FLUX:: / SPAT Revolution (released)

[Lawrence]

So the “keyboard parts” are actually a supplemental orchestra as well as just keyboards? Beefing up the pit orchestra, as it were?

[Daryl]

The band is, at its most basic:

Keys 1/MD
Electric Bass/Upright Bass
Drums
Keys 2 (everything else)

It is designed so that the band can be expanded to 9 players, which slims down the Keys 2 part a little.

[Lawrence]

Trying to understand this, so, expandable to include 5 other, presumably orchestral, musicians?

(Sorry if I’m being dense).

[Daryl]

Trying to understand this, so, expandable to include 5 other, presumably orchestral, musicians?

(Sorry if I’m being dense).

Moved to PM

[Luciano Storti]

I am just worried, they will discontinue support for SPAT V3. And that’s not good news for existing users.

It depends on what you mean by "support". The last ever update was released earlier this year, so it is what it is.

I've just bought Revolution, so once we really get into the nitty gritty, I'll report back. As an aside, each purchase of Revolution actually provides two licences...!

Any news on this, Daryl?

Since I've been spending a few days with a trial version and in contact with support, I thought I'd give an update for anyone interested. Although I would love to hear from you, Daryl, seeing that it's been in regular use, presumably.

I'm currently experimenting with running it on the same machine (MacPro 5,1, well-specced) and while the sound is still outstanding, there are significant workflow issues to overcome, at least for the way I like to mix.

1. I cannot yet get it to be in sync all the time. Not even in its simplest configuration.

What it means: by going outside of the DAW, there arises the need to synchronize the audio streams to each other. This opens up issues here, where you can have dropouts, CPU overloads, tracks shifting out of sync, etc. For me, a few dropouts here and there but mostly tracks out of sync, usually one or two. I completely understand the reasoning for going outside the DAW, but again, kinda opens a can of worms.

Investigating the issue, there does not seem to be a clear culprit: the CPU is not taxed in Logic, in SPAT, or in the Activity monitor. Not even close. I'm on it with support. Still, even when things are in sync (rarely) I *feel* like the timing is not as tight as in the DAW.

2a. This one is the potential workflow dealbreaker: once you instantiate a "SPAT Send" plugin on a track, you lose the ability to use your DAW mixer for that track. No Solo, No Mute, no Fader volume. At least that I can see, and support indirectly confirmed. Whatever plugins you want to affect the track, must be inserted prior to the "Send" plugin.

For now, the only workaround, or actually the way Flux wants you to use this thing, is to create AUX tracks to host the "Send" plugin instead. Obviously, if you go with a 1:1 ratio, you may very well end up with hundreds of tracks for an orchestral mockup!

Next best, would be to organize your tracks by instrument family, which I reckon most of us do anyway, stuff them in a Stack/Group with the same AUX routing and instantiate the "Send" plugin on there. Fine, but then you lose the ability to place each individual instrument where you want, instead being relegated to moving the entirety of the Woodwinds as a whole. SPAT effectively becomes 'only' a depth tool. The panning has to happen in the DAW. Defeats half its purpose, but workable.

2b. This basically means that in order to take full advantage of SPAT Revolution's superb capabilities, one has to mix in SPAT. But then you lose the use of whatever control surface you might be using other than OSC (Avid S1 in my case). And the mixing of the sources in SPAT, positioning, volume, room/reverb characteristics, is limited to just that. As mentioned above, one still has to go back to the DAW to use whatever other plugins need use.

Unless I'm missing something big, it would seem to me that SPAT Revolution complicates things unnecessarily for our particular use group. If it were financially viable, and I'm convinced that it would, Flux should create different tiers of the software for different users: the current version is very clearly geared toward immersive sound, and I'm sure it's brilliant at it. However, for composers who want to use SPAT to create the illusion of one great sounding room, the workflow gets in the way.

For the latter use case, I think Flux could go back to providing a plugin, even at the cost of losing many sources within one instance of SPAT. Preferably however, the plugin version would still find a way to route multiple tracks/streams into it - perhaps with some clever usage of surround capabilities of the DAW channels?

As it is, and as satisfying as it was hearing the sound coalesce within SPAT again since V3, it would be considerably more work for a marginally improved illusion. But I'll keep at it for a few days and report back if anything changes.

[Luciano Storti]

Update:

It would seems that there is some multithreading confusion between SPAT and Logic on my machine. Lowering the CPU thread usage in Logic to be the same as it is in SPAT (12 cores instead of 24) consistently makes the sync error stay at a minimum of 1. Meaning that there are no dropouts or clicks. But I can very clearly hear that the sync between the parts is off.

However, upon resetting Core Audio, by changing something in Logic's preferences, SPAT always gives me a SOLID first play through where everything is perfect and just as tight as in the DAW. Problem is, the second and any subsequent playthroughs go back to throwing errors.

Is anyone using this without problems and integrating it in their workflow? At the moment I cannot see how to do that - one, because it isn't synchronizing properly, and two, because I don't want to mix levels in SPAT and go back to the DAW for additional plugins. I'm still on with support, but I've all but given up on this for now. Back to 7th Heaven, Reverberate, Waves IR-Full, etc.

[Daryl]

Any news on this, Daryl?

Not really. There was a "gotcha" in terms of the way it's designed, so we abandoned using it very early on.

[Luciano Storti]

Any news on this, Daryl?

Not really. There was a "gotcha" in terms of the way it's designed, so we abandoned using it very early on.

Disappointing. Thanks for chiming in, Daryl.