{https://supercollider.github.io}{SuperCollider} 3.5 + \citep{website:supercollider2016} and is also capable of driving large + scale systems. It uses a different approach in + doing so, though: Whereas withsWONDER all audio streams are distributed + to each node, WFSCollider usually uses the audio files to be played on + all machines simultaneously and synchronizes between them.\\ + It has a feature-rich GUI in the ``many window'' style, making available + time lines and movement of sources through facilitating what the sclang + (SuperCollider programming language) has to offer.\\ + As WFSCollider basically is SuperCollider plus extra features, it is also + an OSC enabled application and can thus also be used for mere + multi-channel playback of audio.\\ + Although it has many useful features, it requires MacOSX (Linux version + still untested) to run, is built upon a quite old version of + \href{https://supercollider.github.io}{SuperCollider} and is likely never + to be merged into it, due to many core changes to it. + + \subsection{SoundScape Renderer} + SoundScape Renderer (SSR), also a C++ application, running on Linux and + MacOSX, is a multi-purpose spatial audio renderer, as it is not only + capable of Binaural Synthesis and WFS, but also Higher-Order Ambisonics + and Vector Base Amplitude Panning.\\ + It can be used with a GUI or headless (without one), depicting the + virtual sources, their volumes and positions, alongside which speakers + are currently used for rendering a selected source. + SSR uses TCP/IP sockets for communication and thus is not directly OSC + enabled. This functionality can be achieved using the capapilities of + other applications such as \href{http://puredata.info}{PureData} + \citep{website:puredata2016} in combination with it though.\\ + Unlike the two renderers above, the SSR is not able to run large-scale + WFS setups, as it lacks the features to communicate between instances of + itself on several computers, while these instances serve a subset of the + available loudspeakers. + + \section{Extending Sound Scape Renderer functionality} + The SSR, due to its diverse set of rendering engines, which are made + available through an extensible framework, and its clean codebase, is a + good candidate for future large scale WFS setups. These type of features + are not yet implemented though and will need testing.\\ + Therefore I propose the implementation and testing of said feature, making + the SSR capable of rendering on large scale WFS setups with many nodes, + controlled by a master instance.\\ + The sought implementation is inspired by the architecture of sWONDER, but + instead of creating many single purpose applications, the master/node + feature will be made available through flags to the ssr executable, when + starting it. This behavior is already actively harnessed eg.\ for selecting + one of the several rendering engines. + \begin{figure}[!htb] + \centering + \includegraphics[scale=0.9, trim = 31mm 190mm 24mm 8mm, clip]{ssr-networking.pdf} + \caption{A diagram displaying the SSR master/node setup with TCP/IP + socket connections over network (green lines), audio channels (red dashed + lines) and OSC connection (blue dashed line). Machines are indicated as red + dashed rectangles and connections to audio hardware as outputs of SSR + nodes as black lines below them.} + \label{fig:ssr-networking} + \end{figure} + While the SSR already has an internal logic to know which loudspeaker will + be used for what virtual audio source, this will have to be extended to be + able to know which renderer node has to render what source on which + loudspeaker (see Figure~\ref{fig:ssr-networking}). + To achieve the above features, the SSR's messaging (and thus also settings) + capabilities have to be extended alongside its internal logic concerning + the selection of output channels (and the master to node notification + thereof). To introduce as little redundant code as possible, most likely a + ``the client knows all'' setup is desirable, in which each node knows about + the whole setup, but is also set to only serve its own subset of + loudspeakers in it. This will make sure that the rendering engine remains + functional also in a small scale WFS setup.\\ + The lack of a direct OSC functionality, as provided by the two other + renderers, will not be problematic, as master and nodes can communicate + through their builtin TCP/IP sockets directly and the master can, if + needed, be controlled via OSC. + + \section{Prelimenaries} + In preparation to the exposé I tried to implement a side-by-side + installation, using Arch Linux on a medium scale setup, facilitating the + WFS system of the Electronic Studio at TU Berlin. Unfortunately the + proprietary Dante driver, that is used in that system is very complex to be + built, as well as underdeveloped and thus keeps the system from being + easily updated, which is needed for testing purposes (finding a suitable + real-time, low-latency Linux kernel), trying out new software features, + building new software and keeping a system safe. The driver will most + likely require changes to the hardware due to implemention of hardware + branding by the vendor and dire testing before usage.\\ + Although eventually using a proper WFS setup for testing will be necessary, + it is luckily not needed for implementing the features, as they can already be + worked out using two machines running Linux, JACK and the development version + of SSR.\\ + The hardware of the large scale setup at TU Berlin in H0104 is currently + about to be updated and therefore a valuable candidate for testing of the + sought SSR features. + + \section{Schedule} + I propose a six month schedule for the implementation and testing of the + changes to the source code and writing of an accompanying thesis. The + following rough schedule should serve as a guideline for the realization of + the work:\\ + \begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|l|} + \hline + \multicolumn{4}{|c|}{\textbf{Schedule}}\\ + \hline + \textbf{Week} & \textbf{Implementation} & \textbf{Tests} & \textbf{Thesis} \\ + \hline + 1 & Reading into codebase & & \\ + \hline + 2 & Reading into codebase & & \\ + \hline + 3 & Reading into codebase & & \\ + \hline + 4 & Reading into codebase & & \\ + \hline + 5 & Assessing changes & & Documentation \\ + \hline + 6 & Assessing changes & & Documentation \\ + \hline + 7 & Implementing changes & & \\ + \hline + 8 & Implementing changes & & \\ + \hline + 9 & Implementing changes & & \\ + \hline + 10 & Implementing changes & & \\ + \hline + 11 & Implementing changes & & \\ + \hline + 12 & Implementing changes & & \\ + \hline + 13 & Implementing changes & & Preparation\\ + \hline + 14 & Implementing changes & & Preparation\\ + \hline + 15 & & Small scale setup & Writing\\ + \hline + 16 & & Large scale setup & Writing\\ + \hline + 17 & & Large scale setup & Writing\\ + \hline + 18 & & Large scale setup & Writing\\ + \hline + 19 & Large scale setup (scripts) & & Writing\\ + \hline + 20 & Large scale setup (scripts) & & Writing\\ + \hline + 21 & Large scale setup (scripts) & & Writing\\ + \hline + 22 & & & Writing\\ + \hline + 23 & & & Writing\\ + \hline + 24 & & & Writing\\ + \hline + \end{tabular} + \pagebreak + \bibliographystyle{plainnat} + \bibliography{bib/ssr-networking} +\end{document} -- cgit v1.2.3-54-g00ecf