Audio · Beta
Ray-Traced Check (beta)
A second opinion on the acoustics of hard rooms. The beta Ray-Traced Check follows the real geometry and gives RT60, C50 and STI where the listeners stand.
On this page
Note
The Ray-Traced Check is in beta. It is a cross-check on the main model, not a replacement for measuring the installed system, and its results are never saved into the project.
The heatmap engine is a statistical model: fast, live and accurate for normal rooms, but it assumes the reverberation is the same everywhere in a room. In a long hall, an atrium or a room that opens into another, it is not. The Ray-Traced Check follows the room’s real geometry to show where that assumption breaks down.
What it does
It fires 24,000 rays per speaker through the room as you drew it: the walls, open sides and open sky, doors as openings and interior walls. Each surface absorbs sound per octave band, according to the material you chose. At each listener position, or the centre of the room if there are none, it builds an echogram and reads from it:
- the RT60 at that position, measured as T20,
- the clarity, C50,
- and the STI.
Run it
- Place the speakers. The area’s results update as you go.
- In the area’s results, find Ray-traced check, under site calibration, and choose Run ray trace. It runs in the background for a few seconds; a large hall takes longer.
- Compare each listener position’s ray-traced RT60, C50 and STI with the figures from the main model. Positions where they differ are flagged.
- For the whole floor, choose Trace floor map. It paints the ray-traced RT60, C50 or STI over the plan: switch the metric with the chips, and click a chip again to hide it. Under each position you also get the RT60 per band, from 125 Hz to 4 kHz.
When it matters
In a normal box-shaped room, the two models agree, and that agreement is a check in itself. The ray trace earns its keep where reverberation is not the same everywhere:
- long or flat rooms, such as a 40 m hall that sounds far more reverberant at the far end,
- a hard room with one treated surface,
- glassy atria,
- spaces coupled through openings,
- part-open venues.
Where the two disagree, the tool’s advice is to trust the trace.
Anchored to your RT60
The trace uses your materials per octave band, scaled so that the room’s total absorption matches the working RT60 you set, typed or estimated from materials. That way it shows the effects of geometry, such as position, openings and coupling, rather than arguing with your material list. The tuned speaker levels, their aim, their frequency ranges and the air absorption all carry into the trace.
What to expect from a beta
- It is an energy ray tracer, with specular and scattered reflections: the same class of method large acoustic packages use for the late part of the sound.
- Results repeat exactly, because the random seed is fixed.
- Results are never saved into the project. Run it again after any change.
- Run it before you export: the audio report’s acoustics appendix prints the ray-traced RT60, C50 and STI at each position next to the main model’s.
Warning
Like every prediction in the tool, the ray trace is a planning baseline, not a guarantee. Commission the installed system with a meter, and an STI check for speech.