Local Audio Path - Solve sync issues

Most of the time, sync issues encountered in SPAT Revolution connected to Local Audio Path sources, can be fixed by setting up the routing in the DAW as described in this article.

When experiencing sync issues in SPAT Revolution, which may result in clicks, noises, and/or loss of sound, the sync indicators in the bottom left corner turns to red and displays "sync error".

When everything is in Sync, the sync indicator is green and displays "all in sync".

To set up the sync to work properly all send plugin instances must be processed by the DAW before the return plugin instances are processed To force the DAW to this, each track with send plugins inserted must be routed, directly or indirectly, to the tracks with the return plugins, using the DAW's internal routing.

Here are 4 examples of how to do this:


1. Return on the master track
In simple projects, when having a single return plugin on the master track, you should not encounter any sync issue as long as each send track is routed to the master track.


2. Single return on an AUX track
Issues may be experienced when a return plugin is inserted on an AUX track. Make sure that each track with a send plugin is routed to the AUX track with the return plugin using AUX send (see the example below), alternatively, route the output to the AUX track.


3. Several returns on AUX tracks
When you need several tracks with return plugins (when using several rooms in Spat Revolution, and/or several outputs), each track with send plugins has to be routed to the tracks with their corresponding return plugins, using the same technique.

However, this may quickly become complicated as the project grows. So, in the following example, we added a 'dummy' track, that avoids using several AUX sends on the tracks with the send plugins, making the routing more clear, and faster to set up in large projects.

The 'dummy' AUX track is routed to all the tracks with return plugins (using AUX sends), then all the send tracks are routed to this 'dummy' track (using aux sends).

4. Larger projects that require independent dry and wet signals
In larger projects, when you need to keep both the dry signal and the Spat return signals independent of each other, (when the mix requires to switch easily from one to the other), add one AUX (pre-fader preferably) per audio track to be sent to Spat, and insert the send plugins on these AUX tracks.

This way, you keep the dry signal on the output of the audio tracks. 

In the cases described below, sync issues appearing in Spat Revolution, that are inaudible, even when you have applied the above recommendations, can be ignored:

• When one or more tracks with a send plugin inserted don't play any audio (between two audio regions, as an example).
  
  
• When some of the send/return plugins are not connected in Spat.
  
  
• When having both SPAT send plugin objects and hardware output objects in the same Spat project. A mix of software and hardware input is not officially supported at this time although successful setups may be done this way.