Key Terms
This glossary defines the main terms used throughout the Living Sky manual. These definitions are intended to clarify the plug-in's spatial audio concepts, interface controls, and processing terminology before they appear in more detailed sections.
| Key term | Definition |
|---|---|
| 3D Control App | The companion visual control application for Living Sky, used to view and position sources in a three-dimensional space. |
| Ambisonics | A spatial audio format that represents sound as a full spherical soundfield. |
| Aura | An experimental convolution send that reshapes the spatial character of a loaded Space, creating a dynamic and position-dependent reverb behavior. |
| Azimuth | The horizontal angle of a source around the listener position. |
| Bus Selector | The control is used to assign the selected source to one of Living Sky's reverb buses, or to disable its reverb send altogether. |
| Convolution | The process of applying an impulse response to audio so the sound takes on the acoustic character of a recorded or synthetic space. |
| Decoder | The output stage that translates Living Sky's ambisonic soundfield into the selected speaker or channel format. |
| Decoder Criterion | The decoding method used to optimize ambisonics for speaker playback includes Canonical, MaxNorm, and InPhase. |
| Direct Bus Compensation | Additional compensation is defined in the "Extra latency" control applied to the Direct Bus (non-reverberated, but spatialized output path). This latency can be used to improve performance in high load sessions when On, and can keep comfortable monitoring for applications that require low-latency, like recording or live mixing. |
| Distance | The perceived distance of a source from the listener's position. A greater distance places the source farther away and can make it appear quieter. |
| Drift | The depth amount of Aura's dedicated modulation controls how strongly the Aura effect changes. |
| Elevation | The vertical angle of a source above or below the listener plane. |
| Envelope Follower | A modulator that reacts to the level or contour of an assigned audio source and uses that movement to control another parameter. Sometimes known as key input. |
| Envelope Gain | Gain control for the signal feeding an assigned envelope follower. It changes the modulator's response, not the source's audible output level. |
| Flux | The rate of Aura's dedicated modulation, controlling how quickly the Aura effect changes. |
| Extra Latency | The amount of delay added before processing or playback occurs. Extra latency can be used to ease processing load by delaying the onset of convolution. |
| Heatmap | A visual display of the energy distribution in Living Sky's output soundfield. It shows where sound is concentrated across the spatial field, helping you monitor the balance, movement, and spread of the processed reverb. You will find a 2D heatmap in the plug-in and a 3D heatmap in the 3D Control App. |
| LFO | A low-frequency oscillator used as a repeating modulator for moving parameters over time, either freely or synchronized to the DAW tempo. |
| Open GL | An open graphics standard used by software to render 2D and 3D visuals through the computer's graphics hardware. In Living Sky, OpenGL is used as an interface rendering option and supports features such as the 2D heatmap. Disabling OpenGL Rendering also disables the 2D heatmap. |
| Pitch | Rotation around the side-to-side axis, tilting the reverb field upward or downward. |
| Roll | Rotation around the front-to-back axis, tilting the reverb field clockwise or counterclockwise. |
| Rotation | The orientation of a reverb bus or global soundfield across yaw, pitch, and roll axes. |
| Routing Matrix | The input/output routing grid used to connect incoming DAW channels and processed outputs inside Living Sky. |
| Scene | A saved state of a full bus, including its loaded Spaces, EQ, EQ-to-size behavior, and Size Range. |
| Scene Browser | The browser used to load Scenes into a bus. |
| Sharpness | A control for spatial definition. Higher values create a more focused point source, while lower values spread the sound more diffusely through the soundfield. |
| Size | A control that stretches or compresses the loaded impulse responses, changing the length and character of the reverb. |
| Snapshot | A saved state of the entire Living Sky plug-in instance, including sources, buses, scenes, spaces, routing-related settings, and modulation assignments. |
| Snapshot Browser | The browser used to load, save, edit, delete, tag, and favorite full plug-in Snapshots. |
| Source | An incoming audio signal in Living Sky that can be positioned, routed, sent to reverb buses, and controlled independently. It can be mono or multichannel and can be grouped according to its format. |
| Spaces | Individual impulse response slots within a Scene. Each Space represents one acoustic environment element loaded into a bus. |
| Venue Grouping | A Space Browser option that visually groups impulse responses according to their venue. |
| Yaw | Rotation around the vertical axis, turning the reverb field left or right. |