Sound Objects are a logical acoustic representation that make sound in Spatial. Objects with an assigned soundset(s) produce audio. These sound Objects work together to create a Spatial experience. Each Object must have a soundset, which holds an audio file in order to make any sound. Soundsets can contain one or many sound files, generate tone and be used to input external AES67 streaming.
Sound Objects operate in a hierarchy, which is an important part of the Object list. The Object list is an organizational tool to distinguish governing behaviors of sound within a Scene.
How does the Object list hierarchy work?
If an Object is nested under another, or it is a child Object, it will inherit certain properties. For example, changing the playback volume of a parent Object will create a compound change in the volume of all its children.
Changing position will shift all the child Objects to offset to the new position; in this case the parent Object is essentially providing an origin position for its children.
There are many more inherited properties and some values are shown as their global (compounded) value by showing the value next to a globe icon.
Note: Because of the nature of Objects, it is useful to take advantage of mono sounds. Split left and right stereo tracks to use as separate soundsets or Objects for independent positioning and richer width.
Best practice is to edit the sound file attributes like length, fade in/out and gain to your liking before importing to Spatial Studio. Learn more about importing files.
There are multiple ways to import Objects and audio to the Object list.
- Add Object
- Add Soundset
- Add Audio → As Object...
- Add Audio → As Soundset...
- Add Sound Files (to a SoundSet)
Add Object
There are two ways to add a single Object to the Objects list without audio. This is useful for creating parent Objects that will be used to control a group of child Objects.
Click the plus symbol in the toolbar to add a parent Object. If you highlight an existing Object, clicking the plus symbol will add a child to that Object.
This action does not add a soundset to the Object therefore the Object will not generate sound. Sound files are imported by selecting Add SoundSet.
To add a soundset to an existing Object, right click on that Object and click Add SoundSet. This drops in an open soundset. You can then import a sound file into the soundset from the desired folder on your computer.
Note: The menu will display an additional set of options that allow for specific hierarchical inserts including Add Sibling Object Above and Add Sibling Object Below.
Add SoundSet
Generates a soundset attached to the selected Object.
To import a sound file to an Object, create a soundset by right clicking the Object in the Objects list and choose Add SoundSet. You can add a sound file by dragging and dropping the file into the soundset or click on the folder icon to open a finder window. A successful import is indicated by the green plus sign bubble.
Add Audio → As Object...
To import audio to an object, right click on an Object to display a finder window.
Tip: Spatial Studio may request permission to access files on your computer.
Navigate to the desired sound file and click Select to import the audio file. This automatically creates an Object with a soundset attached for the sound file selected.
When selecting multiple audio files, a unique Object - soundset combination will be created for each imported file.
Add Audio → As Soundset…
This function allows for an audio file to be directly imported as a soundset and added to the selected Object. Importing multiple audio files at once will result in a unique soundset for each file, nested as a list of soundsets under the selected Object.
Add Audio → As Sounds… (to a soundset)
Right click on a soundset to import sound files directly to the soundset. Selecting multiple audio files will import them to the list of sounds in the selected soundset.
Importing Audio Files - Spatial Studio can import .opus files natively and will convert major audio file types such as .wav, .mp3, .aac and .m4a to .opus files. Spatial operates better without importing .mp3 files and other compressed audio files such as .aac and .m4a. These file types can be imported into Spatial Studio, and will be converted to .opus files upon import. However, the conversion process may cause audio artifacts and distortion in the file. Compressed audio files undergo a conversion process which changes their original texture and essentially removes bits from the file. Therefore they are not as high quality as uncompressed or lossless file types like .flac, .wav and .opus. Sometimes this is unnoticeable but we encourage Spatial users to avoid these file types in order to produce the highest quality Scenes.