Getting Started
This section of the manual goes over the basic concepts needed for doing your first IRs in Impulse. All of the explanations in this section are kept simple, and more details in regards to concepts like Simulation, Rendering & Visualization are provided in later sections.
Authentication
Before doing anything, you will need to authenticate your Impulse license. A license key is generated for you upon purchase, and its longevity depends on the style of license purchased.
To authenticate your license, click on the Lese logo in the top left of the program, and select “About”. This opens up an additional window for accessing a bunch of preferences for configuring your experience in the software.
In the new window, select the Authentication tab, and then click “Activate License”. Input your license key into the window that opens up, input your license, and click “OK”. If everything worked, then you should now have access to Impulse’s functionality.
Demo Projects
If you don’t have your own 3D model that you want to simulate with, then you can go to “File -> Open Demo Project” in the menu bar to open one of the project files that come shipped with Impulse.
They are marked with an arbitrary “Complexity” value, where one star = simple (a small amount of geometry, few materials, only a source & listener object) and five stars = complex (a large amount of geometry, many materials and multiple source & listener objects).
Simulation
Rendering IRs in Impulse is a two-step process, first, the acoustics must be virtually simulated (or propagated) in the application. Going to the “Simulation Settings” tab (third tab from the top) on the sidebar provides the controls for setting up various options for the simulation, as well as triggering it.
If you have a demo project loaded, there should be a source object that was created and is selected in the “Source to Trace” list box. This is the origin point where acoustic data will be simulated from.
You can also trigger the simulation by going into “Render -> Simulate Acoustics (Shift + S)”.
Rendering
Once simulation has been completed, the second part of the two-step process involves rendering an audio file based on the acoustic data at a given position. Going to the “Render Settings” tab (fourth tab from the top) on the sidebar gives the controls for setting up various settings for the impulse response rendering process.
If you have a demo project, there should be a listener object that was created and is selected in the “Listeners to Render” list box. This is the selection of listener objects where audio files will be created based on the acoustic data at that position.
With this list box, you can also select multiple listeners in the 3D Scene to render at once, and Impulse will render all selected listeners at once.
Outputs
Once an impulse response has been rendered, you can preview it in the “Outputs” tab (fifth tab from the top), as well as save it as a .wav to a specified location.
In the lower pane of the interface when in the “Outputs” tab, you can see that there is a variety of different visualization & analysis views, including a conventional waveform view, spectrogram, and spectrum.
Geometry Importing
Impulse allows you to import your own 3D geometry to use for your acoustic scene. Impulse supports all of the common interchangeable formats, such as .obj, .dae, and .stl. Import your own geometry into Impulse via “File -> Import Geometry”
Learn More
Once you've gotten this completed, check out the documentation about Impulse's Core Concepts.