Anyone using Ircam Spat?

[Jesse Peterson]

IMO all flux's stuff is really geared towards music mixing. I own a couple and have demo'd a couple. Not automation friendly and therefore not practical for post. They also eat up a lot of CPU. however, the reverbs are some of the nicest digital verbs I've ever heard.

[bee]

I'd love to hear from more users, I watched a super lo-fi video of it and it looks awesome $$$$.

[JSt0rm]

I own it. Great effect but it kills my quad 1,1 macpro. I have it inactive all the time until needed. I haven't found any problems automating it but I'm not blending between presets. I am waiting to lean on it more until I get a better computer. I bought it for 1 scene in 1 film cuz I'm crazy and it worked really well.

[pethenis]

Hah! Do tell

Originally Posted by JSt0rm

I own it. Great effect but it kills my quad 1,1 macpro. I have it inactive all the time until needed. I haven't found any problems automating it but I'm not blending between presets. I am waiting to lean on it more until I get a better computer. I bought it for 1 scene in 1 film cuz I'm crazy and it worked really well.

[JSt0rm]

Originally Posted by pethenis

Hah! Do tell

I worked on a film that centered around a 69' Lincoln with a ford racing engine. It had great sound and I went and recorded a lot of it. There is one scene in the film where the lead is telling his girlfriend that he must basically drive fast to get away from the bad guys but it's ok because he used to race professionally (lots of back story here but you get the jist) so they are sitting in the car and it goes into slow motion and into a big music only montage so to get out of the vehicle sound I used flux splat and had the idle engine kind of "wash away".

The film is a comedy but the story point was she became relaxed in his ability to drive this vehicle and ircam splat helped me tell that part of the story with the sound of this glugglug engine slowly washing away.

The only real issues with the plug in is you are handing the mixers a 5.1 track and they mostly don't like that because their hands are tied as to what they can do with it. I reserve doing this for special moments.


I also just used trax on a voice treatment for a super sexy girl who is infact a robot! I haven't done more then a test on that project as the film is still in editorial but there is a lot you can do sound design wise with these plug ins. They will kill your system though. Beware.

Oh you can also extract exact freq information from samples using the trax plug in. This was useful as on another project I needed to supply the director with many bell samples all in a certain pitch. FYI most bells are in A

[Brent_in_Sydney]

Bought IRCAM SPAT recently (3 weeks ago?) for an upmix from 5.1 to 7.1
The description on the site says that's a supported format but I couldn't test it with the demo, as its crippled to stereo only (weird seeing as its mainly a surround plugin??)
Needless to say it didn't work in PT.
Firstly there's no 5.1 to 7.1 version of the plugin available, you need to split your paths keep your LFE seperate and use the 5.0 to 7.0 plugin format, and hey presto, SWOD, crash to desktop on insertion.
Logged it with their support system (a trial in itself, after emailing them and getting no response) have had one response saying they'd fix it ASAP, then asked for an update a few weeks later, no response, once more, no response.
In my last email, I asked for a refund since the plugin which I bought for a specific function didn't work as advertised.
No response from Flux support.
STAY AWAY would be my advice - I heard this from others pre-purchase but was lured in by the appearance of a perfect fit for my needs. Should have listened to the many others who swear to stay away from them as shocking for service.
If they turn over a new leaf and start to listen to clients and response in a timely fashion I'd love to use their products (assuming they get them stable) but right now I'm rather peeved at them.

[JSt0rm]

Sorry man :( The support is slow but hopefully they get back to you and make it right.

Ive never used spat for upmixing reasons but for moving sounds around the listener in a set environment it does what nothing else really does.

[nkf]

I don't know what Flux is thinking ... the support is really unresponsive. Their products are in many ways great but a bit on the buggy side. I have Elixir, which still doesn't work here in PT 9HD on OSX and the Analyzer package which has a surround monitoring problem here on the Win7 machine I run it on. I filled out their special bug report form a week ago and there is no reaction whatsoever. I emailed them in the past and sometimes they responded after many weeks. I will now try to involve french friend as I argue they may have an aversion against other languages ... I cannot understand this sloppy support when for example small iPad app programmers react within a few hours and even detailed.

