Show HN: Audiocube – A 3D DAW for Spatial Audio
123 comments
·January 30, 2025sitkack
I am so glad you built this, I just bought a license.
I sketched out an similar app, but never had super pressing need. I can think of many many uses for this from modeling performance spaces, minimizing resonances in industrial settings, crime scene reconstruction, art installations, speaker placement for large concerts and many more.
What research or similar tools did you look to for inspiration?
Some things that come to mind
Efficient Interactive Sound Propagation in Dynamic Environments https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/dissertations/5425kb409
Precomputed Wave Simulation for Real-Time Sound Propagation of Dynamic Sources in Complex Scenes http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/PrecompWaveSim/
Immersed boundary methods in wave-based virtual acoustics https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/257303782/Bi...
noahfk
Thanks so much for the support!
All of these uses are possible - my dream is for it to become much more advanced and powerful, almost like Blender but for audio and acoustics. It's still in early days and I'm a solo dev for now...
I'll look at those links. For me it was blender, and spatial audio plugins like the DearVR stuff, and game engines!
sitkack
I assume this can do sound rendering, like simulating a conversation on a subway platform while a subway passes by?
Or singing while walking through a tunnel?
Since it has capabilities that would be hard to replicate, rather than show the tool on the landing page, I would show the output. Remove the clutter and force people to listen to what the tool can produce.
The tool as it is now, is being marketed towards yourself, people that wanted to build that tool and know what it is. But everyone will know what it can do after listening to sample output.
noahfk
Yes it can do all of those things.
You are right about the audio demos, I'll update the frontpage with this soon. Thanks!
JofArnold
This is great (in theory). During lockdown I got an ambisonic mic (Rode NF-SFW1) and used it to create Dolby Atmos experiences. The workflow - including sending it to Dolby's tool every time - was such a pain. Adding additional 3d elements was especially annoying and limiting.
Unfortunately that's no longer my hobby so can't test this for you but definitely scratches an itch for past me. Nice
gareth_untether
That mic looks fun to play with. On their site there’s a link to a bunch of recordings that can be downloaded:
noahfk
Thanks!
Yeah, frustration with the existing solutions was one of the main reasons I started this project.
I was working in creating immersive audio, and I just found that none of the plugins allowed the level of placement that I wanted. It was all fiddly, and you couldn't easily move the listening position around, while also moving sound sources.
I came from an audio engineering background, not programming, so it took me a while to even learn how to make software! But now I made the tool I always needed.
bitdivision
Very cool project! And well done on doing it without being a software eng!
How long have you been working on it out of interest?
FpUser
Lots of cool software was created by domain experts who taught themselves how to program. And quality is more than often is excellent.
noahfk
Thanks! Yeah it was a steep learning curve at the start but I’m very confident now.
I started it in 2020 - here’s a blog post about the history https://www.audiocube.app/blog/audiocube-history
I’ve recently got it working on an iPad which was a frustrating grind but I think the concept is a lot of fun on touchscreen!
S0y
It's funny to see this now because I've been for a couple weeks looking into audio spacialization. After a lot of research and even trying to write my own spatializer plugin, I found that Game Engines have probably the most complete toolset to do this task. (Specifically I'm using Godot with https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/).
Steam audio is pretty awesome in that regards because it supports HRTF and all the physical based goodies like occlusion/reflection and sound propagation. So you can get really really immersive spatial audio.
The only downside with this solution is that you can't do offline rendering. So my question is:
can Audiocube do offline rendering? seems like it would be one killer feature for my use case.
noahfk
It sounds like you’re in a similar field to me so it would be great to connect! Totally agree, yeah Audiocube is built in unity as game engines made the most sense for what I wanted to achieve. Steam audio is super cool and was a lot of use to look at for writing my own stuff.
Offline rendering is at the top of my research list currently. It’s not in the app yet. It’s going to take a lot of work to build given that the physics engine calculations are tied to frame rate etc, so there is a lot of work to do - but I’m sure it’s possible.
Thanks!
pnw
Very cool app. If you can crack multi-channel output formats (5.1, Atmos) I can see a lot of prosumers who would happily buy the product. Even the most basic tools for Dolby 5.1 are overpriced IMHO and Atmos encoder prices are either far beyond the reach of most DAW users or require use of Pro Tools.
One downside of selling into the pro audio market is piracy unfortunately. I learnt that the hard way and ended up having to use iLok.
noahfk
Thanks!
Yeah multichannel is a priority. I don't think it's too far away - maybe a month or so in the lab.
And true, although I'm not a fan of iLok.
piltdownman
Really? I mean I haven't seen an iLok used in anger since the bad days of Prosumer ProTools.
Ableton, Reaper, Reason, and all associated VST and VSTi's from the incumbents like Arturia through to Korg and Roland, are all hardware-dongle free. Most use some sort of 30 day license server check-in or similar cloud platform intermittent auth.
