We're continuing in our process here to build
our own cheap or free DIY two channel audio analyzer so we can run Smaart
SATlive or Systune or whatever and we already talked about shopping for a
microphone so if you don't know which microphone to get go back and watch
those videos we already talked about shopping for and audio interface so if
you don't know which audio interface to use go back and watch those videos now
we're gonna talk about which software should I get and this is a big question
for people and sometimes kind of a roadblock kind of a stumbling block
because this is where you might start to consider investing in some money there
anybody who invest their money at Bitcoin is stupid you might not have
this piece of software just lying around your house but I'm going to show you
that you can get started with even a free option and that's not gonna slow
you down at all does it matter which piece of software we get again just like
the other pieces in the end it doesn't really matter it's just a tool that
helps us get to our end goal which is making better sound it's just a tool
that delivers data they all kind of do the same thing the only requirement is
that whatever software you choose needs to be able to take a to channel
measurement and create a transfer function and again a transfer function
is just the process of comparing an input to an output so that we can see
that if we send a bicycle out that we get a bicycle back or how is it
different and therefore if it's different what sort of changes do we
need to make are we gonna make changes what choices will we make depending on
that okay or maybe it doesn't come back as a bicycle comes back as a rocket ship
and then there might be a problem and we need to look into that can you use the
RTA app on your phone no that is a single channel measurement it doesn't
tell time compute polarity it's not very helpful for the kind of work that we
need to do what we've got are some platform
considerations if you're on a Mac probably the way to go is smart okay
it's one of the most common pieces of software it has a big community
worldwide there are education opportunities if you get stuck on
something you can probably find someone who can help you out pretty quickly now
if you're on a PC you can also choose Sat live and this is the piece of
software that I used exclusively for the first 10 years of my career doing
measurements and I initially chose it just because of the price tag I didn't
even have a PC I had to install bootcamp on my Mac and then you know jump through
some other hoops but it is a little bit cheaper than the cheapest version of
smart only runs on PC ok so keep that in mind you'll need a Windows machine there
is a free alternative though now I used to recommend room EQ wizard and I know a
lot of people use that with success in fact I have a student right now who's
been using it for six years and he's great at it my only problem with Ruby Q
wizard is that it doesn't quite look the same as these others Smart's at live and
and rita the interface all look pretty much the same and what that means for
you is that you can get started using this free option rita from education and
then when you're ready to upgrade you can get sat live and basically train
yourself to use the slightly different interface in an evening you know and
then if you want to upgrade to smart same thing you can basically train
yourself just how the controls work a little bit differently but again it's
the same data it looks the same I just tested it and it now runs on this Mac
code I'm using right now which has the latest operating system so that's great
news it doesn't limit you it also runs on PC ok so I don't have a lot of
experience with room EQ wizard but I heard recently that the team who was out
on tour with this band that you may remember from the 90s placebo does use
it and the entire team uses it so if a free piece of software is good enough
for international touring with this kind of rockstars
then it's probably good enough for us right okay one more platform
consideration is the iPad option the only app that I know of currently is
called transfer function from Studio six digital you can get that over at Studio
six digital comm again I don't have much experience with it but I have had some
students who have used it and say that it works great okay so we've got our
four options here for audio analyzer setups we've got Mac PC free and iPad so
we're almost done building our anja audio analyzer in the shopping portion
here but I have one more thing to show you so right after this I'm gonna do
another short video I have built a little chat bot that is going to just
walk you through a checklist and help you pick the software if you're still
having a little bit of trouble picking software because I know you have several
options here so I think I can make it even more clear with that so I'll see
you in the next video sound design