Analyser View

Orbit Pro

The Analyser View requires Orbit Pro.

The Analyser View is a full-page analysis workspace: a grid of modules — spectrum, the programme's loudness journey, spatial energy, phase and big-number loudness readouts — that you arrange to suit the job. Every module updates live as the file plays.

Getting there

Click Analyser in the Mode Bar.

The default layout

Out of the box the page shows four modules: Spectrum and Loudness across the top, with Comet and Topology side by side below. Every module has a Full page button in its header that expands it to fill the page; click it again (Exit full page) to return to the grid.

Modules

Module	What it shows
Spectrum	Real-time analyser, per speaker group — see Spectrum below.
Loudness	The programme's loudness over time, against your delivery target's pass band — see Loudness journey.
Comet	The energy centroid of the mix as a trace on a sphere of speakers. Drag to orbit.
Topology	The spectrum over time, as a 3-D surface of ridges.
Goniometer	A stereo vector scope.
Correlation	Phase per speaker pair, with a top-down visualiser you can hide with VIS.
Matrix	Phase between every channel.
Spectrum Field	Where frequencies live in the room.
Integrated, Momentary, Short-term, True Peak, LRA	Big-number loudness stat tiles.
Fold-down	The loudness cost of folding to stereo and 5.1.
Timecode	A big transport clock.

Loudness readouts are measured to ITU-R BS.1770-5, the same engine as the footer — see Loudness.

Spectrum

The Spectrum module is the same analyser as the one in the footer, given the whole width of the page. While the Analyser is showing, the footer's spectrum greys out and reads in the Analyser.

Spatial RTA. Switch the spectrum to Spatial with the SPA button beside the footer spectrum and it draws one trace per speaker group instead of a single trace — in the footer and in the Analyser's Spectrum module alike — so you can see which part of the rig carries which frequencies. The groups come from the Monitor View — its Smart groups, plus any custom groups you've made. The groups button above SPA lets you choose which groups are shown, change a group's colour (Change Colour…), and turn the translucent FILL under each trace on or off. Add or remove in Monitor → takes you to the Monitor View to edit the groups themselves.

The footer spectrum also offers AVG (the long-term average spectrum, in yellow), a depth setting for how deep the display floors (−60, −72 or −90 dBFS), and a reset for peak and average.

Loudness journey

The Loudness module draws the whole programme's loudness over time against the pass band of your current delivery target, with the final integrated loudness and LRA in its header and live values at the playhead. BED and OBJ toggle the bed-only and object-only traces. When a file first loads, the module shows Measuring loudness… with a progress bar while Orbit measures it.

Customising the page

While the Analyser is showing, a Customise the Analyser button appears in the Mode Bar. Click it and the page enters an amber CUSTOMISE mode:

• Drag a module to move it, pull a corner to resize it, and click × to remove it.
• Add module + opens the module browser: click a module to add it, or drag it onto the grid. Modules already on the page are marked ON PAGE.
• Layouts holds the presets — Full, Loudness-first, Spatial-first and Blank — and your own layouts under My layouts. Save current layout… saves the arrangement under a name (an existing name replaces that layout), and Delete layout removes one.
• Click Done to leave Customise mode.

The Instruments window

Open the Instruments window (in the Mode Bar while the Analyser is showing, or View → Show Instruments Window, ⌥⌘R) pops the Analyser's rack out into its own window — handy on a second display while the main window shows another page. It's the same rack, not a copy: a layout change in one place is the same change in the other.

Analyser preferences

Preferences → Analyser styles the two 3-D modules:

• Comet — Style (Pearl, the soft trace, or Comet, a glide trail), Colour, and sliders for Trail, Intensity, Size, Smoothing, Speaker node size, Sphere bloom, Grid brightness and Grid line width.
• Topology — Style (Aurora, Terrain or Ink), Time window (how far back the ridges reach), Ridge colour (Age, Band, or Spatial — each peak coloured by whichever speaker group is loudest there) and Capture (Transport freezes the recording on pause; Continuous keeps scrolling through silence).

See also

• Loudness — delivery targets and pass ranges.
• Monitor View — where the speaker groups come from.
• Mode Bar — switching between views.