the leamon sound device

The Leamon Sound Device (LSD) is the direct result of many years of thought about

the nature of sound and sound reproduction.

The first inklings of an array-driven audio reproduction device came after I saw the

Grateful Dead in Las Vegas in 1994 and realized the band would no doubt have to

end its long run at some point (as indeed they did, with Jerry Garcia's death, in 1995;

subsequent incarnations have not been the same...). A truism about the Dead is that

the live shows were always so much better than recordings, and as I reflected on this

I realized a lot of it had to do with the sound -- the Dead always had clean, loud,

state-of-the-art concert sound systems.

It occurred to me that one problem with virtually all recorded sound I've encountered

is that it lacks dimension. The attempts by computer speaker makers to create 3D

audio from two channels just reinforces how much we crave hearing sound as our

ears are in fact capable of hearing it -- from any direction at any time. The problem with

trying to make 3D sound out of two speaker outputs is that you'll end up with sound

seeming to originate in mid-air, which is psychoacoustically nonsensical to us.

When it dawned on me that having multiple sound sources in the space around the

listener made sense, I began my first experiments with an array. The first attempt

was crude and generally unsuccessful. I built a three-foot square hollow frame out of

2 x 4s. I strung twine between each cross member around the sides, then attached

six cheap battery-powered computer speakers equidistantly around the frame. Each

speaker set was attached to a Walkman cassette player. I had a very primitive MIDI

audio set-up and managed to create some odd sounds, recording six individual tracks

onto cassettes (i.e., three sets of stereo tracks) and tried to start them all off as close to

simultaneously as I could.

It sounded terrible! After an afternoon of playing around with it I gave up the

Walkman idea but kept thinking about arrays and sound in space, and the means

to build an actual system to test my ideas.

A few years later I was able to afford another attempt. This time things went better,

but there were still problems. I purchased a total of 27 pairs of computer speakers

and mounted them in an array on opposite ends of the living room in my house --

27 speakers for the left channel on one wall, 27 speakers for the right channel opposite.

I then hacked a 10-band graphic equalizer so that each frequency band got its own

output rather than being mixed back into stereo. This gave me a total of 20 channels.

I attached the outputs to the computer speakers, sending most outputs except the

very highest frequency ones to multiple speakers. I'd set up the connections so the

highest-frequency sounds were at the top of the array, the middle frequency sounds

in the middle, and the lowest-frequency sounds at the bottom.

Aside from the Spanish-language AM radio soccer broadcasts that somehow got

picked up, the system sounded great! I didn't have to crank it up very loud to get

a rich, full, comparatively dimensionalized sound -- because it was split into multiple

channels by frequency, the full spectrum of the sound could be heard from the bottom

to the top of the array, and each slice of the spectrum got its own dedicated set of

speakers.

Unfortunately, a few weeks later I blew the equalizer (touched something wrong with

a screwdriver while the power was connected -- stupid!) and my attempt to hack

another one failed.

I waited for a couple years before my next attempt. My father died and left me just

about enough for me to spend what it took to build my dream sound system. (He

would have approved -- my only regret is that he is not here to experience it.) It

took a few months to work the kinks out and learn the basics, but when I first got the

current LSD up and running with 24 distinct, CD-quality streams of sound coming out,

I felt I had finally achieved what I'd started after ten years earlier -- the sense of being

immersed in a very rich environment of sound that actually made my ears feel like they

were listening rather than just hearing.

I can't precisely say why I started down this path -- I am not an engineer by training,

more a mild computer geek with a taste for having my senses engaged. I got a B.A. in

English, and studied film for a few years, and have worked in various sorts of media

companies (movie studio, architecture, computers, Internet, magazine publishing)

in generally menial positions. There's no rhyme or reason for my interest in any of

this except that I am simply not satisfied by the poor quality of the sound we experience,

considering how much better it could be. Yes, 5.1-channel sound is better than stereo

for watching movies, but for music, it sucks compared to 24 channels!

And 24 channels barely doesn't suck.

Early in life I learned to play piano a bit, and I was in band during junior high and

high school (playing clarinet). I learned a smidgen of composition and orchestration

along the way, but not nearly enough to be competent as a composer or musician.

Yet the LSD has enabled me -- a rank amateur -- to create interesting, even compelling

audio environments (I refuse to call it "music," though sometimes it approaches it). Often

it takes no more than 15-20 minutes of manipulating a recorded sound to turn it into

something that could only be listened to on the LSD. Indeed, the beauty of the system

is that it doesn't take a whole lot of knowledge to create for it.The nature of the system

itself -- the audacious difference between what you've heard before and what you can

hear in an LSD -- lends a compelling quality to its output.

Ultimately, I mean the LSD to be a tool for new kinds of music -- it is, after all, a new

kind of musical instrument. I don't believe we are so well served by the audio we

experience today that new ways of hearing aren't desirable. We are at a point of change

in how we experience music technologically -- old forms (radio, albums) are dying or

transforming into new forms (the Internet, burning CDs). What we don't seem ever to

really question is the basic nature of recorded sound -- is stereo really all there should be?

Or is 5.1-channel sound (SA-CDs, for instance, or DVD-Audio) the end-all and be-

all?

I argue this: that our ears are capable of hearing much more than mainstream technology

gives us. That the LSD is just the beginning of an attempt to give us back our ears,

our hearing minds.