# Flux:: SPAT Revolution versus . . . everything else?



## alanb (Dec 21, 2018)

I've been agonizing over whether to move up from SPAT V3 to Spat Revolution . . . but the price . . . the price . . . even with the current 50% 'upgrade' discount, the price . . .

Then I noticed that Ina-GRM had just come out with two new free plugins, SpaceMaster and SpaceVR, to be used in conjunction with their Spaces3D plugin (which I have as part of their Complete Tools II collection).

I have no idea whether "Spat Revolution versus Ina-GRM Spaces" is a proper apples-to-apples comparison, and haven't been able to find anyone on The Internets saying whether it is, or even mentioning both programs on the same page.

Likewise, I wonder whether upgrading to Spat Revolution is necessary, or even makes sense, when there are so many less expensive options available that at least appear to do some or all of what Spat Revolution is supposed to do, including but not limited to:

Dear Reality's 'dearVR pro'

Tripin' Lab's 'Sound Trajectory' 

Noisemakers' 'AMBI BUNDLE HD'

_[etc.]_

Is anyone here sufficiently familiar with any other multichannel/spatialization programs/bundles that they can compare/contrast them with Spat Revolution? 

Thanks!!


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## jamwerks (Dec 21, 2018)

I get the feeling that SPAT is aimed primarily at Post-production houses. I owned v3 for a while, it sounds good, but not the most "musical" to my ears.


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## muk (Dec 22, 2018)

Somewhere I read that Spat Revolution has the same algorithms concerning the sound as Spat v3 did. With identical settings the two should sound identical. What's added are the routing possibilities etc. Check the version history to verify. If true, do you really need the new things in Spat Revolution? To me it looks like an upgrade makes sense for studios that do post pro. Much less so for composers/music producers.

DearVR sounds very good to me. But you have little control over the reverb. You can choose the room you want, and adjust the length of the tail and density of ERs. And that's it. In Spat you have much more control over the reverb itself. That being said the reverbs that come with dearVR are very good.

Sound trajectory looks like a tool to automate movement in a room to me. Reverb per se doesn't seem to be it's focus, and thus it's much less flexible in that regard than Spat. A tool for post pro, with limited capabilities for composers imo.

Ambi Bundle HD works with Ambisonics. That works for 3D applications with headphones. It sounds strange over loudspeakers, so it's not really suited to traditional music production.

Check out Independence Origami. It does stage placement in a similar way to Spat and Mir. You can load any IR you want. It sounds wonderful, and costs a fraction of the other tools. It doesn't let you automate the position like Spat does. And it has less parameters (no up-down placement, no adjustment of the stereo width (just add a separate stereo width plugin before it for that), no azimuth and yaw). The reverb portion is convolution, not algorithmic like Spat. But it has all the parameters needed to adjust the IR, and you can load custom IRs. So the reverb part is really quite advanced.
Overall Origami is a little less flexible than Spat. And it has a dated GUI. But it has all it needs for stage placement/reverb. And to my ears it sounds really good.


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## pmcrockett (Dec 22, 2018)

I touched on this in the other thread, but my feeling about Spat Revolution is that its design moves it further from being convenient for composers than v3 is and that it will probably be available at the 50% discount again in general sales before Spat v3 becomes unusable. It's also likely that spatialization tools will continue to improve in that time -- a lot of these alternatives didn't even even exist when I bought Spat a few years ago -- and you may be better off hanging onto the $900 and spending it on whatever's available in five years instead.

IMO, Flux needs a stripped down version of Spat marketed to composers that removes most of the routing, transcoding, and some of the more advanced parameters; runs as a VST; and sells for ~$400.


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