The Linear Traveling Potentiometer presented at AES Toronto meeting Sept 24, 2013


Presentation Transcript by Amanda Pearl:

Hi my name is Anthony Kuzub and I run a small consulting firm and I do technical design and design mixing consoles I do sound for television I work at Revolution Recording I build things and do crazy things as much as I possibly can.  Right now I‘m studying Electronic design at Seneca  before I went to seneca I had to take a pre-requisite class and I was introduced to this thing called the neglected right triangle.

It’s the 345 Triangle.  So what this introduced me to was.. I started plotting it on the unit square and I was thinking this looks very very familiar, and I said well this looks like the dolby triangle.

So the dolby triangle is you know 30 degrees 30 degrees and 110 degrees but every time I set up a 5.1 system in the studio I always found that we have to cad the room out we have to triangulate this space to this space to this space, and it’s not as simple as setting a tape measurer here and this distance and this distance, you have to do the math and it makes setups somewhat cumbersome, but sometimes it can go quick If you have the markers. 

So what I started doing was playing with this 345 triangle, and I started realizing that it’s pretty close to a dolby spec.  And I started thinking well if you can set up a room in ten minutes with a ratio of 345 you’ve got a triangle, you’re center speaker width would be 6 your rear speaker width would be 4 from your center and with the very simple grade 8 ratio you could figure out how to setup a very similar looking thing to dolby.
  And what I’ve kinda determined, hanging around with David is that IMAX is five point none.  I’m not a big believer in the sub I love 5 full ranger speakers because there’s nothing like the IMAX experience.  What do you call it rear low end

Dave: it’s just a sub woofer.

I love when a rumble comes from behind and goes forward so, I love the full range of surround sound

(dennis points out someone in the audience, who works with Imax and there s chit chat for a bit)

I love the 345 for me it’s a fantastic thing.

When I moved to toronto I was very fortunate to be work with Neil Muncy, neil and I stayed up eating, drinking, and yelling and started talking about surround sound  Patterns?   And one of the things he has, and I think blair has one of his consoles the SI 3, you have two of them, they are not for sale though, Left Center right he was always about a sound comes from one point and everything that comes from this point has to come from here so I started thinking is there a way to do a single pot dolby pattern? 
So the sound comes from one single point and it’s not so much I’s coming form here but ‘m pointing it here, and I want it to come from here. 
So I Started thinking of this and I’m thinking well if I took your regular pot and I said this is left surround this is center and this Is right, and next thing I know I have this positioning system that’s just the coordinates of the 5 speakers that are around so I started thinking about well this is the standard panlaw.

And I figured well if I’m going to redo some of the dolby spec or come up with my 5.9 system I may as well take it a next step further and develop my own panlaw so I figured well you know everybody likes left and right so you got a big range across the front so make the first 180 degrees of that your left and right and hold it down for the center?

 

So I started playing around with that a little bit more and I started realizing that I needed to take this the next step further so I have a black bag.

Who here has owned more then 5 mixing consoles. (man answers)

APK: put your hand in the bag, theres a pot here turn the pot now push it towards me.

MAN: oh yeah

APK: have you ever felt anything like that before

MAN: no

MORE PEOPLE FEEL WHAT’S IN THE BAG

APK: Who’s a performance artist here? What do you perform? Electronic music by any chance?

MAN: Acoustic

APK:(didn’t here but moves on to next question)

What about synthesizers? (no one answers)

 

So what I’ve come up with is a single point linear traveling potentiometer.

So you’ve got volume and you’e got pan and t’s something I havent seen pretty much anywhere. I’ve talked to a lot of synth guys ive done a lot of research check patents did this and I did that I cant find it pretty much anywhere.  So I sat down and started making this one this is the first one I had then the second one I finally got around to bringing both of these ideas together where I have a singe point one motion intensity and position so I came up with well, I take my pan law my new pan law my 5.9 pan law and I put it on an intensity so I have how much is it coming form there and where is it coming from.

SO I brought that in, so I am involved n the wardbeck preservation society, I not know if any f you have heard of that, but I do a lot of mixing console restorations and a lot of these consoles predate stereo, let’s call them dual monos, so I have a lot of ward beck parts kicking around.  So I came up with this…

****plays music and shows what the pot does.

 

 

There you go that’s the traveling potentiometer.

So it doesn’t end there, I’ve never seen this encoder before, so it can be applied in, well as a performance piece, I can be applied as a midi controller, it can be applied as a, well anything you want it to be.  If you need it to be you know as a performer doing electronic music or something maybe you’ve got a filter or you have an affect send or you’ve got a its something very different and its a very special piece.  I’ve never seen it, I have a lot of these mono consoles that vie wanted to convert into stereo and for me realestate is a huge deal, I hate chopping up things id like to just add something to it that just gives me added flexibility and this is what vie come up with.  So then I thought well how do you apply This To atmos how do you apply this to dolby and well this is front this is back this is front and this is the ceiling.  So instead of you linear traveling pot, it doesnt go front to back it goes form bottom over your head and to the back well then now think that  Further and then you go  well its traveling from the front bottom up and then panning, like this. And then you take it to the back and it pans like this then you get almost This 360 degree spinning sphere of positioning to make the size of it different you would have to have a I dont know a different pot in the center of it?

 

This is the size of the object that is traveling and thats what vie come up with. Thats my gadget that Imo presenting. I thought this was a good place to do this and I appreciate the opportunity.

 

Questions

 

Man:have you tried it with an oscillator

APK: sure you can do whatever you want with it, you can do a filter, one of my friends hes a live sound guy he wanted to do something where he wanted to expand you know, you go into a club and you have a 1 aux bus, well now you have 2 now you have an aux that pans between delay and reverb you expand these things.  it’s limitless.  But then you take it into the digital world and it becomes a high resolution coder and a 360 degree coder you put a button on it and it becomes a button activated, and it changes the thing you flip it sideways and it becomes an eq and then you tap where this is your eq point and you want to raise it or lower it.  It becomes a very different interaction with the traditional console where there are a lot of buttons and switches and pots.

 

Man #2: Something about a joy stick ?

 

APK: I dont think that they can achieve The dimensions that this can because I dont know everytime I’ve used one its kinda like the sound, if this was your sound field, you can put it here and well sounds doesnt come from there it comes from the speaker comes from the signal it comes from over there and I dont think sound comes from the middle of a room ever unless, its a conversation I suppose.

APK: theres some fantastic stuff out there but this gives the editor access to it you could put this into a post production studio you could put this in the hands of the content creators where now news is being fed and ingested into systems in 51

 

The Math Project that inspired the FivePointNone

 

This information is the idea of Anthony P. Kuzub of APKaudio Toronto On. M4S 1G9 –

Please share this information around to whomever you want.

Please use this idea in your designs with permission of Anthony P. Kuzub – 416-939-5183   He’s curious to know what you’re up to.

If you would like to put your hand in the black bag, call to book and appointment.

 

Many Thanks to people who have encourage and have had meetings with the LTP.

Ian Dearborn – Saskatoon
Michael Numan – CTV Toronto
Anthony Montano – CTV Toronto
Joe Dunphy et al. – Revolution Toronto
Howie Beck – Toronto
Blair Findley – AES and Harris Institute Toronto
David Ramashoe and Dennis Trembly – Imax Toronto
Kevin Lyver and Ali – Ward-Beck Systems
Herbet Lemcke – Lawo Toronto