Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin Features: Routing and Monitoring Eclipsa Audio

Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin Guide

The Eclipsa Audio Element plugin enabled you to monitor spatialized audio as well as routes audio element audio to the Eclipsa Audio Renderer plugin. This plugin allows for assignment of audio elements to audio in your mix.

Note: In order to successfully spatialize audio, all audio must pass through an Eclipsa Audio Element plugin in order to be rendered by the Eclipsa Audio Renderer plugin. This typically means that each track in a mix must have an Eclipsa Audio Element plugin on it before iits audio is sent to the mix bus.

Setting Up the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin

First, add the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin to an audio track:

Avid ProTools

REAPER

Adobe Premiere Pro

Choose a track and under "Inserts" select "plug-in" --> "Sound Field" --> "Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin"

Choose a track and select "FX", then under "VST3" select the "VST3: Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin"

Open the "Audio Track Mixer" window and select the track to add the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin to.

In the fx list for the track select "AU" --> "Eclipsa Project" --> "Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin".

1. Set the name of the audio track in the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin if desired

2. Select the Audio Element you wish to use with your track in the Audio Element dropdown

Finally, ensure the tracks audio is sent to the audio bus containing the Eclipsa Audio Renderer Plugin.

Avid ProTools

REAPER

Adobe Premiere Pro

Configure a send from the track the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin is on to the track the Eclipsa Audio Renderer Plugin is on.

One way to do this is by selecting "Sends" --> "track" and then selecting the track hosting the Eclipsa Audio Renderer Plugin, typically the "Mix Bus" track.

By default, REAPER configures plugin output to stereo, so we need to increase the number of channels available to the plugin for audio output. This can be done one of two ways:

• Simplified: Increase channels to a value greater than 28, which is the maximum number of channels IAMF uses.

• Advanced: Increase channels only to the number required by the plug-ins audio element. The number of channels and there indexes can be found in the Eclipsa Audio Renderer Plugin on the "Reroute" page. For example, if you have an audio element which requires channels 3-8, the Eclipsa Audio Element plugin will require access to those channels, which means the channels must be increased to 8.

To increase the channels:

• In the top right corner, select the REAPER pin connector routing button

• Change the "Track channels" and "VST3 bus size" to 32 as 32 is the smallest available bus size for the required 28 channels.

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Note: The Eclipsa Audio Element plugin in REAPER supports a maximum of 16 channels in, as the largest possible audio element is 16 channels.

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By default, in Adobe Premiere Pro, audio channels are automatically forwarded from individual tracks to the Mix track.

Ensure audio is forwarded correctly by verifying that the bus target for tracks with the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin is "Mix"

Monitoring Audio Playback In the Room View

The room view in the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin provides a real-time visualization of the audio playback of audio on a specific track, and how it will be renderer to the selected audio element.

• View the loudness in 3D space by observing what speakers in the room have audio

• Monitor individual channel loudnesses and mute or solo these individual channels

• Observe the binaural loudness of the track

• Track the ITU loudness of the track

For Ambisonic audio elements, ambisonics energy spheres are used to display the loudness instead of channels. Note that for ambisonic audio elements it is not possible to mute individual channels.

Panning and Passthrough Output Modes

The Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin features 2 Output Modes:

• Passthrough Mode is the default mode and is used when the Simple 3D Audio Panning is disabled

  • In passthrough mode, audio is directly mapped from the incoming channels to the outgoing channels using a 1-1 mapping

  • If the incoming audio and audio element type match, the incoming channels will be mapped on to the matching audio element channels.

    • Eg: If the incoming audio is 5.1 and a 5.1 speaker audio element is used, the 5.1 incoming audio will be mapped to the 5.1 channels of the audio element

  • If the incoming audio and audio element type do not match, the incoming channels will simply be mapped directly across to the audio element channels. Extra incoming channels will be discarded.

    • Eg: If the incoming audio is stereo and a 5.1 speaker audio element is used, the stereo audio will be mapped to the first two channels of the 5.1 speaker audio element.

• Panning Mode is used when the Simple 3D Audio Panning is enabled

  • In panning mode, audio is panned to all channels of the selected audio element.

  • The audio on the first channel, typically the Left speaker channel, is panned to the selected audio elements channels.

  • Use panning mode when you want to mix a track to a specific audio element layout.

  • Enable panning mode by enabling the "Panning Controls" in the top right corner.

Handling Multiple Tracks With One Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin

While most projects will want an Eclipsa Audio Element plugin on all tracks, there are some cases where the number of Eclipsa Audio Element plugins needed can be reduced.

Using A Single Audio Element and Single Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin

• If only 1 Audio Element is required, the Eclipsa Audio Element Plugin can be placed on the mix bus directly before the Eclipsa Audio Renderer Plugin.

• In this case, all audio on the mix is assigned to a single audio element

Combining Tracks With Sub-Busses

• If there are many tracks assigned to the same audio element, you may consider creating a separate bus for these tracks

• The Eclipsa Audio Element plugin can then be placed on this separate bus

• Audio for these tracks can be sent to this separate bus and audio from this separate bus can then be sent to the main mix bus

• Sub-Busses is an advanced feature and may not be available in all DAW's. Configuring sub-busses is beyond the scope of this document.

Note: An Audio Element Plugin is required on each track or at some point along the track’s signal path to ensure proper spatial rendering of the audio.