Audio
Focus pins and listener positions
Mark where the sound must be at its best with standing or seated listeners, and see how the layout, tuning, time alignment and site calibration all follow them.
On this page
By default the tool assumes the middle of the room is where the sound matters. In a coffee shop, a bar or a restaurant it rarely is: people gather at the bar, by the stage or in a VIP corner. Focus pins tell the tool where the sound must be at its best, and the whole design is built around them.
In the current tool, the pins are people: a standing or a seated listener, placed at their real ear height.
Add, move and remove listeners
- Open Draw on the canvas dock and choose Standing person or Seated person.
- Click inside the area. A numbered person appears there. A standing listener is heard at an ear height of about 1.7 m, a seated one at about 1.2 m.
- Add as many as the area needs, with more clicks.
- To move one, drag it with Select; the acoustics recalculate as you go.
- To remove one, select it and press Delete.
To arrange several, Shift-click them. The Align & space people panel lines them up left, right, top or bottom, spaces them evenly, or places them relative to the area: Center in it, a Row across its width or a Column down its depth. The arrow pad or the keyboard arrows nudge the selection.
What the listeners drive
Almost everything in the audio design refers to them:
| Feature | With listeners placed |
|---|---|
| Apply layout | Aims the speakers at their nearest listener. |
| Centered coverage | Places a stereo pair on every listener. |
| Optimise spacing | Aims each re-spread wall speaker at its nearest listener. |
| Tuned levels | Land the target level exactly at each listener, shared equally across several. |
| Time alignment | Makes the speakers’ sound arrive together at the listeners. |
| Site calibration | Expects the meter reading taken where the listeners stand. |
| Ray-Traced Check | Builds its echogram at each listener. |
The level and coverage are worked out at each listener’s real ear height, so a seated audience and a standing crowd get the design they need.
With no listeners
With no listeners in an area, everything above refers to the centre of the room instead: the tuning, the time alignment, the site calibration and the level in 3D.
In 3D, the client tour and the reports
The listeners appear as figures in the 3D view and the walk-in, a seated one on a chair, and as numbered pins in the shared client tour. Walking to one is where the system sounds its best, so you can stand the client at the bar and let them hear it. They also appear on the floor plan and the heatmap in the PDF reports, labelled P1, P2 and so on, and they are saved with the project.
