Voxengo SPAN Plus 1.21 spectrum analyzer plugin released

[Aleksey Vaneev]

December 12, 2022: Voxengo is happy to announce the release of SPAN Plus version 1.21 - an extended real-time “fast Fourier transform” audio spectrum analyzer plug-in for professional music and audio production applications. SPAN Plus is available in AAX, AudioUnit, VST, and VST3 plug-in formats, for macOS and Windows computers.

SPAN Plus is an extended version of the freeware SPAN plug-in: SPAN Plus provides several additional features such as PNG file export, real-time spectrum import/export, static spectrums display, and a “wide” spectrum display.

Changes in this version:

* Made the spectrum also export its "Filled Display" setting, useful when many spectrums are shown at the same time. This is an often-asked-for feature. Note that you may need to revisit the "Filled Display" setting of some individual tracks. This new feature allows you to export some tracks with the "filled" setting enabled while others without it; or to display the main spectrum filled while displaying imported spectrums without filling. This new feature can be disabled via the "Import Spectrum Filling" global setting.
* Made the CSV spectrum saving also save the frequency values and channel names.
* Made the "Static Spectrums" window auto-fill the spectrum names on "Take" and "Load".
* Fixed non-working static spectrum's shifting when the "Offset" (Normalize/Center) display mode is used.
* Added factory ROM presets previously available in SPAN.
* Changed spectrum's "Freq Lo" maximum to 500 Hz (down from 1000 Hz), and "Freq Hi" minimum to 600 (down from 2000 Hz), to permit finer low- and mid-frequency range selections.
* Added the "Spectrum, meter border" palette modifier, visual features. Updated palettes. The "Flat Panels" global settings is now a part of color scheme's visual features.
* Made a small speed-up of GUI loading and drawing.
* Fixed an issue with popup-menus not functioning in Logic Pro on Apple M1 native.
* Implemented "Portable Setups" support (portable settings and authorization storage), read more in the Primary User Guide.

Note that this and all further updates require a processor with SSSE3 support (generally, any Intel processor released since 2006, and any AMD processor released since 2011); all Intel Macs are compatible (Apple Silicon Macs have NEON instead).



SPAN Plus provides you with a very flexible “mode” system which you can use to setup your spectrum analyzer preferences. You may specify Fourier block size in samples, FFT window overlap percentage, spectrum's visual slope. Beside that you can choose to display secondary spectrum of a desired type (e.g. real-time maximum, all-time maximum). Spectrum can be smoothed out visually for an easier examination.

SPAN Plus supports multi-channel analysis and can be set to display spectrums from two different channels or channel groups at the same time. Spectrum's color can be chosen to taste.

SPAN Plus also features output level metering with adjustable ballistics and integration time, K-metering (including calibration K-metering). SPAN Plus displays level metering statistics, headroom estimation and clipping detection. Correlation metering is available as well.

SPAN Plus features:

* Real-time spectrum import/export
* PNG file export
* CSV spectrum file load/save
* Static spectrums display
* Output signal power statistics
* Spectrum smoothing
* User interface window resizing
* True peak and clipping statistics
* Correlation meter
* EBU R128 LUFS/LU metering
* K-metering
* Stereo and multi-channel analysis
* Mid/side analysis
* Internal channel routing
* Channel grouping
* Preset manager
* Undo/redo history
* A/B comparisons
* Contextual hint messages
* All sample rates support
* Retina and HighDPI support

Demo version of SPAN Plus can be downloaded freely at the Voxengo web site: https://www.voxengo.com/product/spanplus/?eref=fo

[ralfrobert]

Thanks a lot, Aleksey. As a customer, I am very happy to see these little updates coming in. You are 100% committed to your solutions, and I think the investment in Voxengo products is money well spent on the long run.

[Dombaeb]

Agree. Voxengo plugins in the process of constant evolution. But, the minor inconvenient is lack of some kind of download manager where they can update automatically. I know that this is one man show so I can’t ask for that. I already receive much more value thanI expected, really.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

The main issue is that it's hard to offer both "universal installer" experience and separate downloads. Premium owners (who may experience issues when reinstalling many plugins at once) are a minority by a large margin. People dislike bulk installers, it's a feeling one is being spoon-fed stuff they do not need.

