The sixth version of System Measurement Audio Analysis Real-Time (SMAART) is the charm for EAW, a division of Loud Technologies. Having enjoyed SMAART Live 5.0 for a while, bringing in version 6 begs the question, “Why upgrade?” Well the answer is that SMAART v.6 is a complete house cleaning of the SMAART software, with patches and expansions shaken out and put together correctly and efficiently. The kludging is gone — the new SMAART looks clean, familiar and professional looking, as it means business to those who use it.
The Gear
My first impression of the new SMAART software is that the new graphical user interface is now more intuitive. SMAART v.6 offers much less hacking around and gets right down to making and taking measurements. Gone are the colored memory save buttons; they are replaced by a small pop-up window to save or retrieve plot files from your memory. And once up and running, the amount of CPU resources seemed vastly diminished compared to SMAART Live 5.0. My poor Dell Inspiron used to pour out CPU heat from a busy fan, but now the fan is mostly off, and things process without noticeable delay.
Inside SMAART v.6 are the three great applications we have come to count on: Spectrum Analysis, Transfer Analysis and Impulse Response Analysis. Still present are the single- or split-pane plot areas, mic and line amplitude graphs, choices for averages and weighting and all the I/O buttons for delay time and generator amplitudes.
The SMAART v.6 window is done mostly in gray scale, with the plot traces and bar graphs showing the majority of color. I believe this works better in the real gigging conditions of dark indoor venues. While I cheat by using my SMAART I/O box, the software recognized the I/O hardware and nicely placed my phantom power and loopback buttons on the screen along with the gain-setting features for mic and line XLR inputs. No more hunting for the SMAART I/O window like in SMAART Live 5.0.
The Gig
In the shop testing, where I do the majority of my SMAART usage, I immediately loved the complete and concise manual that is offered with the software. Everything is downloadable once the license is purchased, but having a high-speed Internet connection is mandatory if you do not have hours of dial-up time to spare. Heading immediately to the spectrum analysis, I found all my usual friendly features like color spectrographs, RTA bar graphs and ways to smooth up the responses.
Going to the killer application of transfer analysis, I set up the RTA mic four meters in front of a stack of subs and tops, and wired in a send “y” of what is going to my amplifier rack to drive the speakers. By setting the delay time cor-rectly, I got useful amplitude, phase and coherence plots to confirm the effectiveness of the speaker processor settings. As expected, coherence suffers at the crossover points and wavelengths of concrete floor bounce. But I loved the more meaningful coherence indications as feedback for correct delays and acoustic anomalies.
In summary, if you have not invested in SMAART software, now is the time to get a clean, finely tuned copy you can call your own. If upgrading, it is still worthwhile, with a few added automatic routines and easier to use interfaces.
