What is SPADIO IR CREATOR?
An Impulse Response (IR) is the acoustic “fingerprint” of a real room. When you speak or play an instrument inside a cathedral, bathroom, or recording studio, sound waves bounce off the floor, ceiling, and walls before reaching your ears. An IR captures all those bounces so your reverb plugin can place any sound inside that space.
In traditional audio production, creating an IR required traveling to a physical building with starter pistols, sweep speakers, and measurement microphones. SPADIO IR CREATOR gives you complete creative freedom right on your computer:
Visual 3D Space Designer
Change room width, length, and height visually. Choose from 7 architectural shapes including cinematic scoring stages, theaters, and L-shaped rooms.
Acoustic Baffle Walls
Place movable gobo panels right next to the singer, behind your head, or between the sound source to block direct sound and mold realistic reflections.
Real-Time Binaural Listen Deck
Listen immediately in 3D through your headphones as you move nodes. Rotate the dummy head with the 360° heading slider to preview any direction.
Quick Start in 4 Steps
Choose a Room Preset or Shape
In the left sidebar, select a preset like Cinematic Scoring Stage, Acoustic Control Room, or Open Air / Outdoor Field. You can freely adjust dimensions with the Width, Length, and Height sliders.
Position Your Sound Source & Listener
Click and drag the glowing Orange Orb (Sound Source) and the Blue Dummy Head (Listener) on the room floor. Notice how the green reflection rays and arrival delays update in real time.
Audition with Audio & 360° Rotation
Press Spacebar to play the built-in reference audio (or drag and drop your own song anywhere onto the screen). Put on headphones and rotate the head slider to hear the 3D room turn around you in real time.
Export with 1 Click
Click the blue ⭐️ Export Studio Master / Spadio3D (.wav) button in the right panel. Drop the downloaded file straight into Spadio3D, Logic Pro Space Designer, Altiverb, or REAPER ReaVerb.
Global Settings: Simulation & CAD vs UI & Visuals
SPADIO IR CREATOR bridges the gap between lightning-fast musical workflow and rigorous acoustic laboratory simulation. Click the Gear Icon in the top header bar at any time to open the Global Settings Modal, equipped with dual configuration tabs:
Casual Creator Mode
Designed for: Musicians, producers, beatmakers, and game sound designers.
Streamlined UI that hides complex numerical coefficients in favor of macro acoustic sliders, immediate visual responsiveness, and pre-balanced real-time convolution.
Professional CAD Mode
Designed for: Acoustic consultants, studio architects, and audio engineers.
Unlocks advanced simulation parameters: Transition Order (TO) hybrid engine boundary, ISO 9613-1 air absorption with temperature/humidity controls, and ISO 3382 acoustic metric validation.
Individual Ray Opacity Controls
Inside the UI & Visuals tab, adjust independent transparency sliders (0% to 100%) for Direct Sound, 1st Order, 2nd Order, and Diffuse Rays. When using dense ray tracing (e.g. 2880 Extreme), lowering Diffuse Ray opacity keeps internal studio gear and baffles crystal clear without compromising acoustic simulation calculations.
Wall Surface Roughness & Specularity
Fine-tune 3D room wall specularity from 0% (mirror-smooth gloss with sharp reflections) to 100% (completely matte diffuse surface) to visual match lacquer, concrete, plaster, or acoustic panel finishes.
Room Geometry: How Shape Affects the Sound
Real sound behaves differently in curved, splayed, or angled spaces than in a plain rectangular box. IR Creator features 7 distinct room architectures:
Shoebox (Studio / Stage)
Sound Character: Classic, punchy, and predictable. Standard 90° walls produce prominent early reflections and clear lateral imaging. Great for drum rooms, vocals, and pop production.
Stage Auditorium (Splayed)
Sound Character: Expansive and smooth. Side walls angle outwards from a narrow stage to a wider rear, eliminating harsh flutter echoes and projecting sound deep into the hall.
