PRISM Visualizer — User manual

August 2026 · Kaizen Audio

Contents

1. Introduction
2. System requirements
3. Installation
4. Licence: trial, activation and deactivation
5. Quick start
6. PRISM Connect
7. The second screen, step by step
8. PRISM Analyzer: the window
9. The board: cards, settings and sources
10. The modules
11. Global settings
12. Layout presets
13. PRISM Monitor: what only the app has
14. The loudness measurement: RESET and HEAL
15. DAW notes and known limitations
16. Troubleshooting
17. Specifications

1. Introduction

PRISM Immersive Visualizer — PRISM Visualizer for short — is an immersive metering and analysis suite, mono to 9.1.6, built for film and TV post, immersive music and Atmos mastering. Three pieces that work together:

What sets it apart

• A real second screen. An iPad, another Mac or the session’s own Mac shows the same measurement as the plug-in, with your own arrangement of modules, without taking room from the DAW window or CPU from its interface. The Mac app works just as well on a second monitor of the same computer as on a separate machine.
• Several stems at once. Put a PRISM Connect on each stem and meter them all on one screen, each module pointed wherever you want.
• Loudness that survives the session. The programme measurement is saved with the project: close it, come back next week and the graph is still there.
• Both plug-ins are pass-through. They read the audio, they never write it. Inserting them changes absolutely nothing you hear, and they add no latency.

What goes in and what comes out

• Input and output: the same format, always. PRISM does not change the bus format, does not downmix and does not route anything — it only looks.
• Channel formats: mono · stereo · LCR · Quad · 5.0 · 5.1 · 7.1 · 5.1.2 · 5.1.4 · 7.1.2 · 7.1.4 · 9.1.4 · 9.1.6 · 7.1.6.
• Plug-in formats: AAX (Pro Tools), VST3, AU (Logic) — macOS only.

2. System requirements

The plug-ins and the two apps ask for different system versions. Check the one that applies to you:

Windows is not available; this version is macOS only.

A caveat about the Mac app on Intel machines. The installer runs on an Intel Mac and the plug-ins are Universal, but PRISM Monitor for Mac is Apple Silicon only and will not launch there. The plug-ins work perfectly normally.

3. Installation

3.1 Installing on the Mac

1. Download the PRISM installer from your Kaizen Audio account.
2. Quit your DAW. If PRISM Monitor is running on the Mac, quit that too — the installer replaces it.
3. Double-click the .pkg. It is signed and notarised by Apple: no macOS security warnings, and no need for the right-click-Open trick.
4. Follow the steps: Introduction → Read Me (what’s new) → Licence (user agreement) → Installation Type.
5. Under “Installation Type” you can untick the formats you don’t use. All four groups are installed by default:

6. Enter your administrator password when macOS asks, and finish the install.

The tickbox is per format, not per plug-in: each group installs the Analyzer and the Connect together. They belong together — without Connect there are no stems and no second screen.

3.2 Installing on the iPad

PRISM Monitor is a free download from the App Store. Search for it by name on the iPad, or go straight there from the link on the product page at kaizen.audio.

It is free and needs no licence: the plug-ins are what you buy.

3.3 After installing

• Restart your DAW so it picks up the plug-ins.
• Pro Tools: if it was open, quit it completely (Cmd+Q) and reopen — it rescans plug-ins at launch, not on the fly.
• Logic: on first launch, macOS validates the Audio Units automatically. They appear under Audio FX → Kaizen Audio → PRISM Analyzer and PRISM Connect.

3.4 Updating

Install the new .pkg on top; there is no need to uninstall first. Your licence, your presets and your settings are untouched. The iPad app updates itself from the App Store.

3.5 Uninstalling

There is no uninstaller; it is done by hand. Delete these seven items (the first six ask for an administrator password):

/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins/Kaizen Audio/PRISM Analyzer.aaxplugin
/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins/Kaizen Audio/PRISM Connect.aaxplugin
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/Kaizen Audio/PRISM Analyzer.vst3
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/Kaizen Audio/PRISM Connect.vst3
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/PRISM Analyzer.component
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/PRISM Connect.component
/Applications/PRISM Monitor.app

On the iPad, uninstall it like any app: press and hold the icon → Remove App.