[apple-q]

Originally Posted by Brent_in_Sydney

Bought IRCAM SPAT recently (3 weeks ago?) for an upmix from 5.1 to 7.1
The description on the site says that's a supported format but I couldn't test it with the demo, as its crippled to stereo only (weird seeing as its mainly a surround plugin??)
Needless to say it didn't work in PT.
Firstly there's no 5.1 to 7.1 version of the plugin available, you need to split your paths keep your LFE seperate and use the 5.0 to 7.0 plugin format, and hey presto, SWOD, crash to desktop on insertion.
Logged it with their support system (a trial in itself, after emailing them and getting no response) have had one response saying they'd fix it ASAP, then asked for an update a few weeks later, no response, once more, no response.
In my last email, I asked for a refund since the plugin which I bought for a specific function didn't work as advertised.
No response from Flux support.
STAY AWAY would be my advice - I heard this from others pre-purchase but was lured in by the appearance of a perfect fit for my needs. Should have listened to the many others who swear to stay away from them as shocking for service.
If they turn over a new leaf and start to listen to clients and response in a timely fashion I'd love to use their products (assuming they get them stable) but right now I'm rather peeved at them.

+1

[mizzle]

Originally Posted by JSt0rm

Sorry man :( The support is slow but hopefully they get back to you and make it right.

Ive never used spat for upmixing reasons but for moving sounds around the listener in a set environment it does what nothing else really does.

How well does it automate real-time movement? I really need something that can do this with multiple channels. I was looking into Vienna MIR pro but I have learned that it does not automate movements in space.

[Reptil]

I'm using it and on systems it does work, it's really, really great software.
(Mac OS 10.6.8 Logic 9.1.5)

IMO they should post a compatibillity list; software/hardware that IS tested and compatible.

Chasing the "update dragon" everyone? I gave up.

[JSt0rm]

Originally Posted by mizzle

How well does it automate real-time movement? I really need something that can do this with multiple channels. I was looking into Vienna MIR pro but I have learned that it does not automate movements in space.

Yeah it does this fine. You need to set up the automation and its a bit odd to work with 1 autolane at a time while manipulating something in a 3d space but it does work.

[mizzle]

Originally Posted by JSt0rm

Yeah it does this fine. You need to set up the automation and its a bit odd to work with 1 autolane at a time while manipulating something in a 3d space but it does work.

Have you tried using any MIDI controllers on it? I would like to try to "play" the sounds as much as possible.

I really wish their customer support was up and up, as I would have bought some of their plugs by now.

[JSt0rm]

I don't think it's midi capable but you should ask them. You can drag the input around on the screen as well. Maybe use a iPad to grab it?

[JSt0rm]

There are like 6 automation lanes just for its movement. Then it also can rotate the sound away from the listener and also narrow the projection of the sound or widen it to 360 degrees. You would need a ton of midi mappings and it wouldn't be intuitive. As I said you can grab the input on the screen.

[Blitenz]

Flux reverbs are one of the finest Ive came across.

[nkf]

With the help of a french friend I wrote Flux in French. The result is the same - no reaction at all. I think now they're either completely ignorant, sloppy or don't have not enough employees - or a mix between all this. Unbelievable - how can they think to stay in business with a behaviour like that?

[mizzle]

Originally Posted by nkf

With the help of a french friend I wrote Flux in French. The result is the same - no reaction at all. I think now they're either completely ignorant, sloppy or don't have not enough employees - or a mix between all this. Unbelievable - how can they think to stay in business with a behaviour like that?

I've been interested in buying SPAT for 2 years now, but hearing these stories has kept my wallet at bay. I hoped that in that time they would wake up and start communicating with customers.

