Using the Roland Octa-Capture with Smaart

The Roland Octa-Capture has been a favorite of the Smaart community for many years. With 8 analog inputs and 8 analog outputs, Smaart control integration and gain tracking, it is the ideal solution for most measurement applications.

Input Sensitivity

The Roland Octa-Capture offers 4 front panel and 4 rear panel XLR/TRS combo input jacks, each with phantom power and variable level control. XLR preamps 1-6 have a sensitivity of +10dBu at minimum gain, making them ideal for SPL measurement with low sensitivity microphones where channels 7-8 have a sensitivity of +16dBu at minimum gain, meaning they will have a better chance at handling the increase voltage produced by higher sensitivity measurement microphones at concert levels.

For more information about measuring at Concert Levels, see the How to determine the headroom of your measurement system? support article.

Control Integration & Gain Control

The Roland Octa-Capture also offers control integration in Smaart. This partnership allows you to control the phantom power and gain for its preamps directly from the input meters in Smaart's interface. To access the input meters, use the shortcut [Shift] + [E] or navigate to the view menu and select Input Meters from the list. 

This control integration also allows you to enable 'gain tracking' after calibrating an input for SPL measurement using a checkbox in the Input Configuration window. With gain tracking enabled, you can adjust the preamp of the Octa-Capture without losing SPL calibration. Smaart will automatically adjust the calibration to reflect the new dB offset.

Buffer Size Considerations

The Roland Octa-Capture has a default ASIO buffer size of 256 samples. It is recommended to use a minimum buffer size of 1024 samples with Smaart. 

To change the Buffer Size of the Roland Octa-Capture in Windows, open the control panel, navigate to Driver and select the Driver Settings menu option.

In MacOS, however, Buffer Size settings are controlled from separate applet from the main Octa-Capture controller. It can be found within the "Roland" folder inside of the "Applications" folder.

This applet has a slightly different interface from the submenu of the Windows Octa-Capture applet.

With the driver settings window open, use the Audio Buffer Size slider to adjust the buffer size. We recommend the highest setting possible (2048 samples), but for most use cases a buffer size of 1024 will suffice. Additionally, make sure "Use ASIO Direct Monitor", "Low Latency mode", and "VS EXPAND" are unchecked

After adjusting the buffer size, close the driver settings window. You are now ready to use the Octa-Capture with Smaart.