New Music Gear Monday: SPL Hawkeye Audio Analyzer Plugin
You don’t need it often, but when it’s time to track down an audio anomaly having an audio analyzer at hand is a must. There are many really good analyzer plugins available, but most are single or dual function, or only provide a view of one analysis instrument at a time. SPL’s new Hawkeye plugin provides 5 different analysis at the same time in one easy-to-see display.
The Hawkeye UI is broken down into 5 different analysis “instruments” – Level, Loudness, Bit Depth, Vector Scope and Analyzer. We’ll get into each of these in a second, but a great feature of the UI is that it’s scalable in size by just grabbing the handle in the corner. Not only that, you can pop out one of the instruments so you can see it own it’s own, and also scale that as needed.
As you might expect, the Level section provides a True Peak Meter for L, R, Mid & Side with different scales (including Katz-Scales), RMS Metering for L, R, Mid & Side, and a TPL Histogram. The Loudness Meter gives you Peak to Loudness Ratio (PLR), Peak to Momentary Loudness Ratio (PMR) and Peak to short-term Loudness Ratio (PSR), Integrated Loudness (IL), Momentary Loudness (ML), and short-term Loudness (SL).
The Bit Monitor is something that’s somewhat unique and not found in most audio analyzers. Here you get a 64-bit display, Bit-Depth check, Bit pattern and distribution timeline, and Direct Current (DC) offset meter (up to -40dB). The Vectorscope provides a Goniometer in linear and logarithmic view, Luminescence slider, Balance meter, and standard Correlation meter.
The Analyzer is really a multi-function display on its own. It shows a Spectrum and 1/3 Octave-Analyzer as well as Phase-Panorama-Display, FFT with 4096 bands, Spectrogram, Panorama- and Phase-Display with a resolution of 4096 frequency bands, 1/3rd octave analyzer, Linear and mouse draggable logarithmic frequency scales, plus a mouse draggable dB scale to change the displayed amplitude ranges as needed.
The SPL Hawkeye analysis plugin is available for both Mac and PC and for all plugin formats. It’s also available as a standalone app. It costs $249, but there’s a free 14 day trial available.
You can find out more here, or watch the video below.
