Using the Essential Plugins

xpans distributes a suite of plugins named the Essential Plugins. This set of plugins is meant to provide foundational utilities for creating in the xpans Ecosystem within your DAW.

Requirements

You’ll need a DAW that allows for tracks with a high channel count. REAPER allows for 128 channels per track.

Creating a spatial audio scene

It’s recommended to have each audio source be its own track. Each track should have the Scene Editor plugin in the FX chain, usually at the very end (unless you are using spatially-aware effects!) These tracks shouldn’t route audio to the main/master track.

You’ll also need a scene bus: a track that receives all of your audio sources’ audio data via audio routing, and spatial data via MIDI routing. This track shouldn’t route audio to the main/master track.

Routing audio and spatial data

All audio source tracks should route their audio each to their own separate audio channel within the scene bus. MIDI messages should all exist on the same MIDI channel, but you must route each audio source track’s MIDI to the scene bus as well.

Note: Audio and MIDI routing varies across DAWs. Refer to your DAW’s documentation for more information.

In the Scene Editor plugin of each source, you’ll also need to set the Source ID to the channel number your audio source occupies in the scene bus.

Note: At the time of writing, Source IDs count from zero. The first audio source in your scene will have a Source ID of 0.

Monitoring

You’ll also need a way to listen to your scene. Create another track with the same channel count as your scene bus. Route all audio and MIDI from the scene bus to this track. Add a monitoring plugin (ex. Headphone Monitor, Stereo Monitor, or Mono Monitor) to this track. Make sure that this track is the only track routing audio to your main/master track. Enjoy!

Exporting your scene

Add a Scene Exporter plugin onto your scene bus.

Click ‘Set Export Path’ to choose a destination for your spatial data.

Move the playhead to the start of your scene, and click ‘Set Scene Start’. Do the same for the end of your scene.

When you are ready to export, move the playhead back to the beginning of the scene, or before it. Then, click the ‘Export’ button. The next time the project is played from the start of your scene to the end, the Scene Exporter will write a xpans Spatial Record (.xsr) file to the export path you specified.

No audio data is stored in a .xsr file. It’s just spatial data. You will need to render the scene bus (NOT the master/main track) to an audio file as well.

Depending on the DAW you are using, spatial data and audio data can be exported at the same time. Scene Exporter should export your spatial data during either live playback or offline rendering in roughly the same manner.

Tips and tricks

Scene Editor supports sample-accurate automation. If your DAW is configured correctly, you can have spatial properties update as frequently as your project sample rate. Note that this can increase the size of your exported .xsr file drastically.