Ether Dream Player

[j4cbo]

For a while now I've been trying out different ways of playing 8-channel WAV files from an Ether Dream. Implementing firmware support to play them off an SD card is easy (it's not much different from playing an ILDA file), but the big question becomes, what about the audio? A show isn't much fun without the corresponding music. I looked at options for getting audio out of an Ether Dream and even prototyped a dongle that would repurpose one of the unused extra ILDA color pins to carry S/PDIF. But it always felt clunky, and the wiring was a hassle, especially if the Ether Dream is with (or in) the projector itself.

Then I realized I was taking the wrong approach. The way to do this isn't to store the WAV file on the Ether Dream, but to play it over the network. My computer has plenty of storage, room for a nice UI, and its own wide variety of audio output devices. Why not use that? Send the laser content over the network to an Ether Dream, and play the audio out the system audio device.

I actually wrote a tool to do exactly that many years ago, but it was a clunky command-line utility with no UI, not even the ability to seek to a different point in a file. So a few weeks ago I started writing a new one. It's a multiplatform desktop app with binaries available for Windows and Mac (runs from source on Linux too). There's even a preview window:


I've tested it with ADAT tape backups and with files recorded with one of DZ's Wave-USB boxes. Try it out and send any bug reports my way.

Here's the code, and prebuilt binaries are under the "Releases" tab to the right: https://github.com/j4cbo/EtherDreamPlayer

[dchammonds]

For a while now I've been trying out different ways of playing 8-channel WAV files from an Ether Dream. Implementing firmware support to play them off an SD card is easy (it's not much different from playing an ILDA file), but the big question becomes, what about the audio? A show isn't much fun without the corresponding music. I looked at options for getting audio out of an Ether Dream and even prototyped a dongle that would repurpose one of the unused extra ILDA color pins to carry S/PDIF. But it always felt clunky, and the wiring was a hassle, especially if the Ether Dream is with (or in) the projector itself.

Then I realized I was taking the wrong approach. The way to do this isn't to store the WAV file on the Ether Dream, but to play it over the network. My computer has plenty of storage, room for a nice UI, and its own wide variety of audio output devices. Why not use that? Send the laser content over the network to an Ether Dream, and play the audio out the system audio device.

I actually wrote a tool to do exactly that many years ago, but it was a clunky command-line utility with no UI, not even the ability to seek to a different point in a file. So a few weeks ago I started writing a new one. It's a multiplatform desktop app with binaries available for Windows and Mac (runs from source on Linux too). There's even a preview window:


I've tested it with ADAT tape backups and with files recorded with one of DZ's Wave-USB boxes. Try it out and send any bug reports my way.

Here's the code, and prebuilt binaries are under the "Releases" tab to the right: https://github.com/j4cbo/EtherDreamPlayer

Looks interesting- I'm going to send a PM.

[mixedgas]

I'm in.

I have two Etherdreams..

and DZ's Box.

Steve