Several of the new features recently added to FIR Designer & FIR Designer M have just been rolled into FIR Creator EX 1.7.0. Here’s a summary:

More brands supported for IIR emulation. New ‘Biamp Tesira‘ & ‘Marani‘ IIR filter modes have been added to the list of emulated brands, joining Lake, Linea Research, Powersoft, QSC Q-SYS, Symetrix, & BSS). The Lake mode has also been revised to include Lake-specific filters only. (The original and broader ‘General (Lake)’ mode remains available as ‘Legacy’). (BTW, in FIR Creator EX, IIRs for a brand can be emulated but it’s only possible to convert an IIR from one brand to another in FIR Designer & FIR Designer M).

New ‘Generic’ IIR mode. This new default mode increases speed & accuracy when working with processors that don’t have their own branded IIR filter mode.  It includes bandpass filters, low and high shelf, low-pass and high-pass Bessel, Butterworth, Chebyshev I & II, Elliptic, Linkwitz/Riley & Neville Thiele notched crossovers. It also uses Robert Bristow-Johnson Q & BW definitions for many filters. Learn more.

New import & export file formats. ‘SMAART Control‘ in FIR Creator EX now works with SMAART® version 9. Also CLIO MLS impulse response TXT files can now be loaded. FIR filter export for Xilica TXT files REW magnitude/phase text file import are both now supported. See all supported import file formats.

Enhanced plot display customization. The IIR Filters tab now has a BW/Q selector with each filter table list, enabling rapid switching between the BW & Q without having to change the setting in Preferences.

Inverted FIR filters view. A ‘FIR polarity’ checkbox now replaces the ‘Invert FIR at save’ checkbox on the channel Export tab. View the FIR filter in alternate polarities before choosing which to use and save.

Sample rate warnings. These now appear when using a branded IIR mode with hardware that doesn’t support the current FIR Creator EX sample rate.

Speed improvements. Theres an approximate 7% speedup to the FFT that underlies most calculations.

Various user-interface updates and fixes.

In this step-by-step case study, see how FIR Designer (using averaged measurements captured in Rational Acoustics’ Smaart®) was recently used to tune a system using only IIR filters – no FIRs at all – at a newly-renovated church in Australia.

Smaart V9 compatibility has been added to FIR Designer (v3.5) & FIR Designer M (v2.6) and works with SMAART Suite, Real-Time and Light Editions.

Load previously saved SMAART measurements & use them as the starting point for FIR filter & preset design, or use SMAART® Control from within FIR Designer to capture measurements in real-time directly from SMAART running locally or on the local network. Measurements capture in SMAART Control can then be sent via a single click to either the ‘Import’, ‘Target’ or ‘Averaging’ tabs.

In addition, the latest updates add automatic saving of all SMAART measurements sent to the ‘Averaging’ tab, when saving an averaging session. The measurements are saved to a new *.FDM file format & will be loaded when the averaging session file is loaded in the future.

Check out this video to see how SMAART Control works (using Smaart V8; same functionality for v9), or download a free demo of our software to experiment.

FIR Designer M Release Notes | FIR Designer Release Notes

SMAART is a registered trademark of Rational Acoustics LLC, Connecticut, USA.

In this step-by-step case study, see how FIR Designer (using averaged measurements captured in Rational Acoustics’ Smaart®) was recently used to tune a system using only IIR filters – no FIRs at all – at a newly-renovated church in Australia.

In this step-by-step case study, see how FIR Designer (using averaged measurements captured in Rational Acoustics’ Smaart®) was recently used to tune a system using only IIR filters – no FIRs at all – at a newly-renovated church in Australia.

FIR Designer & FIR Designer M have been newly updated to include a Biamp Tesira IIR filter mode that provides emulation of 48kHz IIR filter behaviour in the Tesira range of Biamp products and aids mixed IIR+FIR Tesira preset creation. IIR responses in the new Biamp Tesira IIR mode can be converted to/from Lake, Linea Research, Powersoft, Q-SYS, Symetrix, BSS & Marani IIR modes using the IIR Reference Editor.

The IIR Reference Editor (in FIR Designer 3.4 & FIR Designer M 2.5) enables the automated conversion of IIR filters between brands in a single click. This ensures IIR response matching when working with different amplifiers & processors, and solves the problem of standard filter settings producing different results on various amplifier/processor brands (learn more). Check out this video tutorial of the IIR Reference Editor to see how it works. (Note, the video demonstrates the original non-automated conversion process which usually required manual parameter adjustments to complete the match; these manual adjustment have been replaced by one-click conversion in more recent versions of the FIR Designer software).

