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Difference of 4.7.7 and 4.9.1?

Spat
#1

Hello,

I had an interesting experience when performing a work for violin and electronics. I had written the patch in Max 6 and with Spat version 4.7.7. When upgrading to Spat version 4.9.1. the sound quality of the live electronics changed dramatically. The patch didn’t change in any way, but the output sound did change and after careful investigation the reason was the new version of Spat.

The dramatical change was:

  • everything sounded very much smoother. Attacks became softer, distance and reverberance of the sound seemed to be greater than before.

  • dynamics of the live effects decreased atleast by 6dB

  • there were no error messages in the Max window

  • I use panr as my panning algorithm. Is it maybe out dated?

I ended up performing the electronics part with the Spat 4.7.7 and Max 6.1.8 and everything worked as planned with sound quality I was looking for. With Spat 4.9.1 I think I’d need to build the patch again to suit the changed parameters of Spat 4.9.1.

My operating system is 10.10.5 and Max 6.1.8. I tried using Max 7.2.2 with both versions of Spat and experienced the same issues. In my patch there are so many other things not working in Max 7 in comparison to Max 6 that I can’t make very definite comparison, but the timbral+dynamical issues described above happened in Max 7 too.

Is this a common issue? Maybe I didn’t look carefully enough to the previous posts…

Best wishes,

Maija

#2

Hi Maija,

Sorry for the late reply.

Indeed, between 4.7.7 and 4.9.1, there has been a couple of critical bugs fixed in the diffuse panning module (i.e. the way the late reverb and cluster are dispatched to the loudspeakers). These changes may result in different levels of the reverb elements (and consequently the perceived reverberance and/or distance might be altered as you experienced, unfortunately) as well as difference in ‘spatial diffuseness’ (in the buggy versions, the reverb was not properly decorrelated among all loudspeakers).
I dont remember the exact details, but the bugs affected only some specific situations, and so far no dramatic issue was reported when upgrading a piece.
I’m really sorry about the inconvenience, and I should have announced more carefully these modifications.
As the bugs involved merely differences in levels, you should be able to tune Spat back to your original intention by tweaking the source and/or room presence settings. Yet, I acknowledge it’s a real bummer.

Again, so sorry for the bad experience.

Best,
T.

#3

Hi Thibault,

Thank you for the reply and explanation!

I think I’ve worked some time now with Spat 4.7.7 and gotten used to its qualities and bugs. It has a bit raw sound quality sometimes, which seemed to change to much more sophisticated in the 4.9.1. This is of course fantastic. Looking forward to upgrading to the new version. Thank you for creating it!

Best wishes,

Maija