Chumbi

Chumbi began in the spring of 2025 as a course's final project where I wanted to create a framework for ambisonic processing in the ChucK programming language. I was utilizing a granulator controlled by basic laptop HID devices such as the trackpad and keyboard, and wanted to spatialize multiple instantiations of the granulator in performance. Chumbi was first written at the ChucK level, using arrays of signal processors and manipulating them to produce encoded BFormat signals. After some time, I learned the Chugin framework to create these processors as C++ classes, and import them into ChucK as a dynamic linking library. The speed and cleanliness of compiled C++ was no match for ChucK level signal manipulation, and enabled me to explore creative use of ambisonic processing without having to handle the basic processes that are always found in ambisonic systems. Seeing that this was not an active component of ChucK, I open-sourced the code and now provide Chumbi to anyone who wants to edit, use or destroy it.

A paper about Chumbi
A poster about Chumbi
A paper by Tae Kyu Kim on an instrument they made using Chumbi