Continuing Evolution: Inside New Smaart v8

Further Upgrades
A wide range of other functional and interface facilities have been addressed in v8, many of them driven by our users. Let’s have a look at some of the highlights.

Multi-Window Capability. There’s now the ability to drive multiple windows, each containing its own set of tabbed workspaces. It’s like being able to run multiple sessions of Smaart simultaneously.

Multiple (multi-tabbed) measurement windows can be configured and simultaneously run across multiple displays, with the limits only being display space, and CPU/GPU capacity.

v8 also includes some dedicated, special-purposed windows – most notably, the broadband meters and the API Client Window.

APL (Active Plot Legend). A new window that details the contents of the active/selected plot, showing the names, colors and trace offsets of live and static data traces, as well as providing the controls for hiding/showing the traces.

Improved Data Storage. For static data, we’ve overhauled the trace storage process to allow for better direct access to the larger file structure of captured traces, without cluttering up active memory space trying to keep everything loaded in RAM in case it’s needed elsewhere.

Broadband Metering. Another user-requested feature is the ability to continuously view input signal levels, as well as monitor parameters such as SPL and LEQ for multiple inputs simultaneously. This capability is now provided with the Broadband Meters window (Figure 3), a mode-less window that can be configured to monitor any of Smaart’s input signals via a simple grid configuration process.

Figure 3: Broadband Meters window. (click to enlarge)

There’s a lot more in terms of metering capability, including the ability to choose to display each input’s SPL readout, Input Meter, or both (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Further metering capabilities. (click to enlarge)

IO Control. Access and console for the Smaart IO gain, as well as phantom power, are now integrated directly into the v8 interface. Smaart-to-Smaart API. This integrated function allows any copy of v8 to act as a host to any other copy of v8, meaning that users can create a rig with one computer acquiring the input signals and performing the measurement computations, while another acts as a client and remotely accesses the measurement data. This capability then allows the v8 measurement environment to be spread, not just across multiple monitors, but across multiple computers.

Constant Evolution
The bottom line is that even as we expand Smaart’s complexity with new resources and facilities, we’re also focused on making it easier to use as a tool. That’s the primary goal of this measurement configuration process: to deliver an simpler, more intuitive workflow by adding automatic measurement creation and management functionality wherever possible to streamline configuration and to support a quick, intuitive process that is often an operational necessity for many of our users.

Along with this, we’ve added features to support operation on tablet computers and even stretch Smaart across not only multiple monitors, but also multiple computers. And of course, in the “under the hood” and “not-readily-visible” department, v8 also includes updates to the software’s development environment as well as the licensing system and options.

While not particularly sexy (although who doesn’t find increased speed, functionality, stability and security sexy?) these updates were overdue and bring with them a lot of new capabilities and options for users, both now and in the future.

(Editor’s Note: New Smaart v8 is available for download at rationalacoustics.com, with options for current and new users clearly defined.)

Jamie Anderson is a founding member of Rational Acoustics and has been teaching and working in the field of sound system engineering, measurement and alignment for more than 20 years.