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[Michael Lawrence]

Leave it to the crew at Rational to actually have fun with their jobs.

When the technical writers get let off the leash once a year 
Here's this year's:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/37441592220/permalink/10158900572397221/

Rational Acoustics is proud to introduce a revolutionary leap forward in the field of sound system test and measurement. Smaart™VR brings the measurement platform you know and love into the future with full Virtual Reality support. Supporting the latest generation of VR headset systems including the Octopus Crest 2 and the NAI EVE, Smaart™VR brings you inside the measurement, creating total immersion in the data you’re generating.

According to Smaart™VR product manager Christ Sanjoures, “Our goal with Smaart™VR was to create a measurement platform that comes to you, and I have to say, I think we really pulled it off – once you experience your measurement in an immersive way – breeze blowing in your hair, soaring high above the phase trace, feet dangling into the Live IR – you’ll never go back. It’s like using an IMAX theater as your computer screen.”

Smaart™VR also speeds up measurement and tuning work in the field due to its “distraction free” workflow – the headset allows the user to focus solely on the measurement data itself, without getting distracted by looking around the venue at the actual system being worked on. Plus, the headset offers 20 dB of isolation in both ears, allowing the user to work in comfortable silence, without having to actually listen to the sound being produced by the system. In other words, Smaart™VR is perfect for users who just want to focus on the squiggly lines, devoid of any meaningful context.

Smaart™VR harnesses the full power of a modern desktop gaming PC to render the stunning graphical presentation of the measurement data. Laptop computers are not supported at this time, making Smaart™VR a perfect work-from-home solution to system alignment.

[Justice C. Bigler]

Justice - if you're running the v8.5 public beta, you will find an interesting new option in the Transfer Function "Import ASCII" dialogue 

What am I looking at here? 

[Russell Ault]

{...} just in the last few years, we've seen Apple cease support for 32-bit applications, shift to a new CPU architecture, and deprecate OpenGL, {...}

Of course, this sort of insanity starts to increase the reasons to make a stand-alone unitasking platform like SIM.

Dropping OpenGL in particular sounds like a real kick in the teeth to anyone trying to develop cross-platform desktop software. At that point, a Linux port might be easier than continuing development for MacOS.

-Russ

[Michael Lawrence]

What am I looking at here? 

Open the FFT Size droplist - at the bottom is a "SIM .bin" option that can import a SIM3 .bin file and break the three contained response measurements (Room, Processor, Result) into .trf format and add them to your data library. Now all you have to do is get a CD-R so you can get the data off the SIM machine 

From the readme:

The “Import ASCII” dialog now supports importing SIM® 3 .bin files. Simply choose “SIM .bin” in the FFT
droplist, then browse to the location of the .bin file and choose it. Note: SIM® .bin files pair with a
corresponding .xml file, which must be in the same directory as the .bin file for the import to succeed.

At this time, only Transfer Function data is extracted from the .bin file. Each measurement group within the
.bin is analyzed and the Room, Processor, and Result data is extracted to separate Smaart .trf trace files. For
consistency, the extracted Coherence data is square-rooted; if the desire is to emulate a SIM® machine’s
display, enable the “Squared Coherence” setting in Transfer Function Options to square all Coherence traces
prior to display.

[Michael Lawrence]

Of course, this sort of insanity starts to increase the reasons to make a stand-alone unitasking platform like SIM.

Dropping OpenGL in particular sounds like a real kick in the teeth to anyone trying to develop cross-platform desktop software. At that point, a Linux port might be easier than continuing development for MacOS.

-Russ

I don't mean to pick on Macs (too much)...although I lean towards Windows myself, the reality is that a lot of this work in the field happens on macs, so if you can't run on macs, you are limiting the usefulness of your tool, and Windows is certainly not without its snags - audio-related tasks, in general, are more finnicky on Windows than macOS, so as Jamie would say "we hate all operating systems equally."

