Introducing Sparta VST

[Larry Shelby]

For those unfamiliar, SPARTA is a free and open-source suite of spatial audio VST plugins; including: 3-D panners, Ambisonic encoders and decoders for headphones/loudspeakers, sound-field visualisers.

(SPARTA stand for "Spacial Audio Real Time Applications)

Notable changes for this release include:

- added compass_tracker, a multi-target acoustic tracker based on Ambisonic input (up to 4th order). As far as we're aware, this is the only such tracker available as an audio plugin, which can track multiple sources at a time. The learning curve for this VST is pretty steep, but provided the direction estimates are relatively clean and the parameters are well dialled in, the plugin should be able to determine how many sound sources there are (which can change over time) and track their static/dynamic trajectories (even if they cross-over one-another). A beamformer (virtual-mic) can then be optionally steered in the direction(s) of each tracked target; thus decomposing the sound-field into it's individual stems.

- added plug-in description tooltips to all plug-ins (just hover the mouse over the plugin name to display them), and improved the parameter tooltips in general; especially useful for understanding the parameters offered by the new compass_tracker.

Wishing everyone the best over the festive holidays!

http://research.spa.aalto.fi/projects/sparta_vsts/

Edited December 22, 2020 by cclarry

[nutradoc]

Thanks for this info.  I am new to CakeWalk and want to make some 8D music from the MP3 files that I have. I don't see any video's that say how to do this in the forum yet. But this plugin seems like a good start, I just need to figure out how to use it with the audio files that I have.

James