audio system integrators

Abstract: This paper presents an accessible, distributed approach to higher order ambisonics using a network of low-cost microcontroller-based devices. Leveraging recent advances in embedded computing, networked audio, and precise time synchronization, the system offers an alternative to conventional centralized architectures that typically require expensive multichannel interfaces and high-performance digital signal processing hardware. The proposed architecture combines an audio plugin for soundfield design with a modular network of ambisonics processing units, which, exploiting the parallelisable nature of ambisonics decoding, are each responsible for a subset of loudspeaker outputs. Synchronization is achieved through the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol, complemented by adaptive clock correction to maintain sub-microsecond alignment between devices. A third-order ambisonics implementation demonstrates the viability of the approach, with potential scalability to higher orders and larger arrays. Overall, this work contributes to the development of frugal, distributed solutions for immersive audio, expanding access to ambisonics-based systems for a wide range of applications.

Abstract: One-to-many ultra-wideband (UWB) transport can disseminate shared audio blocks without replicating a downlink stream for every receiver. Yet common reception does not ensure aligned electrical playback, coincident acoustic arrival, or delivery to an entire receiver group. This paper develops a unified feasibility analysis of position-assisted UWB multicast audio that separates clock and actuation error, age-dependent acoustic propagation compensation, correlated block erasures, and reserved communication resources. We derive a conditional bound on one-listener arrival spread, a stationary expression for all-receiver block delivery under common and receiver-local losses, and complementary bounds for reliability-constrained admission. Reproducible Monte Carlo experiments examine 4,590 policy--run records across clock, localization, channel, and slot configurations. For eight receivers, affine clock correction produces a mean run-level 95th-percentile electronic span of $21.19\us$, while position assistance reduces the corresponding one-listener acoustic arrival span from $21.95\ms$ to $419.43\us$. Under the stated $30\us$ timing criterion, 98.86\% of compensated events still exceed the threshold. For 64 receivers, three block copies attain an all-receiver delivery probability of approximately 0.97478 under the modeled correlated channel. The analysis exposes the distinct failure mechanisms of position age, shared fades, retransmission limits, and schedule saturation, and establishes joint criteria for interpreting synchronous multicast audio performance.