SPATIAL SOUND CARD DOCUMENTATION (April 2018) CONTENTS PAGE Description & Features 2 Operating System Initialization 3 Main Display 4 Display & Edit Options 5 Setup Parameters 8 Sampling Rate 11 Setup the Buffer Size 11 Tutorials 11 Known Issues 12 Manufacturer Contact 13
DESCRIPTION The Spatial Sound Card software is the first VR application by New Audio Technology. It is highly recommended not only for gamers but movie enthusiasts and music lovers. It comes straight from the professional production domain and is a software based, virtual sound card. It provides virtual speakers for stereo and surround monitoring (5.1 and 7.1) on any computer with regular headphones. Professional monitoring of audio content usually requires complex, high quality loudspeaker installations, that needs both budget and space. The Spatial Sound Card - Pro uses the HEADPHONE SURROUND 3D TM technology to enable the perception of listening to real loudspeakers in various environments like a professional sound studio, a film mixing stage or a planetarium. As a virtual sound card, the Spatial Sound Card is inserted between playback application, operating system and audio hardware. The room virtualizations originate from high end music studios, film mix dub stages and industry environments like planetariums. The technology built-in the Spatial Sound Card was used on well-known major Hollywood blockbuster DVD and Blu-Ray releases since more than 18 years. To optimize the virtualization the Spatial Sound Card provides parameters to customize the frequency response curve of the used headphones. Presets for well-known headphone models are included. The Spatial Sound Card works with all applications that support stereo and surround audio output. These include Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), games, VR applications and media players like VLC, itunes and Netflix, Skype as well as the main output of your operating system. MAIN FEATURES Up to 8 channel PCM audio input in 44.1 48Khz and 16-32Bit Stereo and surround (5.1 7.1) format support Very low latency and CPU tax (adjustable) Various virtual loudspeaker systems, so-called Locations Discrete virtual loudspeaker / input monitoring and level adjustment Master level access of audio output device Free output routing to audio hardware Headphone sound compensation Works with any regular stereo headphone MAIN APPLICATIONS The user needs just regular headphones to: VR application monitoring Play games with impressive spatial localization of all audio events in the game and a richer natural sound experience. Watching DVD movies and VOD content in stereo and surround sound as sitting in a high-quality home cinema system. User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 2
Experience music without any unnatural ping-pong and in-head localization effects as sitting in the recording studio. Monitor digital audio and video workstation outputs. KEEP IN MINDE The SSC is re-initialized by the operating system as new sound card device any time you install and open it or switch the channel format. This is mandatory for proper function with the operating system and media players! Before starting audio playbacks take care of SSC hast to be opened before the media source player The SSC is set to the right playback format (stereo, 5.1, etc.) Issues if The SSC is opened after the media player The SSC format was switched while a media player is running The wrong format regarding a media source player is set (e.g. YouTube Stereo => SSC 5.1) Solutions Ø Nothing to hear or corrupted signal because of incorrect driver initialization. Ø Level over loads when SSC is set to surround because of some stereo media players send a full scale signal to all channels of a recognized surround device. A restart of the computer may helps. Restart SSC After restart SSC restart the media playback application. Select the right format regarding the playback format. Mac OS installation problem will occur when in Security & Privacy 'Allow application download from:' the first option 'App Store' is selected. That doesn t work please select one of the both options below: Sometimes during Windows 7/8/10 installation the system may ask if the installation was done properly. This can be confirmed. User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 3
MAIN DI SP LA Y Klick on the SSC headline and logo to get version and manufacturer info. User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 4
VISIBILITY OF THE GRAPHIC USER INTERFACE (GUI) MAC Klick on the red button to hide the GUI. Klick on the yellow button to move the SSC in the dock. Klick on the green button to toggle between standard and small GUI display. (Small GUI Display) (Standard GUI Display) WINDOWS Klick on Cross to hide the GUI Klick on the underline to move the SSC in the Taskbar. Klick on the square button to toggle between standard and small GUI display. (Small GUI Display) (Standard GUI Display) User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 5
LATENCY AND RESOLUTION INFO You can find a real time monitoring of current processing latency of the whole signal flow and the audio resolution in the headline of the application. VIRTUAL LOUDSPEAKER AND CHANNEL MONITORING White color indicates that the loudspeaker / channel works in standard mode. Click M for MUTE mode (Red). This function disables the audio playback of this loudspeaker / channel. Click S or simply on the loudspeaker icon for SOLO mode (Yellow). This function disables the audio playback of all other loudspeaker / channel. HEADPHONE SURROUND TOGGLE The HEADPHONE SUROUND 3D selector toggles between virtualization on or off. If it is disabled, stereo sources are just pass-through and surround sources are simply down mixed to stereo (left channel = L + Ls + C -3db + LFE and right channel = R + Rs + C -3db + LFE. SETUP MENU SELECTOR The edit menu selector opens the settings menu and displays always selected Location, format and output device. User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 6
Volume (Channel and Master) Volume is a level adjustment for each channel as well as the master separately from no signal (- ) to -142 db up to +12 db (default setting: 0). To set a value do a left click on the knob, hold mouse button and drag up and down or left and right to increase or decrease the value. Double-click on a knob resets its value to default. To see values simply hit and hold the Shift key. The MASTER volume parameter is NOT the SSC master volume but controls the master of the connected hardware driver. Some drivers (devices) do not have an overall master. In this case the MASTER knob has no function! Edit Volume Parameters When you perform a mouse over, this will automatically show the current values of various parameters. Click on a value to edit it more precisely via your computer keyboard. User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 7