Fan Theater (Amphitheater)
Sound Character: Enveloping and wide. Creates an impressive panoramic sweep where echoes arrive from a broad radial arch rather than hard left/right walls.
Angled Cathedral
Sound Character: Soaring and airy. The high pitched gable ceiling scatters vertical reflections upward, preventing harsh ceiling slapback and creating majestic, ethereal decay tails.
Circular Rotunda & Octagon (Aspect Locked)
Sound Character: Hypnotic and dense. Continuous angled walls produce a
smooth, diffusion-rich wash with no hard corners. Ideal for ambient synth pads and ASMR.
Geometric Aspect Lock: Width and Length are automatically locked together for both shapes to preserve perfect radial symmetry while scaling.
L-Shaped Space
Sound Character: Around-the-corner realism. If you move the sound source around the corner, the direct path is blocked. You hear only the rich ambient bounce coming through the doorway!
Select Open Air / Outdoor Field in the room presets. Upward sound is absorbed 100% by the sky (no ceiling bounce), and ground reflections are absorbed naturally by grass. You can place baffle walls to simulate building facades, alleys, and outdoor stages!
Custom 3D Model Import (.GLTF, .GLB, .OBJ, .FBX)
Have an architectural model of a specific theater, tracking studio, basement, or cathedral? Load your own 3D CAD or polygonal meshes directly into SPADIO IR CREATOR to turn any architectural model into a high-precision acoustic Impulse Response:
Multi-Format CAD Import
Drop .GLTF, .GLB, .OBJ, or .FBX files directly into the 3D viewport. The simulation engine automatically computes the bounding volume, normalizes scale, centers geometry at floor level, and generates collision meshes for ray tracing.
Conforming BVH Ray Bounces
Ray-tracing does not cut through walls! Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) collision detection ensures that early acoustic rays reflect off complex non-convex corners, columns, balconies, and internal partitions without escaping the structure.
Automatic Material Slot Mapping
All discrete material slots and submeshes are parsed on import. The app lists every imported material name in the left panel and auto-assigns the closest acoustic material (e.g. concrete, wood, glass) based on keyword matching.
Remove 3D Model Button
Want to revert back to a standard parametric room? Click Remove 3D Model at the top of the room panel. The imported geometry is cleared immediately without resetting your sound source, listener positions, or slider settings.
CAD & 3D Model Preparation Guidelines (Blender, SketchUp, Rhino, AutoCAD)
To achieve optimal ray-tracing performance and acoustic accuracy, prepare your 3D models according to these industry guidelines before importing:
- Scale & Units: Model your space in Meters (1 Unit = 1 Meter). In Blender, Rhino, or SketchUp, ensure scene units are set to Metric (Meters) and apply all scale transforms (Ctrl+A > Apply Scale in Blender) before exporting.
- Coordinate System: Export using +Y Up and -Z Forward (the standard WebGL coordinate convention). If your CAD tool is Z-Up (e.g. AutoCAD or 3ds Max), enable “Y-Up” conversion during FBX/GLTF export.
- Surface Normals & Manifold Geometry: For hollow rooms and enclosures, ensure face normals point inward towards the interior of the space. SPADIO IR CREATOR uses inner face rendering; inverted normals may cause walls to appear transparent or acoustic reflections to miss collision.
- Clean Polygonal Meshes: Eliminate non-manifold edges, duplicated vertices, and zero-area degenerate triangles. Triangulate complex N-gons before export.
- Recommended Formats:
• .GLB (Binary glTF): Highly recommended! Single self-contained file containing all mesh data, hierarchy, and material slot names.
• .GLTF: If exporting ASCII glTF with an external.binfile, drag and drop both the.gltfand.binfiles together into the viewport.
• .FBX: Export as binary FBX (version 2018 or newer) with mesh geometry and materials enabled.
