The interface is built around five modules that can be reordered, soloed, turned off, or popped out into resizable windows. The Multi Meter Display is still there, but now it sits next to the Loudness Graph, Dynamics Meter, Stereo Scope, and expanded BPM / Pitch tools.

Version 6 adds RMS, PSR, and PLR readouts alongside LUFS, LRA, True Peak, Max Peak, and correlation. All the meters have been rebuilt for better accuracy and thoroughly tested agains ITU-R BS.1770 and EBU R128 test signals. Also you can now turn off sync transport and the meters will measure audio even if the transport is off.

Loudness Graph

The new Loudness Graph is for seeing loudness move over tim. It shows short-term LUFS, true peak overs, adjustable targets and ranges, zoom, and exact hover values.

Dynamics Meter

The Dynamics Meter is built around PSR and PLR. It’s measured by comparing short term LUFS to peaks and is really amazing way to see how dynamic or squashed your mix is.

Stereoscope

The Stereo Scope combines a Lissajous-style display with width, balance, and phase feedback. So mono, wide, and negative-phase material are easier to tell apart at a glance. The correlation meter also shows:

• Instantaneous Needle: fast marker showing the current correlation value.
• 3s Average Bar: Showing short-term average correlation over a 30-second interval.
• Sticky Peak Marker: Shows the maximum negative value received until a global reset or correlation range reset clears it. This way you can see when a section of audio had a negative correlation even if that section is passed.

Better CPU Management

The rewrite also manages CPU more carefully. Modules stay active when they’re visible, including popped-out windows, while heavier processing pauses when a module is hidden. Additionally, utilizing the Live Object Model, Swiss Army Meter can detect when you’re actively on a channel. When you move on to a different channel and the meter isn’t visible or popped out, it dynamically disables processing. This way you can use a lot more instances without the CPU hit.

BPM / Pitch

The BPM / Pitch section is cleaner and expanded too, with timing, note frequency, wavelength, and adjustable A4 tuning tools in one place.

It’s much closer to what I always wanted Swiss Army Meter to be: one place to see all the information I actually care about while I’m working, but also being flexible enough to adapt to the situation.

The new version is free for all current owners of Swiss Army Meter, the Workflow Bundle and the Everything Bundle.

Also if anyone has any other modules, feature ideas or changes they'd like, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Hope you all enjoy!

spktra

Cartoon Brew did an interview with me about the overall film and the 5 year process behind making it.

Animation Obsessive asked me for a short paragraph about the light in the film and I ended up writing a whole article instead. So much research went into that part, trying to understand how older cel animation and film handled glow, bloom, halation, diffusion, grain, and why the light in those films feels like it’s actually inside the image.

A longer interview with Matthew Trask gets more into the behind the scenes side of it. I talk a lot about creating the texture of the world, the animatic process, and even tracking down the same paper Studio Ghibli uses for backgrounds and scanning it in to process the background art with.

I also did a 20 minute talk with legendary animator John Pomeroy (The Land Before Time, Fantasia 2000, Atlantis: The Lost Empire) about the video.

It’s been amazing seeing people’s reaction to the video. If you haven’t seen it, you can check it out below.

You can read the pieces here: Cartoon Brew, Animation Obsessive, and Matthew Trask.

This music video took 5 years to make. Back when the world shut down I decided to try writing and directing an animated music video even though I couldn’t draw whatsoever AND make it feel authentically cel animated…how hard could it be?

Very very very hard is how hard.

But we got there in the end thanks to an absolute wonderful team.

Painstaking detail went into researching the effects of film on animation, from grain, halation, bloom, and color shifts, to how traditional optical effects were achieved and how subtle movements in cel photography gave the image additional texture. The goal wasn't just to mimic a style, but to capture that feeling you have when you watch old animation.

We couldn’t be more proud of how it came out.

Enjoy!

On January 1, 2020 I finished an album I had spent 3 years making. During that process, I built a series of tools born out of the frustration I had trying to get the sounds I wanted. The world and music industry were in flux, so I decided to wait on releasing any music and focus on the software instead. I never thought anyone would actually want any of the tools I made, but hoped a few people might.

I’m glad I was wrong. The enthusiasm you’ve all shown for Noir Labs over the last few years has genuinely changed my life.

Today I’m launching the label side of Noir Labs with its first release, Spirit Jumper.

While mixing it, I used to manually measure gain before and after every plugin and thought there had to be an easier way to do this. This track is the reason Volume Buddy exists. Without the album, there would be no plugins.

I’m hoping you’ll follow me along into this next chapter.

spktra