[JSt0rm]

Honestly I went through the process. They should respond in like 2 weeks. I knows thats not acceptable really but that seems to be how long it takes.

[nkf]

In my cases it takes much longer than two weeks if any response. I would buy more products from them as I like the audio quality, the GUIs etc. but I don't buy any more products from a company that doesn't communicate with me as a customer. I'm not asking for their daughter to date me - I have technical problems with their products on otherwise smooth and clean sytems - therefore I think I deserve answers.

[HighGain]

Originally Posted by Brent_in_Sydney

Bought IRCAM SPAT recently (3 weeks ago?) for an upmix from 5.1 to 7.1
The description on the site says that's a supported format but I couldn't test it with the demo, as its crippled to stereo only (weird seeing as its mainly a surround plugin??)
Needless to say it didn't work in PT.
Firstly there's no 5.1 to 7.1 version of the plugin available, you need to split your paths keep your LFE seperate and use the 5.0 to 7.0 plugin format, and hey presto, SWOD, crash to desktop on insertion.
Logged it with their support system (a trial in itself, after emailing them and getting no response) have had one response saying they'd fix it ASAP, then asked for an update a few weeks later, no response, once more, no response.
In my last email, I asked for a refund since the plugin which I bought for a specific function didn't work as advertised.
No response from Flux support.
STAY AWAY would be my advice - I heard this from others pre-purchase but was lured in by the appearance of a perfect fit for my needs. Should have listened to the many others who swear to stay away from them as shocking for service.
If they turn over a new leaf and start to listen to clients and response in a timely fashion I'd love to use their products (assuming they get them stable) but right now I'm rather peeved at them.

try anymix. they have a 30 day trial that is not crippled, and imho their upmix does a decent job in the same price range

[Jaypin]

I haven't used SPAT yet since I have yet to get into more 5.1 work, but no doubt, if I do go down that route, I will be getting it. I have Verb and Trax (Transformer/CS/SF), which are all rather profound plug-ins. My favorite reverb now for sure, and also comes with a simplified version (Verb Session) for tracking and whatnot.

Originally Posted by Jesse Peterson

IMO all flux's stuff is really geared towards music mixing. I own a couple and have demo'd a couple. Not automation friendly and therefore not practical for post. They also eat up a lot of CPU. however, the reverbs are some of the nicest digital verbs I've ever heard.

The Flux range that includes all their Dynamics processors is great for music production because their plug-ins can recognize change in dynamic complexity and adjust compression/expansion etc to those changes. E.g. Complex drums to simple drumming. (I'm just saying though, you're probably already aware of that.)

I will argue though that these tools are certainly useful for post-production as well, and you can use automation (I'm not sure what problems you had). In fact you can choose to automate all (99% of the) parameters between 2 maps in a Morphing fashion, or choose to automate parameters individually.

Originally Posted by Blitenz

Flux reverbs are one of the finest Ive came across.

+100

The quality is pristine. If you want to get real creative/experimental: You know you've got a serious reverb unit when you can set the Decay to Infinite, and then turn off Air Absorption. And still alter the timbre by changing the decay time. Mind bending tools here. Alter distribution/eq/shape of grouped reflections... Toggle between high and low density/resolution. It just does everything and so you can create sophisticated verbs that can have the character of great convolution verbs.

[JerryPalomar]

First post on GS so excuse any newbie fails when posting.

Seriously thinking about grabbing SPAT for use in Logic Pro but am having a terrible time finding info on routing and assigning sources. I found a lackluster soundless video for assignments in PT but nothing for Logic. Any Logic users using SPAT? Yes, I have reviewed the PDF manual but its super skimpy. Yes, I've tried emailing Flux but its been 2 weeks without response. My main use is in simulating acoustic volume for strings that have been overdubbed to create the density of a large ensemble and my ears got tired of hearing reverbs. The SPAT demo sounds better but I can't seem to get a single instance on a bus to work across more than one track.

Thanks a lot!!!!

JP