• .OBJ: Single mesh or multi-group wavefront OBJ. Material slot names are read directly from group names orusemtltags. - Acoustic Material Slot Naming Convention:
Name your material slots or groups descriptively so SPADIO IR CREATOR can auto-assign the physical acoustic properties instantly:
Material Slot Name Keyword Auto-Assigned Acoustic Preset Acoustic Tone & Absorption wood,stage,parquet,timberWood (Floor / Stage) Warm, balanced low-end resonance, subtle highs concrete,stone,brick,marbleConcrete (Hard Wall) Highly reflective, bright, long high-frequency reverb drywall,plaster,board,sheetrockDrywall / Plaster Neutral acoustic studio boundary response carpet,rug,matAcoustic Floor Carpet High absorption above 1 kHz, deadens floor bounce curtain,drape,velvet,fabricHeavy Velvet Curtains Deep broadband absorption, softens room reflections glass,window,mirror,glazingGlass / Window Hard specular reflections, bright presence seating,chair,pew,audienceAudience / Seating Diffuse scattering and mid-band acoustic absorption tile,acoustic,foam,baffleAcoustic Absorber Controls flutter echoes and standing waves
Surface Materials: What Tone to Expect
Every wall, ceiling, floor, and baffle can be assigned a physical material. Here is what to expect from each material as a sound characteristic:
| Material | Acoustic Nature | Sound Characteristic & Best Use |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy Wood Paneling | Warm & Resonant | Balanced, musical, warm. Preserves rich low-mids without harsh high-end sizzle. The standard for studios and concert halls. |
| Plate Glass / Window | Bright & Hard | Extremely reflective. Keeps sharp, crisp high frequencies intact. Gives an immediate, bright “click” or slapback bounce. |
| Thick Wedge Foam | Dead & Absorptive | Muffles and swallows high and mid frequencies. Eliminates reverberation for tight, dry, up-close vocal booth recordings. |
| Heavy Velvet Curtains | Dark & Luxurious | Softens harsh high frequencies while letting lows breathe. Creates a cozy, vintage, warm acoustic space. |
| Ceramic Tile | Sparkling & Ringing | High-frequency brilliance with virtually zero absorption. Produces the unmistakable singing, bright tone of a tiled bathroom. |
| Brick & Concrete | Long, Industrial Decay | Dense and reflective across all frequencies. Produces massive sustain, loud echoes, and booming subterranean reverb tails. |
| Open Sky | Infinite Atmosphere | Absorbs 100% of sound upward. Zero ceiling bounce. Used for outdoor open-air simulations. |
| Outdoor Grass / Soil | Soft Ground Attenuation | Gently absorbs high frequencies on the ground plane, preventing harsh floor bounce in outdoor scenes. |
Acoustic Baffle Walls (Gobos)
Baffle walls (also known in recording studios as gobos) are acoustic partition panels placed inside the room. They let you sculpt the soundfield with surgical precision:
Placed Behind the Listener
Acoustic Result: If set to Plate Glass or Wood, you will hear a sharp, immediate reflection behind your head. If set to Acoustic Foam or Velvet, it creates an acoustic shadow that blocks rear wall echoes.
Placed Between Source & Listener
Acoustic Result: Occludes the direct sound completely! The direct signal drops out and only the surrounding room reflections reach your ears, simulating hearing someone playing instruments in an adjacent booth or behind a partition.
Clean 3D Object Rendering
When a baffle is unselected, selection outlines and floor footprints are cleanly hidden. Baffles render as solid, double-sided 3D objects with full depth, eliminating all face culling and visual clutter in your room scene.
Global Baffle Bypass Toggle
Toggle ENABLE BAFFLES on/off in the left Baffle settings panel to instantaneously compare your room’s acoustics with and without partitions, without losing any placement coordinates or sizes.
Option + Drag Duplication
Hold Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) and drag any baffle in the 3D viewport to instantly spawn and reposition an exact replica. Or click the Duplicate Baffle button in the inspector panel.
Fast In-Viewport Resizing
Hold Shift while dragging horizontally to widen/narrow the baffle, or vertically to heighten it. Hold Cmd/Ctrl + Shift and drag vertically to adjust baffle thickness on the fly.
