Ramsete Program Home Page

This page is maintained by the authors: Angelo Farina, Paolo Galaverna, Guido Truffelli

Advice: following the Italian Law (D.L. 29 december 1992, n. 518), computer programs are completely equivalent to any other literary or artistic operas. No part of these WWW pages can be copied, reproduced, printed or anyway re-used without the written permission of the author. Information about the Ramsete computer program is provided here just as a reference for the underlying research work. These pages are not an advertissment for a commercial product.

For commercial informations, prices, national distributors, support and training please contact the publisher:

Spectra s.r.l. - Via Magellano 40 - 20047 Brugherio (MI) - tel. +39 039 2872422 - fax. +39 039 2872430 - E-MAIL spectra@spectra.it

Click here to see the Latest NEWS!!!!

Ramsete is the first publicly available software based on the Pyramid Tracing computing scheme, which is quite different from traditional Ray Tracing or Cone Tracing schemes.

Cones

Pyramids

On the left You can see the Cone Tracing generation principle, on the right the new Pyramid Tracing approach

Briefly, the Pyramid Tracing algorithm is capable to solve the sound propagation problems in large enclosures or outdoors, following the Geometrical Acoustics assumptions. It takes into account specular reflections over sound absorbing surfaces, being the absorption coefficient defined over 10 octave bands. Furthermore, it takes into account diffraction over free edges of screens, energy passing through the panels (sound insulation), holes in large surfaces, windows or doors made of a material different from the surrounding surface.

Ramsete comes with a dedicated 3D-surface CAD (compatible with AUTOCAD), a general purpose program for modeling the sound source's power and directivity, and powerful visualzation and post processing utilities.

Ramsete is now equipped with the format conversion utility Audio Converter: this enables the energy impulse responses to be converted in wide-band binaural pressure impulse responses, which can then be convolved with anechoic signals (speech, music or noise) to evaluate subjectively the simulated sound field. For understanding more about auralization through convolution, have a look at the Convolution Home Page.

Furthermore, Ramsete can easily be interfaced with the companion auralisation program, AURORA: it is one of the best convolution software available, but it can also be used with experimental impulse responses (for example obtained using MLSSA or TEF), and includes routines for generating MLS or IRS stimula and to deconvolve the impulse response from them. Please note that Aurora is a separate, stand-alone package, it is not shipped with Ramsete. The forthccoming Ramsete II program, anyway, shall include some of the auralization capabilities which are actually found only by separately purchasing Aurora.

The following flow-chart shows the interaction between the various modules

Flow-Chart of the Ramsete/Aurora Programs

Links to the single modules:

Main Features:

The Pyramid Tracing avoids the coverage problems previously found with conical beam tracers
The original tail correction implemented in Ramsete enables the reconstruction of the whole sound decay, without any "hybrid" approximation for the late part of it
A proper choiche of the tail correction parameters Alfa and Beta enables very fast calculations with a little number of pyramids also in highly non sabinian cases

Ramsete features also some important, unusual modelling capabilities:

Source characterization with octave-band directivity balloons automatically computed from ISO3744 Power Level measurements
Diffraction from free edges of obstructing panels
Evaluation of the sound passing through insulating panels, enabling also indoor-to-outdoor simulations
Optional Auralization companion software (AURORA) for listening at the results of the simulations by a multimedia PC (anechoic samples are required as input)

Latest NEWS !!!

The new Ramsete 1.70 Release Candidate 4 has been finished (09.12.2001) !!!
You can download the new version, which installs in a new directory without any overlap with the previous ones. Please look at the README.TXT file for a detailed description of bug fixes and enhancements.

The Audio Converter program is now part of the Ramsete package. It can be downloaded together with the latest version of Ramsete by registered users. It allows for conversion of the Ramsete results in standard .WAV impulse responses, which can be used for auralization with any convolution software. Ramsete 1.70 already includes a small convolution program.

A sort of DEMO is available, constituted of a simple slide-show of some screenshots taken while working with Ramsete. Furthermore, the demo version of Ramsete CAD and of Ramsete Graph is also available.

We are also proud to announce that also Ramsete 2.0 is being delivered. The install files are the same as Ramsete 1.7, simply plugging the new dongle (white instead of black) makes the new functionalities available. Look at the Ramsete II page for more details.

Hardlock Drivers (Ramsete 1.70 updated from previous versions)

Although on most computers (running Windows 9x) there is no need for specific drivers, on some machines (running NT-4 or Win2000) it is necessary to load a small software piece for having the Hardlock hardware protection dongle (black) to be recognized.

If this is Your case, You find those drivers here.

Smartkey Drivers (Ramsete 2.00 & 1.70 newly purchased)

Although on most computers (running Windows 9x) there is no need for specific drivers, on some machines (running NT-4 or Win2000) it is necessary to load a small software piece for having the Smartkey hardware protection dongle (white) to be recognized.

If this is Your case, You find those drivers here.

Mail to the author for additional information: farina@unipr.it