If you have other Kaizen Audio plug-ins installed, don’t delete the whole Kaizen Audio/ folders — only the PRISM bundles. And remember: before retiring or wiping a machine, release its activation with Deactivate (4.5).

4. Licence: trial, activation and deactivation

PRISM is licensed through your Kaizen Audio account. No iLok, no serial numbers to type: activation happens in your browser.

One licence covers both plug-ins. The PRISM Monitor apps for iPad and Mac are free and need no licence at all.

4.1 What happens the first time

The first time you insert an unlicensed plug-in, the activation panel opens on top of it and cannot be closed until you activate.

Until it is activated:

• The Analyzer shows no modules — only the activation screen. Your audio passes through untouched.
• The Connect publishes nothing, so neither the Analyzer nor the second screen sees that track. Your audio passes through untouched.

There is no demo mode with audio dropouts. PRISM never touches your signal, not even unlicensed.

4.2 Activating (with internet)

1. Click Activate your plugin and then Let’s go!.
2. Your browser opens at kaizen.audio. Sign in and, from the side menu of your user account, assign your licence — or request the trial if you haven’t bought yet.
3. Go back to the DAW. The panel closes by itself and the board appears.
4. Check the status by clicking the Kaizen logo in the top-right of the Analyzer: you’ll see the green LICENSED label and your email.

If the browser doesn’t confirm within about 4-5 minutes, the panel shows Timed out, please try again! — repeat the process.

When you activate with the DAW open, the Connect takes a few seconds to start publishing, and the second screen drops its warning shortly after. That’s deliberate: checking the licence more often would mean reading from disk on the audio thread.

4.3 The trial

The trial is the complete plug-in, with no limitations, for 14 days. The exact expiry date is shown in the Kaizen logo panel (Trial until …), with the amber TRIAL label. When it expires the board locks and the activation panel returns so you can enter a full licence.

4.4 Offline activation (computer with no internet)

If the studio machine is isolated from the network, click the Offline Activation link on the Activation screen:

1. Step 1/3 — Generate Machine File: save your machine’s identifier file (on the Desktop by default).
2. Step 2/3: take that file (USB) to any computer with internet and go to the address the panel itself shows on screen: kaizen.audio/?mb_intent=activate_product. Upload it and download your licence file (.mb).
3. Last step: back in the studio, drag the licence file onto the marked area of the panel (or double-click that area to browse for it).

Offline-activated licences never connect to the internet again: they don’t revalidate, they don’t expire through connectivity, and they have no Deactivate button (to move one, handle it from the web or with support).

4.5 Deactivating / moving to another computer

Your licence covers up to 2 of your own computers (one licence per person). To release a machine:

Kaizen logo → MANAGE LICENSE → Deactivate (red button).

• Requires an internet connection (it tells the server that machine is free).
• Deletes the local licence; the plug-in returns to its unactivated state.
• Important: always deactivate from the button, not by deleting files or wiping the drive — if you remove the local licence without deactivating, that machine still counts as occupied. If that happens, contact support.

In studios with several people, each person needs their own licence: the two machines are yours, not two workstations.

4.6 Day-to-day use and working offline

With an online licence, PRISM revalidates with the server occasionally and silently. If your machine goes offline (or a proxy/VPN gets in the way), the plug-ins keep working normally for a 14-day grace period, telling you the deadline on screen:

Online validation failed (…). PRISM Analyzer will deactivate at …

Get back online at some point before that date and the count resets by itself.

4.7 One Mac, two activations (the Rosetta case)

If you use the plug-ins in an Apple Silicon-native DAW and also in one running under Rosetta, each mode keeps its own activation — it may ask you to activate twice on the same Mac. That’s normal.

4.8 The Kaizen logo panel

Click the Kaizen flower in the Analyzer header and ABOUT opens:

• Installed version.
• Licence status: LICENSED (green), TRIAL (amber) or UNLICENSED (red).
• Registered email, licence ID and expiry date. If you activated offline, the line Offline activated.
• Update notice: Update to vX available, with a link to the download.
• A MANAGE LICENSE button, which opens the full licence panel with Deactivate.