Baffle walls are strictly anchored to the floor level (y = 0). When you adjust the height slider or drag vertically, the wall grows upward naturally without ever dropping below the floor plane.
Professional CAD Simulation Engine & Standards
SPADIO IR CREATOR is engineered to deliver equivalency with professional acoustic CAD simulation suites (such as EASE®, CATT-Acoustic®, and Odeon®) while maintaining a fluid, real-time creative experience.
Hybrid ISM + Diffuse Ray Tracing
Early reflections are computed via the Image Source Method (ISM) for mathematical phase accuracy up to Transition Order 2–3. Higher reflection orders (up to 40–60+ bounces) are handled by stochastic ray-tracing with surface scattering.
ISO 9613-1 Air Attenuation
Models the molecular relaxation frequencies of Nitrogen and Oxygen. As sound travels through large halls or arenas, high frequencies attenuate according to humidity and temperature curves, preventing unnaturally harsh reverb tails.
ISO 3382 Objective Metrics
Designed around ISO 3382 room acoustic criteria: RT60 (reverberation time), EDT (Early Decay Time), C80 (Music Clarity), C50 (Speech Clarity), and D50 (Definition), calculated via backwards Schroeder integration.
Desktop Tauri Rust & WebAssembly
The desktop build leverages multi-threaded Rust for parallel ray tracing, SIMD vectorization, and batch IR generation, while the web version runs the identical acoustic algorithms compiled to WebAssembly.
For complete mathematical formulations, octave-band absorption matrices, and diffusion coefficients, refer to CAD_ROADMAP_SPECIFICATION.md in the project directory.
Sound Source Modes: Point Source vs Stereo Pair
Sound emission in SPADIO IR CREATOR can be configured as a single omnidirectional point source or a calibrated pair of stereo studio monitors:
Point Source (Omnidirectional)
Emits acoustic energy spherically in all directions from a single 3D point. Ideal for modeling vocalists, solo instruments, starter pistols, acoustic testing sweeps, and foley sound effects.
Stereo Pair (Studio Monitors)
Spawns Left and Right nearfield/midfield studio monitors on speaker stands. Allows modeling authentic stereo control rooms, listening rooms, and stage PA setups with independent left/right ray propagation.
Adjustable Stereo Width (0.5m – 15m)
Fine-tune the distance between the Left and Right monitors from 0.5 meters (tight desktop placement) up to 15.0 meters (wide concert stage PA or festival line array spread).
Always Rotate To Listener (Dynamic Toe-In)
Toggle ALWAYS ROTATE TO LISTENER to enable automated studio monitor toe-in. The speakers dynamically rotate in real time to aim their acoustic axes directly at the listener, maintaining the calibrated equilateral monitoring triangle.
Stage & Surface Underneath Elevation Snapping
When positioning performers or microphones on elevated concert stages, risers, desks, or multi-tiered platforms, calculating height from the raw floor (y = 0) can be awkward. SPADIO IR CREATOR features intelligent downward surface snapping:
Ground vs Surface Underneath
In the Source and Listener height controls, choose between Ground (Floor = 0m) and Surface Underneath (Nearest Stage / Riser). When Surface Underneath is selected, the height value is measured relative to the platform beneath the node.
Smart Downward Raycasting
A continuous downward probe detects elevated surfaces, stage decks, tables, and risers. Move your speaker onto a stage, and it automatically snaps its reference base to the stage deck rather than floating in space.
Strict Ceiling & Roof Exclusion
Downward snapping strictly filters out ceilings, roofs, and overhead trusses. Speakers and microphones will never snap upward to ceilings or flip upside down, guaranteeing reliable upright orientation at all times.
Drop Lines & Ground Rings
A translucent vertical drop line and circular reference ring anchor each node visually to its supporting surface, making 3D spatial depth instantly readable from any camera perspective.
High-Poly 3D Acceleration
Optimized for complex CAD meshes and high-poly 3D rooms. Drag-time height raycasting is isolated to the active node being moved and throttled to display refresh rates via requestAnimationFrame, delivering effortless 120 FPS fluid positioning.