Then there's a feeling of safety that you have an installer saved locally in case website is unavailable, or goes out of business.

[dangayle]

The main issue is that it's hard to offer both "universal installer" experience and separate downloads. Premium owners (who may experience issues when reinstalling many plugins at once) are a minority by a large margin. People dislike bulk installers, it's a feeling one is being spoon-fed stuff they do not need.

Then there's a feeling of safety that you have an installer saved locally in case website is unavailable, or goes out of business.

What about an installer with checkboxes, like Toneboosters or Fabfilter?

[Ploki]

The main issue is that it's hard to offer both "universal installer" experience and separate downloads. Premium owners (who may experience issues when reinstalling many plugins at once) are a minority by a large margin. People dislike bulk installers, it's a feeling one is being spoon-fed stuff they do not need.

Then there's a feeling of safety that you have an installer saved locally in case website is unavailable, or goes out of business.

What about an installer with checkboxes, like Toneboosters or Fabfilter?

it becomes impractical with 52 plugins
FabFilter has what, 20 tops?
tone boosters the same

[plexuss]

Can you perhaps organize the downloads with all the macPOS in one archive and Windoze in the other instead of splitting it by plugin format? This will reduce the number of downloads, files and time to manage this approach?

[jinotsuh]

Personally, I'm quite happy with things as they are. (Premium Owner)

[Aleksey Vaneev]

The main issue is that it's hard to offer both "universal installer" experience and separate downloads. Premium owners (who may experience issues when reinstalling many plugins at once) are a minority by a large margin. People dislike bulk installers, it's a feeling one is being spoon-fed stuff they do not need.

Then there's a feeling of safety that you have an installer saved locally in case website is unavailable, or goes out of business.

What about an installer with checkboxes, like Toneboosters or Fabfilter?

it becomes impractical with 52 plugins
FabFilter has what, 20 tops?
tone boosters the same

Well, yes, that will be 300 Megabyte download on Windows and 600 MB on Mac.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Can you perhaps organize the downloads with all the macPOS in one archive and Windoze in the other instead of splitting it by plugin format? This will reduce the number of downloads, files and time to manage this approach?

As I've replied earlier, website-relying installer is not in my plans while a bulk installer is 300-600 megabyte downloading experience, not reliable and not fun for the user (download things they do not need). This is not about split between AU and VST.

[Lazarus451]

I have premium subscription and it's very easy to find updates (and installers in general) from the Voxengo site. I just click ALL VST, AU and AAX Plugins link and from there I can find all the plugins sorted according to their release date. Easy and fast. Some companies make it really hard to find latest releases, Voxengo is not one of them.

[jinotsuh]

I like just going to User Area (Premium) there you have 3 tabs, one is 'Updated Products', if there is any products with updates you haven't downloaded, they will be listed in there, click, download, done.

Couldn't be easier

[Trancit]

I would love if Aleksey could come up with then endless resize problem of VST3 in Cubase if OS is scaled to something different than 100%...

Steinbergs are too silly to implement their own VST3 protocol and have that probblem in Cubase now for a decade...
The only fix was to use the VST2 plugin instead but if Steinberg is going to drop now VST2 support... what´s then??
They will not fix it for sure... at least not in this century...

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Sorry, I have no idea how to fix that VST3 window resizing in Cubase issue. It is Cubase which supplies the window size to the plugin in VST3. If it supplies a wrong size, plugin resizes itself in a wrong way.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I'll add that technically the bug explanation is very simple: Cubase multiplies the last known window size by Windows' DPI setting. This is wrong, of course, because after you set a desired size, closed the window, and opened it again, Cubase multiplies this "desired size" by DPI again. The plugin can do nothing about this behavior. A solution on Cubase's side would be simply not to multiply by the DPI, which is what happens if plugin is non-resizable in real-time.