FIR Designer M Release Notes

FIR Designer Release Notes

*When using FIR Designer to convert IIR filters for brands not listed, we recommend trying all modes within the FIR Designer IIR tab, & comparing the plots displayed with the IIR plots generated by your own control software to determine which mode produces the closest match.

 

Here’s a few of the features added to FIR Designer in 2022 so far…

More brands & file formats supported. FIR filter export for Xilica TXT files & REW magnitude/phase text file import are both now supported. Lake XP modules can now have 96 kHz output channels (in addition to 12, 24 and 48 kHz). Marani Pro Audio specific IIR filters have been added to the list of brand specific IIR filter modes.

Automatic IIR Conversions. The IIR Reference Editor now automatically converts IIRs from one brand to another in a single click, eliminating the need for manual adjustments entirely. Supported brands include Lake, Marani, Linea Research, Powersoft, QSC Q-SYS, Symetrix & BSS. Learn more.

Independent FIR sample rate export. The exported FIR filter sample rate can now be set independently of the workflow’s Design Sample rate. This allows the FIR filter to have a different sample rate to the IIR filtering and delay; ideal for processors that use one sample rate for the bulk of core processing, such as 96 kHz, but only accept FIR filters at a different sample, such as 48 kHz. Learn more.

Workflow speed improvements. Both the Auto Mag and Auto Phase computation can now be optionally paused to reduce program update lag while working in the IIR, Mag Adjust and Phase Adjust tabs.

Copy & Paste between windows & programs. Easily transfer filter table data across windows in FIR Designer and FIR Designer M, and also between products. Copy and paste buttons are available on the Target Mag and Phase, IIR, Mag Adjust, Phase Adjust and Voicing tabs and work between matching tabs (eg. Mag Adjust -> Mag Adjust).

Enhanced plot display customization. Both the IIR Filters tab and the IIR Reference Editor now have a BW/Q selector with each filter table list, enabling rapid switching between the BW & Q without having to change the setting in Preferences. In addition, on the Import tab time delay adjustment can now be viewed in mm, feet and inches.

 

FIR Designer M release notes       FIR Designer release notes       Download FREE DEMO versions

 

Differences in IIR filter definitions continue to be a challenge when working with multiple brands of processors. The same Q or BW setting, for common IIR filter types, does not result in the same response across brands. Q or BW on one processor needs to be adjusted, often significantly, to match the response on another processor.

The IIR Reference Editor was added to FIR Designer & FIR Designer M in 2019, making it possible to convert & match IIR filter settings across brands with different Q or BW interpretations. The editor performed a quick and close conversion, with additional manual parameter adjustments usually required to complete the match. (This video demonstrates the original process.)

 

 

 

 

FIR Designer is ideal for creating complete single channel and multi-way loudspeaker presets (that include mixed IIR + FIR filtering). When creating a preset, both the workflow’s design sample rate and the export file format can be chosen to match those of the processor/amplifier being used.

Loudspeaker measurements of any sample rate can be imported into FIR Designer’s workflow, which supports design sample rates of 12, 24, 44.1, 48 88.2, 96, 176.4 & 192 kHz for all preset processing.

Previously, the chosen workflow design sample rate was used for all preset elements including delay, IIR and FIR filters. This created a challenge when designing filtering for processors that use one sample rate for the bulk of core processing, such as 96 kHz, but only accept FIR filters at a different sample, such as 48 kHz.

Recent FIR Designer and FIR Designer M updates offer enhanced flexibility & customization by enabling the export of the FIR filter at a different sample rate than the other preset components, such as IIR filters. On the FIR Designer ‘Export’ tab, at the end of the preset-creation process, use the new drop-down menu to choose the output sample rate for the FIR filter, before choosing the desired file format for export.

With a separate FIR filter output sample rate selected, FIR filter truncation and windowing are applied at the selected output sample rate. The FIR filter is then resampled back to the workflow sample rate for plots such as the Wavelet view.

 

 

Learn which loudspeaker measurement file formats can be imported into FIR designer for use in preset creation.

Download a free demo of any our software products or watch a video tutorial to learn how to use FIR Designer to design loudspeaker processing, including presets.