Zerr*

Introduction

Zerr* is a channel-based spatialization concept for an arbitrary audio source. It distributes audio signals to multiple loudspeakers, based only on the signals’ inherent features as well as the properties of the speaker array setup. Although various aspects of the algorithm can be tuned, also during runtime, the audio signal itself defines the spatial distribution. Depending on the parametrization, the approach can alter the original signal significantly, similar to modulation and distortion effects. Please check the conference paper, "Autogenous Spatialization for Arbitrary Loudspeaker Setups" for design details.

Zerr* is intended to be available in various creative coding environments. The currently supported environments are listed below:

	Linux	MacOS(M1)	MacOS(Intel)	Windows
Puredata	✅	✅	✅	✅
JACK	🛠️	🛠️	🛠️	🛠️
SuperCollider	⏳	⏳	⏳	⏳
Max/MSP	➖	✅	➖	➖

✅: Fully Supported

🛠️: In Development

⏳: Planned

➖: Not available

Installation

Releases

Precompiled builds are attached to Releases. Each host is released on its own, with its own version number and notes: Max releases are tagged max-v<version>, Pure Data releases pd-v<version>. The "Latest" badge is simply whichever host shipped most recently, so pick the release by tag.

• Max: zerr-max-<version>-macos-arm64.zip (Apple Silicon, Max 9). Follow maxmsp/README.md — it covers the quarantine step macOS requires for an ad-hoc-signed package.
• Pure Data: zerr-pd-<version>-<os>-<arch>.zip for macos-arm64, linux-x86_64 and windows-x86_64. See puredata/README.md.

How to Build

Otherwise, you can also build it for your own machine.

Initialization

• Clone this repo and initialize the submodules( pd-lib-builder, min-devkit )

  git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:ringbuffer-org/Zerr.git && cd Zerr

Dependencies

• Zerr* uses Conan for dependency management, please refer to its documentation for details
• The core library of Zerr* depends only on yaml-cpp and fftw3. Both are declared once in the root conanfile.txt and resolved into a single shared build/ folder that every target consumes — the core and Max/MSP via build/conan_toolchain.cmake, PureData via build/conandeps.mk

# from the repo root; pick the profile matching your host
conan install . --output-folder=build --build=missing \
  -pr:h=profiles/macos -pr:b=profiles/macos

• Committed profiles live in profiles/ (macos, linux, mingw), so dependency resolution is reproducible instead of depending on each machine's ~/.conan2 default. Recipe revisions are pinned in conanfile.txt because both libraries need a ConanCenter revision that supports CMake 4. Read profiles/macos before changing either — it records which settings are deliberately not pinned, and why
• The macOS deployment target is set in core/CMakeLists.txt (and maxmsp/CMakeLists.txt), not via the Conan profile — see the comment in profiles/macos for the reasoning
• ./build.sh resolves dependencies automatically on first use, so the command above is only needed for a manual or non-default build. ./build.sh deps re-runs just the resolve step, and ./build.sh -c deps discards it
• Conan is only required when dependencies actually need resolving; a tree with a populated build/ folder still builds without it
• You can also edit the paths in Makefile/CMakeLists.txt to point to your own

For Puredata

• Make sure you have installed Puredata. Building pd externals depends on the Puredata-API (m_pd.h)

• Build/Install with following commands

# build puredata externals
./build.sh puredata

# build and stage the puredata package in puredata/dist/zerr (plus a zip)
./build.sh -p puredata

# build and install the package into Pd's user library folder (~/Library/Pd on macOS;
# set PDLIBDIR to choose another, e.g. ~/.local/lib/pd/extra on Linux)
./build.sh -i puredata

# for development: install as a symlink to puredata/dist/zerr instead of a copy
./build.sh -l puredata

For Max/MSP

• Requires macOS on Apple Silicon and the Min-DevKit submodules (git submodule update --init --recursive)
• Build/Install with following commands

# build Max externals into maxmsp/externals
./build.sh maxmsp

# build and stage the Max package in maxmsp/dist/Zerr (plus a zip)
./build.sh -p maxmsp

# build and install the package into ~/Documents/Max 9/Packages (set MAX_PACKAGES_DIR to override)
./build.sh -i maxmsp

# for development: install as a symlink to maxmsp/dist/Zerr instead of a copy
./build.sh -l maxmsp

• Max scans its Packages folder at launch, so restart Max after installing or rebuilding. The externals are arm64 only; a universal build is not produced

On Windows

build.sh runs on Windows as well, from an MSYS2 MINGW64 or Git Bash shell. It detects the host and selects profiles/mingw, pins CMake to the MinGW Makefiles generator — without that, CMake picks Visual Studio whenever one is installed and compiles with MSVC against a MinGW toolchain — and uses mingw32-make in preference to the MSYS make. There is no .bat/PowerShell equivalent; native cmd.exe is not supported.

# in an MSYS2 MINGW64 shell, with MinGW-w64 gcc 13 on PATH
./build.sh deps
./build.sh core
./build.sh puredata

pd-lib-builder needs to find your Pd installation for m_pd.h; set PDDIR if it does not locate it on its own.

Max/MSP cannot be built on Windows from this script — a .mxe64 requires an MSVC toolchain, whose runtime and C++ ABI cannot link against the MinGW-built libzerr_core.a that profiles/mingw produces. ./build.sh maxmsp reports this and exits rather than failing inside Min-DevKit. See docs/design/dependency-fallbacks.md §3.7.

For Jack

# build Jack client
./build.sh jack