Interactive 3D Node Picking
Forget hunting through menus! SPADIO IR CREATOR features full raycast interaction directly in the 3D viewport:
Click Source to Open Source Settings
Click directly on the Sound Source orb, studio monitor meshes, speaker stand, drop line, or ground shadow disk in the 3D scene to instantly open the Sound Source settings panel on the left.
Click Listener to Open Listener Settings
Click directly on the dummy head listener, headphone earcups, microphone array, drop line, or ground shadow disk to instantly pop open the Listener settings panel.
Seamless Visual Repositioning
Combine direct clicking with Shift + Drag to effortlessly position, elevate, and configure your entire acoustic setup without taking your hands off the mouse.
Slider Sound Guide: What Each Setting Does
Every slider in SPADIO IR CREATOR has an immediate, audible acoustic impact. Here is what to listen for:
| Slider | Setting Range | Sound Characteristic & Expectation |
|---|---|---|
| Dry Sound | 0% to 100% | The direct, unaltered instrument or voice. At 100%, sound is crisp and right in your face. Turn down to 0% for 100% wet atmospheric reverb. |
| Early Reflections (ER) | 0% to 100% | The first discrete wall bounces. Controls the perceived intimacy, size, and width of the room. Higher values make the space feel tangible and close. |
| Reverb Tail | 0% to 100% | The long, diffuse wash of decaying sound. Controls sustain, warmth, and cathedral-like spaciousness. |
| Pre-Delay | 0 ms to 120 ms | The quiet pause before the room reflections kick in. Adding 20–40ms keeps lead vocals or snare drums hyper-clear before the reverb washes in. |
| Air Damping | Low to Heavy | Simulates air distance. Heavy rolls off high frequencies for a warm, dark, distant room. Low keeps reflections bright and razor-sharp. |
| Diffusion Scatter | 0% to 100% | At 0%, reflections bounce cleanly like laser beams. At 100%, surface micro-textures scatter sound into a smooth, lush, cohesive reverberation cloud. |
| Manual Heading (Yaw) | -180° to +180° | Turns the dummy listener’s head. As you slide it, you will immediately hear the sound source pan smoothly from center to your left ear, right ear, or behind you. |
Listen Deck & Quick Audition Toggles
The Binaural Listen Deck on the right panel lets you monitor your room in real-time with zero latency:
Dry / Reverb / Mix Audition
Quickly click Dry Only to hear the raw source, Reverb Only to hear solely the room reflections, or Current Mix to return to your custom blend. Even when direct sound is physically blocked by an obstacle or baffle wall, selecting Dry Only still lets you compare the direct reference signal against the acoustic room sound.
Pop Out Floating Deck
Click ⧉ Pop Out in the Listen Deck header. The deck detaches into a floating, resizable window you can drag anywhere across your screen while arranging the 3D room.
Live 3D Waveform
Displays the synthesized binaural impulse response in real time. The Cyan wave shows the left ear arrival and the Yellow wave shows the right ear arrival.
Live Disk Audio Presets
Preset tracks (Drums, Voice, Guitar, Music, Footsteps) load directly from webapp/audio-presets/ with automatic cache-busting. Modifying or replacing an MP3 on disk is instantly reflected in audition playback.
Load Custom Audio
Click LOAD CUSTOM AUDIO HERE to audition your own recordings, instrument tracks, or dry stems directly through the acoustic simulation with zero latency.
Fast Far-Right Export Tab
The Export Tab is located at the far right of the top navigation bar for immediate 1-click delivery of True Stereo Master WAVs and 4-channel B-Format AmbiX impulse responses.
360° Listener Head Rotation
In spatial audio acoustic design, monitoring how the room behaves when the listener faces different directions is essential. Rather than introducing audio distortion or tracking jitter, SPADIO IR CREATOR features an artifact-free, crystal-clear Manual Rotate Head Slider in the Binaural Listen Deck:
Smooth Full-Circle Panning
Slide smoothly from -180° to +180° to turn the dummy head listener in real time. The direct sound and early wall reflections pan naturally across your headphones with pristine audio quality.
