How to listen multitrack spatial music at home?

To experience spatial music? it is simple. Get 8 similar loudspeakers, arranged them in the 8 corners of your listening room *: 4 loudspeakers suspended on the ceiling and 4 loudspeakers laid down on the ground. Plus 4 stereo amplifiers (2 x 4 = 8) (or 2 quadro). An audio interface with: 8 physical audio outputs as "USB 7.1 external audio card" (for 25 €). Do not consider the ".1" (of 7), but all audio outputs as equal **. Download VLC, the free audio video player. 

Make VLC to output audio in 6 tracks (5.1 surround) or 8 tracks (7.1 surround)

You have 6 or 8 speakers with the amplifiers, this, to listen to multitrack digital files (in surround 5.1 or 7.1) and VLC only outputs the sound in stereo? You can force VLC media player to recognize your multitrack audio device.

1. In VLC, click on "Tools" menu and then on "Preferences".
2. In the "Display Settings" area at the bottom left of the window that opens, click "All".
3. Pull down the "Audio", "Output Modules" and "DirectX" item.
4. Pull down the "Output Device" list and select your hardware.
5. Then, pull down the "Speaker Configuration" list and select the system supported by your hardware.
6. Finally click on "Save".

Open audio files .wav 8 tracks 24bit 44.1kHz in VLC in the playlist and ...
Listen to the shadow-sky myster(y)'s choreosonic polytrajectophonic music.
Knowing that tracks 1 2 3 4 are on the ground, and tracks 5 6 7 8 on the ceiling.


Notes

* In a multichannel device (for music), a subbass loudspeaker is useless, since the 8 speakers cover a surface area greater than a bass loudspeaker can ever reach in its size. And, infrabass in spatial music does not fly with dexterity as other sounds. Bass (in excess) requires extra power, extra energy and unnecessary extra cost, useless for spatial music with audible trajectories.

Some motherboards include the audio interface with 8 physical outputs (7.1) with 4 stereo mini jack.

Small HiFi "bookshelf" loudspeakers (for 40 € per pair) are enough, because they are in number. Also, you should know that: the presence of the perceived sound depends on the sensitivity of the loudspeaker: a HiFi loudspeaker at 85dB of sensitivity does not have the same rendering as a loudspeaker at 105dB of sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter). But the second is approx. 250 time more expensive to buy...

** Translation: "7.1 = 8 channels, 4 stereo outputs with 4 mini jack: Front L/R (front left and right), Side L/R (left and right sides), Rear L/R (rear left and right) , C/Sub (center and subbass) »
These 4 stereo outputs correspond to the following channels, according to your agencement:
	Front L/R	= 1 - 2
	Rear L/R	= 3 - 4
	Side L/R	= 5 - 6
	C/Sub	= 7 - 8

Knowing that our space is not flat, you have just to consider the verticality (to hear sounds flying through your entire space). Position the first 4 speakers on the floor, the next 4 on the ceiling (a loudspeaker in a corner reinforces the perception of low frequencies).

*** Be aware that the 5.1 and 7.1 surround system: was not (never) designed for music. No, it was designed for cinema industry ("home theater"!). And, the "sub", the subwoofer performs only sine waves, this, to enhance and reinforce the diffuse impression of explosions and detonations, nothing else. This excess of bass does not serve the music, only the special effects of engines and explosions (moreover, inaudible in the interstellar space, contrary to what it is heard in SF movies!). 

Also, space music exists since 1958, invented by the composers Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Its development remains, 61 years in 2019, but still moribund, indeed, no trajectory generator allows yet a precise music composition of the turbulence rhythms of trajectories in multiplicity! (my) Audio trajectories are felt as physical sensation by being crossed (our body) by something else (not surrounded to not have the ability to escape); the basic of spatial turbulence flux, as I had conceived since 1980 with live musical instruments. 

Mathius Shadow-Sky

//

The 8 multichannel album: 'LIVING Human Species' for the shadow-sky's inharmonic and nonoctave flying electric guitars will be released this winter 2019/2020. 
The 8 multichannel album: 'THE EXTRACTION OF THE TRIUMPHANT BEAST' by Les Guitares Volantes (the flying electric guitar quartet with Stéphane Barascud, Laurent Avizou, Stéphane Marcaillou et Mathius Shadow-Sky) will be released this winter 2019/2020 (should be).