Audio output gadgets?

Beginners
1

I am working on a non profit art show project where we want to simulate outdoor sounds for kids in 5-6 locations around the gallery (owls, wolf calls, crickets etc). From what Elburz has been saying maybe best to do that in MaxMSP and the visuals in TD, sync with OSC or UDP or something between two laptops.? But I would prefer to do everything from one laptop if possible.

I have seen a few articles here referring to multi track audio issues, and we don’t likely have enough money for a Dante audio network. So I have two newbie questions:

  1. Has anyone successfully driven 5-8 audio outputs simultaneously successfully entirely in Touch?
  2. Has anyone used little standalone self contained audio gadgets with their own little sound storage, amp and speaker all built in for spot sound effects (not fed sound by td but possibly turned on and off)?

Kinda wondering about a distributed star network vs a bunch of unsynchronized separate devices approach…and if anything cheap and reliable exists in the art museum type space…

PS - unfortunately our budget is super tight

Thanks

2
  1. Yes have done projects with 8 channels running direct from TD to the USB external audio output device. In this case we separated the audio out to its own .toe file, this lets it run in its own process.
3

Thanks Ben! That is great to know. I have done something similar in MaxMSP at Christie in the past for eight channels with Focusrite saffire 40pro - so maybe something like the Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 or similar? Do you recall what USB interface you used successfully? I like dealing with proven solutions… with proven drivers…

4

It was a Roland Octacapture, not my choice of device but it worked.

5

Thank you Ben - I will check it out.