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[Alberto Escrina]

I work for a manufacturer / importer of professional sound products and club or dj products are not the main items we handle. Live sound and installation products are.
As the company R&D chief, I'm wondering who manufactures DJ processors for creating configurable effects in dance floors from a stereo mix to several discrete outputs to active speakers.
I mean, this has nothing to do with Dolby, THX or immersive sound. This is for developing spatial effects that could enhace a DJ performance.
Any input will be highly appreciated.
Thank you!

[Matthias McCready]

I work for a manufacturer / importer of professional sound products and club or dj products are not the main items we handle. Live sound and installation products are.
As the company R&D chief, I'm wondering who manufactures DJ processors for creating configurable effects in dance floors from a stereo mix to several discrete outputs to active speakers.
I mean, this has nothing to do with Dolby, THX or immersive sound. This is for developing spatial effects that could enhace a DJ performance.
Any input will be highly appreciated.
Thank you!

Not quite sure what you mean by product.

Most individuals I know on the performance side use Ableton Live for these sorts of effects/firing samples. This often has to do with the creation of their material, although with a Midi controller (ex. Korg nana) things can certainly be manipulated on the fly.

Ableton is usually run into an interface, some performers I work with give me up to 10 outputs to mix. However at this point the ME is often making some musical decisions.

As a mix engineer Waves has some very capable tools

However I feel these are probably not helpful answers for you...   

Maybe someone else around here who better understands your situation and market can better help you.

[Alberto Escrina]

Thank you Matthias,
By product I mean a device that has a stereo input and multiple outputs capable of create spacial effects by panning, dynamic eqing, etc to those outputs on real time. This device would be capable of selecting parts of the recorded program (bass drum, snare, voice, etc) to trigger the effects to the different discrete outputs.
I think it should be connected between the DJ mixer output and the different amplifier inputs.
Probably connected to a laptop for recalling programs.
I don't know if a device like this even exist or, perhaps, there are other ways to do this.
Regarding the Ableton, being a DAW program, you can use it for recording, sampling, editing and playing all kinds of material but it is not what we're looking for.
Thank you!

[MikeHarris]

You should PM me...Richard Long (RIP) and I had discussions about this and were thinking of ways to implement this at the Palladium

[Matthias McCready]

Thank you Matthias,
By product I mean a device that has a stereo input and multiple outputs capable of create spacial effects by panning, dynamic eqing, etc to those outputs on real time. This device would be capable of selecting parts of the recorded program (bass drum, snare, voice, etc) to trigger the effects to the different discrete outputs.
I think it should be connected between the DJ mixer output and the different amplifier inputs.
Probably connected to a laptop for recalling programs.
I don't know if a device like this even exist or, perhaps, there are other ways to do this.
Regarding the Ableton, being a DAW program, you can use it for recording, sampling, editing and playing all kinds of material but it is not what we're looking for.
Thank you!

Agreed Ableton is not what you are looking for, but based on your description an interface with waves would.

While I do not know of anything (does not mean it does not exist) that will pick out snare hits or bass or other specific parts of a stereo mix that can be worked around to an extent. In an ideal world we can get these things separated out on the DJ side, obviously that is not realistic and not your scenario.

Waves has some cool plugins such as Brauer Motion or LoAir might do what you are looking for.

What waves can do:

1. It is relatively instant
2. It is recallable
3. It works with many devices from consoles to a rack mounted solutions.

---
It is quite conceivable that you could have two inputs and as many outputs as you might desire.

To pick out instruments as you suggested perhaps Dynamic EQ, gates, or other types of compression would be able to help pick out the parts in the mix so to speak, differentiating what is hitting specific effects, and thereby what speakers in the system.

To my knowledge Waves doesn't have a cool little interface like UAD does, however to my knowledge I am not aware that UAD has the variety of plugins (for your purpose). Keep in mind there are countless ways to get a Waves rig running; albeit none of these options are as cheap as you are thinking.

Again I may be barking up the wrong tree so to speak.

[Alberto Escrina]

You should PM me...Richard Long (RIP) and I had discussions about this and were thinking of ways to implement this at the Palladium

PM sent

[Randy Pence]

The Tresor club in Berlin tried something similar last decade - https://www.residentadvisor.net/news/9750

A sometimes colleague of mine was one of the performers, as was Monolake, who is also known for his development with Ableton Live. If I remember correctly, a Lemur was used to do the panning control, and RME sound cards handled all of hte I/O. It was interesting to hear certain sounds swirling around the room, but the effect only worked in a small sweetspot in the middle of the dancefloor.

Another immersive audio installation is or was at the Funkhaus facility in Berlin, also using a Barco/Isono system.

I personally don't see much of a future with these kinds of surround systems, as so few performers have the resources to practice with them. Something like that could have worked at the Palladium when weekly resident DJs were the norm, but that is hardly the case these days.

[Alberto Escrina]

The Tresor club in Berlin tried something similar last decade - https://www.residentadvisor.net/news/9750

A sometimes colleague of mine was one of the performers, as was Monolake, who is also known for his development with Ableton Live. If I remember correctly, a Lemur was used to do the panning control, and RME sound cards handled all of hte I/O. It was interesting to hear certain sounds swirling around the room, but the effect only worked in a small sweetspot in the middle of the dancefloor.

Another immersive audio installation is or was at the Funkhaus facility in Berlin, also using a Barco/Isono system.

I personally don't see much of a future with these kinds of surround systems, as so few performers have the resources to practice with them. Something like that could have worked at the Palladium when weekly resident DJs were the norm, but that is hardly the case these days.

Thank you very much for your input Randy.
I'll keep my eyes on this post to see other contributions coming.
Best regards

[Tracy Garner]

I work for a manufacturer / importer of professional sound products and club or dj products are not the main items we handle. Live sound and installation products are.
As the company R&D chief, I'm wondering who manufactures DJ processors for creating configurable effects in dance floors from a stereo mix to several discrete outputs to active speakers.
I mean, this has nothing to do with Dolby, THX or immersive sound. This is for developing spatial effects that could enhace a DJ performance.
Any input will be highly appreciated.
Thank you!

Most DJ controllers (even entry level ones) have a ton of effects, sampling, looping, sequencing already available out of the box. As far as spatial effects, a lot of DJs have all but abandoned their BBE or Aphex units. Most mobile DJs are using controllers and powered speakers so there is no place for the rack units like in decades past.

There has been a wave of mobile DJs using the DBX GoRack for speaker on stick events mostly because it was available for a long time for around $30. The wave of GoRack users grew to the point where you find them for sale used now $150-$200.

Even the old Richard Long 3-way Crossover is now standard functionality on even entry-level DJ controllers. The last dozen or so clubs I visited you may not even notice a stereo signal at all based on the placement of the speakers. I'm trying to picture a multi-zone effect for the DJ and I dont see the use case for an extra piece of gear for it.