Paning with Delay

Nikolas K's icon

Hello everyone,
I am looking to find an algorithm for 4way-panning using delay. i am searching but so far no luck! If anyone can help....

Tim Lloyd's icon

Psychoacoustics...yumm

I only have a 2-speaker set up at the moment (would really love a quad), and 4-way time-difference panning is a little tricky to test in a patch with only meters for feedback :P

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

I'll assume you've done the appropriate research about the precedence effect, and if so you should be able to put something together for 4 speakers based around this if it's helpful:

Nikolas K's icon

Thank you Tim for the patch. I am looking more for the relation between the delay time and the position of the sound. I don t know if that makes any sense...? :S

Roman Thilenius's icon

it is simpler than you might think: sound travels at 334 meter/second
so you can convert from distance to millisecods using a factor of 33.4
and that is it.
and in a 4 way panning system (a rectangle) the distance from the
source to the 4 corners can be found using simple geometry.

Tim Lloyd's icon

Yeah what he said ^; except I'm no good with the simple geometry :P

A delay of more than approx 33 milliseconds and you'll begin to hear distinct sounds rather than panning. In my patch I've only used a time-difference of 2 milliseconds and it works, so I can't see the need to go much higher than that.