When you turn it on, you'll hear a “ploc”, in 8 speakers. The octoploc consists of 4 backpacks, each contains a pair of speakers and one stereo amplifier powered by a battery. One can use a bag as an independent and portable system, by sending an audio line signal from a phone, a portable radio, a media player…

It was also designed to deploy it's 8 loudpseakers for a spatialized or sourrounding sound performance thanks to it's 25m cables and it's Matrix Mixer, allowing to mix up to 8 inputs and output up to 8 channels. With this, it's possible to use only one sound source, or mix various (always coming at line level, ie. laptop, synthetizers, walkman, hand recorders), and send the sound to one or various speakers. The mixing and routing part is done by the 8×8 rotating potentiometers of the Matrix Mixer.

One can also manually spatialize (move) the sound with the 8 faders of the Spatialisatrice, an add-on to plug on the matrix mixer.

With the Octoploc, it's possible to spatialize a pre-recorded sound piece, play the mono sound of a film on 8 speakers, plug several electronic instruments and distribute them over the space of the speakers, walk and wander playing desynchronised mix or sound piece thought 4 backpacks.

The Octoploc consists of

• 4 backpacks (each contain) :
  • 1 stereo amplifier (wondom - ref )
  • 1 BMS board with 5 lithium cells (wondom - ref )
  • 2 monitoring speakers (JBL Control One)
  • 2 hi-fi cable (20meters)

• A Matrix mixer : a tool to mix various sources and route, or duplicate, a signal to the 8 speakers of the Octoploc
  • 8 line Input (with gain attenuators)
  • a 64 routing and mixing potentiometers matrix
  • 8 VU meter
  • 8 line Outputs (with gain attenuators)
  • powered by 5 lithium cell control by wondom boards BMS

• A Spatialisatrice : an instrument to move the sound inside the space defined by the 8 speakers
  • 8 faders

Research Journal
Description of the research project, goals and choices we made…

User Manual
How to use the OctoPloc. (to be published later)

Matrix Mixer & Spat : Construction Guide
Step by step instruction to build the Matrix Mixer and the Spatialisatrice

Portable Amplifier : Construction guide
Build portable amplifiers for the Octoploc, step by step.

Last update : august 2025

• the spat is not working… Added washers as spacers in case screws where still slightly too long… But still, 3 faders are not responding at all… even if they all seems to work on the ohms-meters. Maybe check again if it's not a RJ45 issue…

PROBLEMS

• Check that peak level of the vu-meter and of the amps are the same.
• some colored jacks are missing

BACKPACKS

• construire et tester (faire une couture zizgzag avant de couper l'avant pour éviter effilochage,couper le devant, mettre des œillets en récupérant la corde de devant du sac, on peut récupérer les attaches des côtés pour recoudre devant pour tenir les enceintes, on peut garder le tissus avec les minis trous devant pour tenir les enceintes aussi, a voir)

MATRICE

• Refaire la boite ( Marianne ) en essayant de gagner de l'espace (agrandir la boite, moins coller les côtés) + isoler avec du cuivre? (ou avec l'alu vu que ça marchait bien)
• enlever le plastique de protection à la fin
• Faire les marquages pour les information des boutons sur le côté ( on.off, batterie test charge, 9V , Alim) : se référer au modèle dessiné. + numéro des pistes horizontale et verticale(1-8) et In-Out, Le nom OctoPloc ? sur le haut de la boite . Trouver les termes et dénominations. Se mettre d'accord sur la typo et la technique d'écriture

SPAT

• mettre la Spat dans sa boite

BOXES SPAT / MATRIX

• On décide de rester à 2 éléments séparés. Sinon c'est trop gros… Imaginer une lanière ou autre pour les transporter en bandoulière? Ou ajouter un sac à dos si c'est pertinent.

CÂBLE

• Etamer les pointes des cables des amplis

DOCUMENTATION

SPECTRAL is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission.