Delay alignment

Delay Alignment

The goal of delay alignment is to reduce delay spread across the audience area. Unlike a traditional sweet spot approach, the algorithm minimises spread over the whole area rather than optimising for a single perfectly time-aligned point.

Note: Delay alignment does not fix or optimise interference-related artefacts. It is recommended to fine-tune the low-frequency range manually by adjusting delays after the alignment has been run.

Line of Sight Activation

Enabling line of sight activating Acoustic Shadowing in the simulation excludes acoustically shadowed areas — areas obstructed by a boundary — from the alignment process. This ensures the algorithm only considers positions with a direct acoustic path. If you wish to use this mode, ensure this is activated before running delay alignment.

Delay Lock

If you want to re-run alignment without changing specific delay values, you can lock those values before starting. Locked values are excluded from the calculation entirely — the algorithm will not adjust them and will not factor them into the alignment.

Delay lock is only available on the Delay tab.

Delta Values

Delta values are the manual offsets a user can apply on top of the values set by the auto-alignment algorithm. They exist to ensure that the algorithm's output is always preserved and recoverable — you can never accidentally or intentionally overwrite what auto-alignment provided.

The downmix matrix offers three view modes:

View	Description
Auto-alignment	Shows only the values set by the alignment algorithm
Delta	Shows only the manual offsets added by the user
Total	Shows the combined result of auto-alignment values and user delta offsets

Value ranges:

• Delay total (auto-alignment + delta): 0 – 999 ms

• Gain total (auto-alignment + delta): –200 – 0 dB

Due to current limitations, the Delta values are not stored when exporting and re-importing a .holoplot file. In this scenario, user-added Delta and auto-added Auto values are both added to the Delta field, meaning that the distinction between the two is lost.