Acoustica Premium 7.0.56 - Spectrum Analyzer / suggestions

[Paulo-Brazil]

Mr. Stian,

I refer to Acoustica Premium 7.0.56, running on Windows 10 Professional 64-bit.

About the Spectrum Analyzer on the main Acoustica workspace:

1. Would it be possible to add to it a background grid of vertical and horizontal lines, in the same way as we can find in the Analysis > Spectrum Analysis tool?

2. When an audio file is playing and we press the Pause button on the toolbar, the image of the spectrum on the Spectrum Analyzer window disappears (in fact, fades to the bottom of the window). I would like to suggest that, when pressing Pause, that image just "freezes", stay fixed showing the spectrum of the last sounds played. This way I think we could better see and analyze the spectrum at a specific point in the audio file. This "freezing" of the image is what happens with the Loudness Meter when we press the Pause button. In the Loudness Meter, after a Pause, when we resume the audio playing with the Play button, the moving image just goes on, as if no Pause had happened in the first place. I think this could be the behaviour of the Spectrum Analyzer.

OBS: I am referring specifically to the Pause/Play combination of buttons. When we pause an audio file with the spacebar on the computer's keyboard, things seem to happen differently in Acoustica, as the playing does not resume from the point where the audio was paused.

A question: what time window, what time period, would a "freezed" image on the Spectrum Analyzer refer to? I mean, the changing spectrum is (I suppose) like a motion picture, a series of fixed spectrum frames, each calculated for a specific time window. Each frame is a picture (a spectrum analysis) of which time window?

Regards,

Paulo

[stian]

Hi Paulo,

Thanks for your further suggestions! I apologize for my late reply.

Mr. Stian,
1. Would it be possible to add to it a background grid of vertical and horizontal lines, in the same way as we can find in the Analysis > Spectrum Analysis tool?

Yes, that would be useful and consistent.

2. When an audio file is playing and we press the Pause button on the toolbar, the image of the spectrum on the Spectrum Analyzer window disappears (in fact, fades to the bottom of the window). I would like to suggest that, when pressing Pause, that image just "freezes", stay fixed showing the spectrum of the last sounds played. This way I think we could better see and analyze the spectrum at a specific point in the audio file. This "freezing" of the image is what happens with the Loudness Meter when we press the Pause button. In the Loudness Meter, after a Pause, when we resume the audio playing with the Play button, the moving image just goes on, as if no Pause had happened in the first place. I think this could be the behaviour of the Spectrum Analyzer.

OBS: I am referring specifically to the Pause/Play combination of buttons. When we pause an audio file with the spacebar on the computer's keyboard, things seem to happen differently in Acoustica, as the playing does not resume from the point where the audio was paused.

I see your point, but I'm not sure we should change the current behaviour. The real-time meters are meant to analyze the audio output. In mulitrack sessions, you will hear effect tails like reverb and echo after you press stop or pause and these should be visualized in the meters in my opinion.

A question: what time window, what time period, would a "freezed" image on the Spectrum Analyzer refer to? I mean, the changing spectrum is (I suppose) like a motion picture, a series of fixed spectrum frames, each calculated for a specific time window. Each frame is a picture (a spectrum analysis) of which time window?

This depends on the sampling rate, but Acoustica uses a block size closest to 40 ms duration with a number of samples that is a power of 2 (e.g. 1024, 2048, 4096...). There's a 50% overlap so the updates are around 50 times per second.

Best,
Stian