MidiSpace: a temporal constraint-based music spatializer

1. ABSTRACT We develop multimedia technology for enriching the music listening experience. We propose a system - MidiSpace - in which users may listen to music while controlling in real time the localization of sound sources, through a simple interface. We introduce the problem of mixing consistency, and propose a solution based on a constraint propagation mechanism. The proposed system contains both an authoring mode, in which sound engineers may specify spatialization constraints to be satisfied, and a listening mode in which listeners can modify the localization of sources under the supervision of a constraint solver that ensures the spatialization always satisfies the constraints. We describe the architecture of the system and report on experiments done so far.