Octophonic sound is a form of
audio reproduction that presents eight discrete
audio channel
An audio signal is a representation of sound, typically using either a changing level of electrical voltage for analog signals, or a series of binary numbers for digital signals. Audio signals have frequencies in the audio frequency range of roug ...
s using eight
speakers
Speaker may refer to:
Society and politics
* Speaker (politics), the presiding officer in a legislative assembly
* Public speaker, one who gives a speech or lecture
* A person producing speech: the producer of a given utterance, especially:
** I ...
. For playback, the speakers may be positioned in a circle around the listeners or in any other configuration.
Typical speaker configurations are eight spaced on a circle by 45° (oriented with first speaker 0° or at 22.5°), or the vertices of a cube to create a double quadraphonic set-up with elevation. In reference to his own work,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th and early 21st-century ...
made a distinction between these two forms, reserving the term "octophonic" for a cube configuration, as found in his ''
Oktophonie'' and the electronic music for scene 2 and the Farewell of ''
Mittwoch aus Licht
(English: Wednesday from Light) is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting, four scenes, and a farewell. It was the sixth of seven to be composed for the opera cycle (Light: The Seven Days of the Week), and the last to be staged. It was w ...
'', and using the expression "eight-channel sound" for the circular arrangement, as used in ''
Sirius
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word , or , meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbreviated Alpha CM ...
'', ''
Unsichtbare Chöre'', or Hours 13 to 21 of the ''
Klang'' cycle. While
quadraphonic sound uses four speakers positioned in a square at the four corners of the listening space (either on the ground or raised above the listeners), this cubical kind of octophonic
spatialization offers both horizontal and vertical sound spatialization, meaning listeners get a sense of height. In order for such movement in space to be heard, it is necessary that
rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...
s be slow, and
pitches change mainly in small
steps or in
glissandos.
Some notable composers who have worked with octophonic spatialisation include Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Jonathan Harvey,
Gérard Pape
Gérard Pape (born April 22, 1955 in Brooklyn, New York) is a composer of electronic music, author, and Lacanian psychologist. He is a former student of David Winkler, George Cacioppo, William Albright, and George Balch Wilson. He became the d ...
, and
Larry Austin. The first known octophonic (that is, eight-channel) electronic music was
John Cage's ''
Williams Mix
''Williams Mix'' (1951–1953) is a 4'15" musique concrete composition by John Cage for eight simultaneously played independent quarter-inch magnetic tapes. The first octophonic music, the piece was created by Cage with the assistance of Earle B ...
'' (1951–53) for eight separate simultaneously played back quarter-inch magnetic tapes. Austin later made a surround-sound octophonic mix of ''Williams Mix'', ''Williams (re)Mix
d' (1997–2000), using the score and different sound sources. This version is intended to be played back on eight speakers surrounding the audience in a 360° circle, using (unlike Cage's original version) stereo source recordings heard in adjacent speaker pairs. Octophonic sound (in the general sense of eight-channel playback) was stimulated primarily by "the equal coverage it provides to all listening angles" and also by the precedence of eight-channel (initially tape) sound and subsequent ease of playback.
See also
*
Height channels
Height channels are audio channels in surround sound multichannel audio. Height channels are located above the listening area and increase the sound field beyond the horizontal plane.
Two systems that use height channels, Dolby Pro Logic IIz and ...
References
Cited sources
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{{Music technology
Sound production technology
Spatial music