One project which I'm thinking about is a box which takes the 2 channels from the empeg and produces 6 channel (FL, FR, BL, BR, Centre and Sub) output. The DSP inside does all the calculations on phase, delay and volume to correct for your off-set position within the car. In other words, it produces a signal that sounds as if you're sitting in the centre of the sound field rather than at one corner (as you are in a car). The box is controlled by the empeg and/or serial connection to a computer running appropriate software.

The software presents a picture of the four seats in the (usual) car and the positions of the speakers. You can adjust the width of the seats (how far between the centre of the seat and the centreline of the car), their forward distance, the forward distance and width of each pair of front and back speakers, and the forward distance of the centre speaker and subwoofer. It might even be possible to do this in three dimensions - height off floor, for instance, to give it an extra bit of realism. The DSPs would then take the sound and do their magic with these parameters.

This is not a "Hall / Stadium / Room" setting, which is simply a filter and an echo component. This is full spatial processing. The empeg could control which position you wanted to favour - driver, passenger, front pair, back pair, all, or whatever - and other bits and bobs like amount of spatial processing done (mix between dry and wet). There may be other things you could do with it via the empeg, but the main control would be via the software. Of course, the protocol would be opened so people could write their own programs to provide alternate interfaces (on alternate platforms).

So, what do people think. Is this a good idea, are there any things you'd like to see in a box like this, and is it something you'd pay money for?

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