Smaart® Control

Smaart Control enables loudspeaker measurements in Rational Acoustics’ Smaart software to be controlled by FIR Designer, captured in real-time & seamlessly integrated into the FIR Designer workflow for use in filter & DSP design. (Pre-existing Smaart files can still be manually imported into FIR Designer.)

Smaart Control is particularly helpful in time-limited live sound applications, enabling fast measurement capture and creation of custom DSP for system optimization.

Smaart Control includes support for the “moving mic measurement” method, which is often used as an efficient way to take a spatially averaged measurement with a single microphone, rather than averaging the response of multiple microphones at fixed positions.



Don’t use Smaart? No problem – FIR Designer can import data from other audio measurement tools

Using Smaart Control

Smaart control button in the FIR Designer Import tab

Open Smaart Control from the Import tab

With Smaart open locally or on any networked computer, FIR Designer’s Smaart Control dialog (accessed from the Import tab) can live-stream any available Smaart Spectrum or Transfer Function measurement. Smaart’s signal generator on/off and measurement magnitude & phase banding or smoothing can all be controlled remotely.

A snapshot of a measurement can be taken from Smaart’s live measurement stream and stored locally in a ‘grabbed’ measurement list. Any measurement in the list can be sent via a single click to one of three destinations: the ‘Import’, ‘Target’ or ‘Averaging’ tabs, for use in the DSP design workflow.

Smaart Control is available in FIR Designer, FIR Designer M and FIR Creator EX. (Note that in FIR Creator EX, data can be sent only to the Import & Target tabs, as FIR Creator doesn’t include built-in measurement averaging.)

Smaart Control uses the Smaart API developed by Rational Acoustics
FIR Designer M Smaart Control live transfer of measurements for DSP design

Smaart® Control in FIR Designer M

FIR Designer Smaart Control live transfer of measurements for DSP design

Smaart Control® in FIR Designer

The Moving Mic Measurement Method

A moving microphone measurement is a practical and efficient way to capture a spatially averaged response using a single microphone. Instead of taking multiple measurements at fixed positions and averaging them, the microphone is moved continuously through the listening area while the measurement is being averaged.
This approach can provide a representative result of the listening space with significantly less setup time.

Measurement Setup

To perform a moving microphone measurement using Smaart and FIR Designer:

  1. Configure averaging in Smaart
    Select either a Spectrum or Transfer Function measurement and set its Averaging to Infinite (Inf). This allows the measurement to continuously update as the microphone is moved.
  2. Enable streaming in FIR Designer
    Open the Smaart Control dialog in FIR Designer and enable live streaming to the Smaart Streaming plot.
  3. Set the Reset Delay
    Configure the Reset delay to match the time it takes to walk from the computer (running FIR Designer) to the measurement position.
  4. Configure Auto Grab
    Enable Auto grab, and set the Grab delay to the desired measurement averaging time. This determines how long Smaart will average the microphone signal before the measurement is captured.

Taking A Measurement

  1. Select Reset Average in FIR Designer.
  2. Walk to the measurement position.
  3. Slowly move or wave the microphone throughout the listening area.

After the Reset delay + Grab delay time has elapsed, the measurement is automatically captured and added to the Grabbed Measurements list.

moving mic measurement method using SMAART control in FIR Designer

Settings for Moving Mic Measurements in the Smaart Control dialog within FIR Designer

Using The Measurement

Any captured measurement can be selected from the Grabbed Measurements list, and transferred with a single click to the Import tab, Target tab or Averaging tab in FIR Designer. From there, it can be used directly within the FIR Designer workflow for filter & DSP design.

Further Reading

This technique is discussed in more detail in several published articles, including the Audio Engineering Society paper:
“Moving Microphone Measurements for Room Response in Cinema”
Authors:
– Paul Peace (Community Professional Loudspeakers)
– Shawn Nageli (Harman International)
– Charles Sprinkle (NXC Systems)
Note: Access to this paper requires an AES login.


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