Rational Acoustics has announced the introduction of Smaart Origin, a painstaking recreation of the original SMAART v1 software analyzer released in 1995.
Almost 30 years later, Smaart Origin brings back everything Smaart users loved about the original SMAART v1 platform, meticulously updated and remastered to run on modern computers. The update includes a refresh to the rendering technology, allowing the program to output in Native 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, although users have the option to enable a proprietary Nostalgia Mode, which limits screen resolution to 640 x 480 at 256 colors.
Additional display options include the MS-DOS inspired all-white text on a blue background and user favorite “monochrome” which emulates original-generation CRT displays by using green text on a slightly darker green background.
According to Rational Acoustics president Jamie Anderson, achieving period-accurate performance on modern computers was a major development challenge. Since modern machines have no trouble running the realtime FFTs that strained 1995-era laptops, the development team had to find ways to actively degrade measurement calculation performance. “With Smaart Origin, we’ve worked hard to bring back that authentic ‘feel’ of taking a measurement on a computer whose CPU is completely overwhelmed by the task,” Anderson notes. “We really want to re-capture that experience of your keyboard heating up and your fans spinning up until your laptop sounds like it’s about to take off.”
Product manager Chris Tsanjoures adds that “It was very important that the look and feel of the interface not just bring you back to a simpler time in computing, but also remind you that simple and frustrating often went hand in hand.”
While measurement engines are running, CPU and GPU load are artificially increased via the inclusion of unrelated computing tasks running in the background. “We’re using those extra cycles for bitcoin mining,” explains Tsanjoures, who also noted that a new “eco-responsible” option allows users to instead dedicate those calculations to protein folding research.
Smaart Origin comes packaged in a limited-edition collectible box containing the installer on a set of eleven 1.44 MB floppy disks.