SET U P PA R AME T ER S SETUP MENU FORMAT The FORMAT selector switches the format of the operating system. A warning screen will appear and reminds you that it could be necessary to restart current audio applications. OUTPUT, LATENCY AND DRIVER SETTINGS User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 8
The OUTPUT selector enables to rout the SSC output to available audio devices on as well as connected to the computer. External audio devices are supported on Windows if they provide a standard WASAPI driver. Mac needs only standard Core Audio. The LATENCY TARGET allows to change the buffer size of the SSC processing what can help to save CPU power as well as running with drivers of external third-party audio devices. The DRIVER SETTINGS allow the SSC to become to be the standard audio device of the computer when it launch. LOCATION The SSC use real measured studio loudspeaker systems for the virtualization. The LOCATION selector offers five different loudspeaker virtualizations. The different is in the place where they were measured and the kind of speakers. Commonly audio tools use for such applications names like Music, Film, Pop, Rock, Classic etc. But listening is a highly emotional and personal issue. So different listener definitely prefers to us different Locations for different audio sources what makes such classification useless. So, we decide to give the locations names and pictures of well-known locations who are not confirm to audio classifications what let the listener decide if he wants to play his 5.1 game in New York, enjoy stereo music in Paris, and watch 7.1 movies in Shanghai. ROOM PARAMETERS User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 9
The ROOM PARAMETERS belongs to the selected Location and can set differently for each Location. It edits the room reflections of the measured environments. Sometimes e.g. a music source sounds much more precise if the ROOM PARAMETERS is short. A movie soundtrack might sound better in a bit larger location with longer reflections. So, the user has a lot of opportunities to find his favorites. The reflections of the SSC measurements are not reverb but the sound of the room. The professional studio rooms who are included in the measurement are of course treated well. Hence the reflections, also from the SHORT presets, let the SSC virtualizations sounding well controlled and alive. HEADPHONE EQ The HEADPHONE EQ has two applications. The first is to compensate the sound of the used headphones. Some presets for well-known models are available and more will follow. Like that, the sound of the virtual loudspeaker system gets more value. The second application is simply to modify the sound for personal taste e.g. by boosting the bass. THE MENU BAR MAC WINDOWS Known features like visibility and virtualization toggle are available here again. Furthermore, the new function Keep always on top is available. This option might help for editing the SSC if a movie or game is running but should not cover the SSC GUI. Finally, this is the place to exit the application. User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 10
ADDITIONAL SAMPLING RATE Prinzipally the SSC is able to go up to 192KHz. But proper funktion over 48Khz depends very much to the playback application driver. Higher sampling rates are always a tricky issue for any operation system as well. SET UP THE BUFFER SIZE A higher buffer size e.g. up from 256 samples for the audio hardware driver (or ASIO for Windows) guaranteed a proper prozessing performance. UNINSTALL To uninstall the SSC just execute go to the Steam Library, make a right mouse klick on the application to open its context menue and select Deinstal. TUTORIALS Further application tips, setup info, demo productions and news are available on https://www.youtube.com/user/newaudiotech/playlists User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 11
KNOWN ISSUES Currently (4/18) the SSC doesn t work on MacOS 10.13+ Audio driver communication, especially on windows is a challenge. Also dealing with different formats like stereo, 5.1 and 7.1. Thus, sometimes it happens that no sound is present, or the sound is corrupted or the SSC will not run correctly or the installation fails. This is mostly caused by setting-related issues. The following list aims to help with fixing these issues. The following is not a step by step instruction but a collection of instructions. Please use the internal Realtec sound card on windows systems for now. It s because of external devices e.g. connected via USB can cause driver miscommunication. If so, this can be fixed later by trimming of SSC and external device drivers when the SSC runs correctly in general with the internal Realtec sound card. Please check if you have the newest Realtec sound card drivers installed. If not, please update them. Check if you chose the analogue output of your computer for your headphones in the Output parameter of the SSC setting menu. Reinstall: o Reinstall the SSC by using the Deinstall function from the context menu of the app in the Steam Library list to delete first o and install the SSC again from the Steam Library. o Restart your computer to delete the Driver in the RAM too and install the SSC again. If the system language is not Latin letters like Chinese or Russian, please rename the SSC in the Windows Sound settings Playback devices tab as shown here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aklxxy_xr-sr4ceg5kou1vfbhkea-rzn Check to see if another audio device is set to exclusive. You can change that too in the Properties of the context menu in Windows Sound settings Playback tab. It shouldn't look like this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=10ookka0ov0r8snklantxgwnxd-ktkwo3 If the SSC starts but does not run properly, it can be useful to o close the SSC. o On Windows: Go to C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Spatial Sound Card or %APPDATA%\Spatial Sound Card and delete the file Spatial Sound Card.settings o On Mac use Go to ~/Library/Preferences and delete the file Spatial Sound Card.settings o And start the SSC again. If you have any further issues not listed here please contact our support team by email: support@newaudiotechnology.com User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 12
New Audio Technology GmbH Planckstrasse 7 22765 Hamburg Germany Phone: +49 (0) 40 386 101 67 support@newaudiotechnology.com www.newaudiotechnology.com www.facebook.com/newaudiotechnology twitter.com/newaudiotech General Manager: Tom Ammermann User Manual - Spatial Sound Card Steam Version 13