N.B. I don't use Waves or UA software. Ever. Licensing models are akin to common assault.
pnw
This was over a decade ago. We were selling into the Pro Tools market, alongside Waves, UA and other tools more likely to be sold into studios and didn't see a lot of objections to the iLok.
I still remember walking into one of the highest profile million dollar mixing stages in LA, opening their Pro Tools plug-in menu and almost every single piece of software was pirated. Unfortunately even people who could pay for software (and had a strongly developed sense of IP rights for their own work product) seemed to have no issues ripping us off.
piltdownman
I can't disagree, although pricing models in the industry were a bit insane comparing 1:1 today with the 'don't pirate' site that deep discount a lot of premium plug-ins.
That said, there was a non-negligible amount of studio owners who had licenses but chose to use cracked versions of software stripped of DRM or otherwise bypassing the security checks in favour of maintaining stability. Lot of BSODs and IRQ issues with competing dongles with bad serial implementation.
cjbprime
(iLok has a software-only client that works similarly to the cloud license check-ins you mentioned, it's commonly used by VSTs.)
hyperific
YouTuber Benn Jordan would probably get a kick out of this. He's a major audiophile and did a series of ambisonic ambience.
noahfk
Thanks, I think so too by the looks of his channel, I'll get in touch!
jedimastert
I was just thinking about this!
ggerules
Will there be a Linux version anytime soon!?
wdfx
Easy decision to send you a few pounds for this. This is no small task to put together and looks really impressive. I can't wait to try it out :)
I have a history experimenting with 3D audio - about 15 years ago I build myself a pair of ambisonic microphones, but until only recently I think the software support for ambisonic capture and mixing has been seriously lacking. Back when I built the mics I started working on a plugin suite for the processing, but I could never get it quite right. Nowadays, there are more 3rd party options I can use, and I will spend some time with this again :)
noahfk
Thanks so much - yeah it's been a bit of a grind, especially not coming from a coding background. But it's been enjoyable for the most part...
Yeah there is defiantly a lot of stuff missing or neglected in this field!
null
highhedgehog
No expert at all here. But could I use this to say, model my room and understand how to treat it acoustically to remove reflections and stuff like that?
_kb
Environmental modelling is normally a little seperate to what you'd expect from a DAW. If you're unfamiliar, it's worth taking a look at EASE [1] (the semi grand-daddy of electro-acoustic simulation). Treble [2] are also doing some really interesting things. 10log [3] too for some coarser (but free) analysis.
[1]: https://www.afmg.eu/en/ease
[3]: https://10log.io/
highhedgehog
Nice! Thanks a lot!
noahfk
Eventually, but I'm not sure it's quite there yet. It has reflection surfaces, but I'd still need to add some more features like absorption, and more advanced frequency analysis. Treating a room is pretty techy - but I'm sure it could give you some ideas.
I'd like to look more into the acoustic modeling capabilities later on - and give it some more advanced features
thot_experiment
Really cool! I've been working on a side project that utilizes spatial audio and I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality I'm getting just using the WebAudioAPI HRTF spatialization. I'm sure this is leagues ahead but it was really nice to find that I didn't really need to do anything to get decent spatial audio other than set the panner node to HRTF mode.
noahfk
Thanks! Yeah this is definitely a lot more complex and deep than the WebAudio API but that’s still a great tool for some situations.
dekhn
IIUC, I'd be able to take individual closely miked recording on multiple different instruments and mix them into a soundspace, such that when I listen on stereo headphones, I'd be able to "locate" the sounds on a virtual stage?
(asking because I listen to a lot of live jam music in stereo and noticed that they use a stereo mix with a virtual image)
noahfk
Yes exactly - this was something I wanted to achieve.
For example, you could have an entire orchestra with each instrument close miked - and then arranged in audiocube in a vritual concert hall.
The user could even move around the space for full placement control - or you could simply render it to a binauralized stereo file for more immersive listening on headphones.
I'd like to develop a mobile "listening" app, which isn't for making projects, but listening to them and placing you in the virtual environment with control
mystifyingpoi
That's how normal panning works, yes (or using a stereo pair of ambient mics, same thing but baked into the recording). But that's left-right only, I assume that these Atmos tools can do it in 3D space.
dekhn
Does that work if you only have a pair of stereo headphones?
I've had quad speakers before (with a "delay" unit for the rear speakers) but I think it would be hard to do 3D in stereo (I know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_audio_effect and HRTFs but I have never noticed any 3d-ness to the sound I'm listening to in games).
noahfk
Yes, on standard stereo headphones, a binauralized sound can give the impression of sound coming from all around your head. It mimics the filtering acoustic effects applied by your head and ears
I’ve recently released my solo project Audiocube
I wanted to make a 3D DAW, where spatial audio, physics, and virtual acoustics are all directly integrated into the engine.
This makes it easy to create music in 3D, and experiment with new techniques which aren’t possible in traditional DAWs and plugins.
I’d love to get any feedback on this software (Mac/Windows) to make it better.
You can download it for free through the website.
Thanks, Noah