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Why can't I use the Smaart Wizards on my StudioLive 16.0.2

16 Nov 2020

When you run the Room Analysis Wizard (on the Main Outs for example) using a 16.4.2 or 24.4.2, what it’s actually doing is sending pink noise through channel 1 which is assigned to and going out of the Main outs and thus through your speaker system. Your analysis mic, listening to the pink noise coming through your speaker system, is connected to the talkback input, and the talkback input is routed through the Smaart analysis tool (using an auxiliary firewire stream) giving you a frequency response curve. Through the Smaart Transfer Function, the frequency curve as measured by the analysis mic is displayed on the screen and overlayed by the controls for the Fat Channel parametric EQ of the Main bus. When you make an EQ adjustment in the wizard, this is what you’re adjusting, the Fat Channel EQ of the Main bus, NOT the GEQ. As you make EQ adjustments to what’s coming out of the Mains, you’ll see the measured curve change on the screen in real time. This way you can see the results of your adjustment and easily correct for any room or speaker anomalies. 

Because of the way Smaart is integrated into Universal Control/VSL and because the Room Analysis Wizard audio routing requires extra firewire streams that the 16.0.2 doesn’t have, the Smaart Room Analysis Wizard essentially can’t be implemented on the 16.0.2.  The 16.0.2 has only 16 firewire input streams and 16 output streams for the regular channels 1-16, unlike the 16.4.2 (32 in x 18 out) and the 24.4.2 (32 in x 26 out) which have extra auxiliary firewire streams in addition to the regular channel streams. The 16.0.2 also has only one Stereo GEQ on the Main Outs, unlike the 16.4.2/24.4.2 which have eight GEQs, one on each Aux (reassignable on the 24) and the Main L/R as well.

 

VSL Smaart features have to use a pair of firewire streams to route audio through the Smaart analysis tool, and since the 16.0.2 has no extra firewire streams to use, the Smaart tool is only available on the Main outs. This means the 16.0.2 is essentially hardware limited from being able to do the Room Analysis Wizard. For example, if you want to turn on Smaart RTA or Spectrograph for the GEQ you have to reassign channels 15/16 in the Flexible Inputs Router in VSL Setup to Main Mix L/R. For the same reason, the routing necessary for the Room Analysis Wizard isn’t possible with the 16.0.2

See section 3.7.2 Flexible Inputs Router (StudioLive 16.0.2 only), pg 38 in the latest StudioLive Software Library Manual (found on this link here)

 

On the 16.0.2 there are no extra firewire streams or GEQs to route the audio through, and the only Smaart analysis you have is on the Main out when reassinged to the 15/16 firewire streams. The problem with the Wizard becomes that the pink noise would be going to the Main outs, the analysis mic is picking this up, but the only Smaart component and firewire stream it can be fed to is the Main mix on ch 15/16’s firewire stream (which is being used to route to Smaart). This means the audio input of the analysis mic (measuring the main output from the speaker system) will be going back through the main output, and back into the analysis mic, and back through the main output, and back into the analysis mic, and... as you can see, you've created a nasty feedback loop.

Long story short, since the only place to do Smaart analysis on the 16.0.2 is on the Main Outs, there’s no way to compare the Main output of the system to the input measurement of the mic, because the input of the mic has to be routed through this same Main output in order to be analyzed.

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