Facilities

CCRMA is located on the Stanford University campus in a building that was refurbished in 1986 to meet its unique needs. The facility includes a large space with multichannel sound for teaching, concerts, and acoustic experimentation, an adjoining control room/studio, a digital multi-track recording studio with adjoining control room, two additional studios with digital editing facilities, several work areas with workstations, synthesizers and speakers, a seminar room, an in-house reference library, classrooms and offices. The building has been wired so that any office or workspace can connect with the underlying network. A gateway connects the network to the campus at large and also to the Internet. A description of the hardware and software environment follows below.

The CCRMA computing environment is supported by more than 40 machines that include fast Pentium class PCs running Linux (some of them dual-booting Linux and NEXTSTEP), Silicon Graphics workstations, NeXT workstations (for old time's sake) and PowerPC Macintosh computers. All machines are connected through a switched high speed backbone and several servers provide shared services and resources to all computers in a way that is transparent to the users. A high speed connection to the Stanford University Network (SUNET) provides connectivity with the rest of the world, including direct access to the new Internet 2 network. Soundfile manipulation and MIDI input and output are supported on all platforms. Multichannel playback is supported on some Linux and SGI workstations and on the Macs through several Pro Tools systems. Digital audio processors include a Studer-Editech Dyaxis II system, two Digidesign Pro-Tools systems with CD-R drives, digital i/o cards on Linux systems, Singular Solutions analog and digital audio input systems for the NeXTs, and several Panasonic DAT recorders. Text and graphics are handled by an HP 4c color scanner on the unix-based systems and by high resolution network connected printers.

The recording studio consists of a control room and an adjoining recording studio. Equipment available currently includes two Tascam DTRS 8-track digital recorders (DA-78HR and DA-38), a Tascam 80-8 1/2" analog 8-track recorder (with dbx), an Ampex ATR-104 analog 1/2" 4-track recorder (with dbx and/or Dolby A), a Mackie Digital Eight Bus (D8B) mixing console, a Presonus M80 eight-channel mic preamp, a Panasonic SV-3800 DAT recorder, a Lexicon 224XL digital reverberator, Westlake BBSM-10 and JBL 4206 monitors, and outboard gear including equalizers, compressors, and digital effects processors. A Macintosh-based sequencer playback system and a Linux PC-based computer system are available in the control room. Recorders may be linked together via SMPTE time code, which will also synchronize the Mac sequencer software. Microphones available in the recording studio include a Neumann TLM-193, two AKG C414B-ULSs, two AKG C460s (with interchangeable cardioid and omni capsules), a Beyer M-500, a Sennheiser MD-421, two Sennheiser E604s, two Electrovoice RE-20s, an Electrovoice N/D868, two Shure Beta-57s, and several Shure SM-57s. There is a Yamaha C7 Disklavier MIDI grand piano in the studio.

The MIDI part of the MIDI studio is organized around a PowerMac 8600 computer and an Opcode Studio 5 MIDI interface/MIDI patcher. There is a Yamaha KX-88 weighted-key controller and MIDI equipment including Yamaha SY-99 and VL-1 synthesizers, TX-802 module, Korg Wavestation A/D and X3R modules and Wavedrum synthesizer, E-Mu Proteus/2 module and ESI-32 sampler, and Kurzweil K2000R. There is a Yamaha Disklavier upright piano as well. The MIDI Studio audio system includes a Mackie 24-8 analog mixer, Tascam DA-38, Panasonic SV-3700 DAT recorder, Denon DN-600F CD player, and ProTools|24 with 888 I/O. Monitoring is via four Ramsa WS-A200 speakers with Yamaha P-2200 power amps. Signal processing is available from a Korg A-1 multi-effects processor. A Plextor 8/20 CD writer is part of the studio as well and CD-Rs can be written from Toast and Jam software from files edited in ProTools 4 or Peak programs.

Studio E is a ProTools III-based room with some MIDI capability. Audio equipment includes a Tascam DA-88 w/ IF-88AE AES/EBU converter, Allen and Heath GL2 mixer, and Genelec 1030A monitors. The ProTools system features an 888 I/O module and NuBus expansion chassis with nine DSP Farm cards for a powerful mixing environment. Several ProTools plug-ins are available. MIDI equipment includes an E-Mu Emulator IV, Korg X3R, and a Kurzweil K2000 keyboard. A Linux system is available with Sonorus audio card providing 8-channel digital I/O.

Studio D is CCRMA's digital editing and dubbing facility. Equipment available includes a Studer-Editech Dyaxis II digital editing processor, a PowerMac 7100, an SGI computer with 8-channel digital connection to a Tascam DA-88, a Panasonic SV-3700 DAT recorder, a Denon digital-output CD player, a Sony PCM-601 PCM processor with serial digital output, a Yamaha DMP7D digital mixer, a Yamaha SPX-1000 digital effects processor, a Tascam 122 mk II cassette recorder and monitor speakers by Meyer Sound Labs (Model 833) for stereo and Boston Acoustics A-60 speakers for quad monitoring.

The CCRMA software has been developed over more than twenty-years, and consists of a vast set of programs and system tools for editing, viewing, synthesizing, and analyzing sound. Much of the software was originally written in SAIL, a sophisticated Algol-like language for use on the previous mainframe and has been ported to the new workstation environment and developed further. The programs currently in use include a comprehensive environment written in Common Lisp that includes Common Lisp Music (CLM) for music synthesis and signal processing, Common Music (CM) and STELLA for compositional programming and Common Music Notation (CMN) for creation of common music notation scores. The lisp-based world closely interacts (on the X windows environments) with Snd, a very complete sound editor and mixing tool also developed at CCRMA. Recent projects in music recognition, real-time performance, audio, signal processing, acoustics, psychoacoustics and physical modeling have been developed in languages native to the workstations, primarily Common Lisp, C, C++, Objective-C, Matlab, Mathematica, and Smalltalk. A multi-platform environment for real-time DSP research, STK, is being jointly developed at CCRMA and Princeton University. Of course there is a wide variety of public domain software for text, image and sound processing installed on all workstations.