Signals visualization and ballistic

Even if ears are the most valuable tool of a sound engineer, having a good and reliable set of tools for metering and visual monitoring is crucial, especially when handling as many channels as we are in immersive sound.

In SPAT Revolution, we have three main features regarding this subject:

Vu-Meters

Throughout SPAT Revolution’s different editors, you will see a complete set of accurate decibel meters giving you a visual display of all channel activity in an audio stream, whether Ambisonics or Channel Based. They are very useful to see when clipping might be occurring in any of the channels and to debug signal flow routing in general.

Also, notice how the “wire” that graphically connects modules in the setup signal graph does not visually change even though it is handling a load of channels.

The meter’s behavior can be adapted with some controls available in UI panel of the Preferences page.

Nebula Spatial Spectrogram

Nebula is a technology adapted from our flagship MiRA real-time analyzer, a suite of highly regarded professional mastering and mixing visualization tools.

Note

Screenshot from a MiRA real-time analyzer session.

Nebula in SPAT Revolution provides a unique representation of the sound field in terms of spectral content and localization rendered directly inside the 3D speaker simulation and virtual room display. It combines the functionality of a spectrum analyzer and a vector scope in a novel real-time display. It is a useful tool to get a real-time overview of your SPATial mix in terms of spectral-spatial diffusion, and can give quite accurate representations of ‘where’ and ‘how’ sound will manifest over a real-world sound system. A lot of work has gone into optimizing the real-time rendering of the display, not solely for aesthetic reasons, but because we wanted the display to react instantly to all the details in the incoming multichannel audio. The idea is literally for you to be able to see what the listener will hear and feel.

How does it work?

The overall principles behind Nebula are quite straightforward. At any given time, and for every frequency, the engine computes the position of a frequency in space (2D in stereo and 3D for multichannel surround). This position is taken as the center of gravity of the various channels, weighted by the relative amplitude of the signal in their corresponding channel. A color-intensity mapped projection is computed for the multi-speaker plane, giving a spectrum-space frame constrained to the surround sound field radius or sphere. Past analysis frames are progressively “forgotten”, using blur and dimming, in order to make place for new information, which gives the graphic display increased legibility and its characteristic ‘nebulous’ quality.

Note

Nebula is available for Channel-Based rooms only.

Send to MiRA Workflow

SPAT Revolution provides a close integration with the analyzer designed by FLUX::, MiRA, allowing to send audio directly to MiRA.

Nothing more simple to do: on the Setup Page, select a block. On the list Send to MiRA, select True. On MiRA, you will see it as a new Source, called “SPAT Revolution”. Select it: the correct speaker arrangement will be loaded.

Note

Send to MiRA feature is not compatible between all versions of SPAT Revolution and MiRA (or legacy FLUX:: Analyzer). Please note that:

  • SPAT Revolution 25.01.50445 version and up are compatible with MiRA Analyzer.
  • SPAT Revolution 22.09.50200 version until 24.08.50399 are not compatible with any FLUX:: Analyzer or MiRA.
  • SPAT Revolution 22.02.50151 version and below versions are compatible with FLUX:: Analyzer 22.01.50131 version and below.

MiRA EQ Integration

In addition to sending audio to MiRA for analysis, SPAT Revolution can receive EQ correction curves designed in MiRA. Both applications share the same EQ engine, so EQ data can be transferred seamlessly between them via the system clipboard.

This enables a complete system tuning workflow without leaving the FLUX:: ecosystem:

  1. Measure in MiRA — Send audio from SPAT Revolution to MiRA using the Send to MiRA feature described above, or use MiRA’s own measurement tools to capture the transfer function of your room or PA system.
  2. Design EQ in MiRA — Use MiRA’s parametric EQ to manually design corrective curves, or use the Auto-EQ feature to automatically compute optimal correction bands based on your measurement (with optional target curve and smoothing).
  3. Copy the EQ in MiRA — In MiRA’s EQ dialog, click Copy to place the EQ settings on the system clipboard.
  4. Paste in SPAT Revolution — Open the target EQ dialog in SPAT Revolution and click Paste. The EQ curve is applied instantly.

The destination EQ in SPAT Revolution depends on your use case:

Use Case Where to Paste Description
Per-speaker room correction Output EQ (per-channel) Each output channel has its own independent EQ. Paste a different correction curve for each speaker to compensate for individual room acoustics or speaker response differences.
Global room correction Master EQ Apply a single corrective EQ to the entire mixed output, affecting all speakers equally.
Source-level correction Source EQ Apply EQ correction to an individual source before spatialization — useful for correcting microphone response characteristics.
Note

MiRA can also export EQ curves to third-party formats (FabFilter Pro-Q 4, RME TotalMix FX Room EQ, LPIF). However, SPAT Revolution only supports clipboard-based EQ exchange — there is no file import mechanism for EQ data. For transferring EQ curves to SPAT Revolution, always use Copy/Paste.