Dedicated hardware is yet another can of worms, and the economies of scale are basically non existent for the size of the industry (RIP Smaart IO). Luckily the dev team is really on top of things, and these are the things we are attacking now with v9 on the horizon - a deep dive into how Smaart communicates with audio hardware, overhauling the entire renderer...  I can't say much more along those lines for the time being but the idea is to build a solid, flexible, capable code base, which creates a nice strong foundation to build the "fun" stuff on top of.

[Justice C. Bigler]

Open the FFT Size droplist - at the bottom is a "SIM .bin" option that can import a SIM3 .bin file and break the three contained response measurements (Room, Processor, Result) into .trf format and add them to your data library. Now all you have to do is get a CD-R so you can get the data off the SIM machine 

From the readme:

How every, very interesting. 

[Mark Wilkinson]

Very happy for the RA crew.
No clue if it matters business wise,
but having heard bits and pieces of history in various Smaart classes, it sounds like Meyer's dropping SIM and adopting  Smaart is something of a full circle journey.
Good stuff happens to good folks !

[Russell Ault]

{...} Dedicated hardware is yet another can of worms, and the economies of scale are basically non existent for the size of the industry (RIP Smaart IO). {...}

I suppose it depends on how dedicated "dedicated" is. In my mind I was picturing something along the lines of a SoundGrid server, rather than something like Smaart IO (or SIM, for that matter), i.e. something that is almost entirely off-the-shelf (both hardware and software) with only just enough customization to do the task (and, when it comes to packaging, keep the marketing department happy). I'm not sure if that actually solves any problems or not (it would certainly create some!), but it might at least reduce the number of entities that can screw you without warning or recourse. (My own personal opinion is that MacOS dropping OpenGL support is borderline anti-competitive, if not in the technical sense then in a practical one.)

-Russ

[fedele de marco]

money buys everything

[Guillermo Sanchez]

Smaart is typically on about a 6-year cycle between major releases. v8 was released in March of 2016, and the fifth major update (v8.5) is still in development, so there is still more to come for v8 users before development focus shifts fully to v9. As was pointed out above, updates (everything after the decimal point) are always free to license holders, and upgrading versions keeps your previous license intact (if you own a v7 license and decide to upgrade to v8, you will end up with both v7 and v8 licenses on your account - you never lose access to the previous versions).

That being said - six years is a pretty long time from a software development POV - especially for a program that interfaces so directly with audio hardware and GPU's - just in the last few years, we've seen Apple cease support for 32-bit applications, shift to a new CPU architecture, and deprecate OpenGL, for example, and Smaart doesn't exist in a vacuum,  the hardware manufacturers (both audio interface and GPU) have the ongoing task of product support and driver development to ensure that everything can continue to talk to each other. Plenty of folks out there still running v7, and yes, even v6. I've got a buddy who is still running v5 on an ancient tablet PC. Software is built on the shifting sands of the OS and supported hardware, and that's typically where you can expect the trouble when trying to get decade-old applications to interact with 2021 hardware. I still have a copy of the original Tomb Raider game from 1996, one of my favorites, still in the box on my shelf, but the days of being able to pop in the disk and just launch the .exe are probably long gone. 

Luke - if you have a v6 license that you are having trouble accessing, our support team would be happy to help you out - just send an email to [email protected] or click here to open a ticket. I will keep an eye out for your ticket but I know Liz and Casey will take good care of you.

I still have in my windows 10 computer Smaart 2, Smaart 5.4, Smaart 7 and of course Smaart 8 among several other Dual Ch FFT programs :-D

I don't have V6 installed because I never felt comfortable with that platform. It was developed while SIA software was still in the EAW umbrella but at the time they were having financial issues, so it was never fully developed.  I have it installed Smaart 2 for nostalgia sake.  I still use Smaart 5.4 when I find legacy processors that can be controlled by it. I use it solely as a control platform though, as I do my analysis with V8.

Write to RA people, they are always willing to help.

[ProSoundWeb Community]