Our friends at Flux:: Sound and Picture Development are hard at work bringing their IRCAM SPAT room acoustics simulation plug-in to the AAX 64 bit platform. They hope to release it next month but we cannot share any more about what might be in the new 64bit release. In case you haven’t heard of IRCAM or Spat, here is a little more information…
What is IRCAM?
IRCAM is the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music, is one of the world’s largest public research centres dedicated to both musical expression and scientific research.
What is IRCAM SPAT?
Following more than a decade of research performed by the Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces Team at IRCAM, SPAT is a very sophisticated tool for room acoustics simulation and localisation, managing both spatialisation (source localisation) and room acoustic simulation.
Designed for surround and multi-channel use, SPAT presents the option to setup the output arrangements providing a variety of stereo and surround configurations, including subwoofer configuration. With eight input and output channels available in SPAT, configurations up to 7.1 and 8.0 are feasible.
Each of the up to eight incoming audio channels is internally mapped to a range of Virtual Sources localised in a 3D space, and connected to a room (a reverb). Up to 3 rooms in parallel are provided, presenting the option to simulate complex spaces (coupled room acoustics).
SPAT Is Algorithmic
SPAT is not a convolution based plug-in, it is algorithmic and also takes a very different approach to reverb and doesn’t come with the usual controls that you would expect on a reverb or room simulation plug-in like an RT60 decay control for example. With SPAT you get three controls, Reverberance, Heaviness & Liveliness, which when used together effectively will enable you to set the reverb decay. But in reality, trying to compare SPAT to any other reverb plug-in is like comparing apples with oranges. Another thing to be aware of, is that SPAT looks at the volume of an acoustic space so the room sizes are based on cubic meters and not length.
We are looking forward to this release and we will review it when it is released.