It seems like there's no reason for this use case for the speakers to be individually addressable, and that would probably add significant complexity.
I can't imagine the audio interfaces being faster than HDMI 2.0, USB 4/Thunderbolt, DisplayPort 3, etc.
1000 channels is a rather small array, though. 5000 is still not too much.
Modern audio codecs/standards (Dolby Atmos, DTS:X) have moved 'beyond' individual speakers, and are now using object-based sound:
> Audio becomes an object when it is accompanied by metadata that describes its existence, position and function. An audio object can, therefore, be the sound of a bee flying over your head, the crowd noise, commentary to a sporting event in any language. All this remains fully adjustable on the consumer’s end to their specific listening environment, needs and liking, regardless of the device.
* https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/16347/objec...
> Think about this: imagine the sound of a race car speeding around a track. You can see the car approaching in the distance, off on the right side of the screen. As it gets closer, it gets louder and zooms across the screen from right to left, with the resulting Doppler shift of the sound as it goes past you. It screams off the left edge of the screen and continues down the left wall until it disappears into the distance behind you.
> A sound designer could, in theory, pan this sound carefully from the Right speaker, through the Center speaker, to the Left speaker, and on down to the Left side surround and the Left rear surround before it faded out entirely. That would be the channel-based way of thinking about the task at hand.
> Alternatively, the same designer could associate the sound of that race car with locations (coordinates) that move smoothly across the front of the room and then down the left side of the room. It is the same sound, but now with metadata telling the playback system where it should be from one moment to the next. […]
> The second, object-oriented way, is scalable. It doesn’t care how many speakers you have in your room because it is not referencing a specific speaker – just relative locations. Importantly, these locations can include the space above you and around you, enclosing you in a “bubble” of sound.
* https://www.trinnov.com/en/blog/posts/what-is-immersive-soun...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_(sound_system_company)#DTS...
Given the (x, y, x) co-ordinates of an audio signal/object, the codec algorithm figures out which speaker(s) should get what signal: if the system only has two speakers then you'll generally only have stereo, if you have a 7.1.4 setup (four overhead / in-ceiling speakers) it will probably be more immersive:
* https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guid...
* https://www.dolby.com/about/support/guide/speaker-setup-guid...
After all, 3D graphics create objects and then model their interaction with the world.
Someone correct me if I'm remembering wrong, "sound raytraycing" was a feature in the game Thief if you had a compatible sound card, right?
I (also not sme) think the best graphics analogy would be holograms in Star Wars - object is at point-in-room, and you can hear/view it there.
The big tech here is the ability to spacially position the audio in the physical space the speakers sit in, by automatically mixing it between the speakers.
Sorry if I misunderstood the question, or a smarter person answered while I was typing.
What you're describing is representational. You still need individually controlled speakers to position audio in the room according to the positional metadata. The question of representation really isn't relevant to the question I answered, nor is it to my answer, but it's an interesting topic.
> Given the (x, y, x) co-ordinates of an audio signal/object, the codec algorithm figures out which speaker(s) should get what signal
...and for the signals to be distributed accordingly, you need to be able to address each speaker individually.
In the domain of representing positional audio, this is also nothing new. No one mixes surround sound in terms of speakers, and that has been the case for decades. No one would manually pan a sound "carefully from the Right speaker, through the Center speaker, to the Left speaker, and on down to the Left side surround and the Left rear surround before it faded out entirely". What object-based codecs bring to the table is that the positional representation is encoded in the data stream rather than mixed down to per-speaker audio streams during production, which means that the distribution and filtering can be tailored for each setup individually.