Instant 0° Recenter
Click the ↺ 0° button at any time to snap the listener’s head back to facing straight ahead (North towards the front wall stage).
Webcam Face Tracking & VIEW Preview
When webcam head tracking is active, click the VIEW button next to the camera dropdown to toggle a live floating Picture-in-Picture video feed. Verify face framing, tracking confidence, and lighting conditions directly in the studio.
Artifact-Free Critical Monitoring
Eliminates pitch warbling, camera disconnects, and buffer dropouts, giving mixing engineers dependable, reproducible spatial reference.
Impulse Response & Sample Audio Export
Spadio IR Creator provides two dedicated export pipelines: acoustic impulse responses for convolver plug-ins and offline processed sample audio with the acoustic reverberation rendered directly.
1. Impulse Response Export
Select any format from the dropdown menu to configure the primary export action, then click the export button to render and download:
Studio Master / Spadio3D (.wav)
48 kHz / 24-bit Stereo PCM WAV (-0.3 dBFS peak)
The worldwide standard for modern DAWs. Drop directly into Spadio3D Aux Convolver, Apple
Logic Pro Space Designer, Avid Pro Tools, or Cockos REAPER.
High-Res Pro Master (.wav)
96 kHz / 32-bit IEEE Float Stereo WAV
Audiophile master grade. Delivers pristine resolution and unlimited dynamic headroom for
mastering engineers and film composers.
Legacy Standard (.wav)
44.1 kHz / 16-bit PCM WAV
Guaranteed compatibility with vintage hardware rack processors, digital guitar pedals, and
legacy hardware samplers.
AmbiX Ambisonics (.wav) & SOFA
1st, 2nd, 3rd Order AmbiX & AES69 SOFA
Full spherical B-format (4, 9, or 16 channels) and standardized SOFA files for game engines (Unreal/Unity) and HRTF spatial renderers.
2. Sample Audio Export (Export Audio with Reverb)
Click Export Audio with Reverb (.wav) in the Sample Audio Export card to render the active audio preset (Voice, Drums, Guitar, Music, Footsteps) or any imported custom audio file with the simulated room acoustics and convolution reverb applied:
Rendered Audio Sample with Room Reverb (.wav)
48 kHz / 24-bit Stereo PCM WAV
Runs an offline acoustic convolution pass combining early reflections (ER), late diffuse reverberation tail, pre-delay, and 3D binaural positioning. Automatically captures the natural ring-out tail and normalizes headroom to prevent clipping. Perfect for exporting quick stem audition files, music stems, dialogue treated with physical room reverberation, or sound design assets.
Sound Design Recipes
Try these pre-tested setups to quickly achieve popular acoustic environments:
The Intimate Vocal Booth
• Room Preset: Dry Vocal Booth (3.6m × 4.0m × 2.6m)
• Walls: Thick Wedge Foam
• Baffle Wall: 1.5m behind listener, material Acoustic Foam
• Early Reflections: 40%, Reverb Tail: 15%
Result: Super dry, crisp, upfront vocals with zero room boxiness.
Punchy Indie Rock Drum Room
• Room Preset: Cinematic Scoring Stage
• Left & Right Walls: Plate Glass (Bright slaps)
• Floor: Concrete, Ceiling: Wood
• Pre-Delay: 15 ms, Early Reflections: 90%
Result: Huge, explosive drum room reverb with aggressive transient smack.
Outdoor City Street Alley
• Room Preset: Open Air / Outdoor Field
• Floor: Outdoor Grass / Soil, Ceiling: Open Sky
• Baffle Wall 1: Width 12m, Height 6m, Material Concrete
• Baffle Wall 2: Duplicate across from Wall 1
Result: Authentic outdoor slap between buildings with zero ceiling clutter!