PRISM Connect has no ABOUT panel. Its licence is the same one; manage it from the Analyzer.

5. Quick start

One bus, one meter

Insert PRISM Analyzer on the bus you want to look at. That’s it: it meters its own input.

In Pro Tools, PRISM does not change the channel format — you insert it on the track or bus as it is, in whatever format it already has.

Several stems on one screen

1. Insert PRISM Connect on each stem. Leave ROLE on Stem and give each one a STEM NAME.
2. Insert PRISM Connect on your master with ROLE set to Master.
3. Insert PRISM Analyzer anywhere. Every Connect now appears as a source you can point any duplicated module at.

Within the same Mac, the Analyzer reads the stems directly — no network, nothing to configure.

The iPad as a second screen

1. Make sure there is exactly one PRISM Connect with ROLE = Master on that machine.
2. Open PRISM Monitor on the iPad, on the same network. It connects by itself.

Step by step, edge cases included, in section 7.

6. PRISM Connect

A small window, three controls, one job: publish a track so the Analyzer and the second screen can see it.

6.1 The controls

The STEM NAME menu offers twelve ready-made names — Dialog, Music, FX, Ambience, Foley, Backgrounds, Stem 1 … Stem 6 — but you can type whatever you like. Names you invent are stored in a library shared by every instance on the Mac, so a new name shows up in the menu on the next track without you doing anything. Renaming a stem live works: the change reaches the Analyzer, the iPad and the Mac by itself.

6.2 Master and Stem

At a glance — and first of all, do you need Connect?

No, if the plug-in alone is enough. PRISM Analyzer inserted on a track meters that track on its own, saves its measurement with the project and restores it when you reopen. No Connect required for that.

Yes, in two cases: to see several stems at once on one screen, and to bring the measurement to an iPad or the Mac app.

When you do use it: the Master is the programme track — the one that gets measured, saved with the project and fed to the external screens. Stems are extras that send their audio so you can meter it. One and only one Master per computer.

The two plug-ins are independent: you can have the Connect Master on the master bus and the Analyzer on any other track, or both on the same one. You decide where you look.

The exact rules:

• One effective Master per machine. If for whatever reason two instances are set to Master, one of them acts as a stem while the other is alive, and says so with a permanent amber notice: ANOTHER MASTER IS ACTIVE · ACTING AS A STEM UNTIL IT LEAVES. Your choice in the combo is never touched.
• It recovers on its own. If the Master disappears (you delete the track, you close that instance), the other one promotes itself within a second. There is nothing to fix by hand.
• Only the Master measures loudness inside Connect. A Stem doesn’t measure: with twenty stems, metering them all would be wasted CPU. (Note: this is what Connect does. If you point an Analyzer module at a stem, the Analyzer does meter it on its side.)
• With no Master at all, the second screen still sees the room and spells it out: MASTER CONNECT NOT FOUND.

If you leave an instance on Master that ends up acting as a stem, it will be published under its STEM NAME — and since that field is disabled while it says “Master”, the name will be whatever was stored. If two entries with the same name show up, that’s why: set them to Stem and give them different names.

6.3 What the window shows

• RECEIVER TARGET — the address and port the external screens listen to. It’s what you would type if you ever had to connect by hand.
• STREAM — format and sample rate of what is being published, for example 7.1.4 · 48K.
• RECEIVERS — how many screens are connected, out of a maximum of 4. Green when there is at least one.
• RATE — the pace at which data is going out. It’s a pulse: if it moves, there’s flow.
• A green dot in the top-right corner when someone is listening.

The PRISM Connect loudness thumbnail (Master only)

Below the readouts, the PRISM Connect window in Master mode shows SESSION LOUDNESS: a graphic summary of the whole accumulated measurement, with the integrated value and the measured duration. It is not an Analyzer module and it does not replace LOUDNESS · TL — it’s a quick look inside Connect itself.

It works as a receipt for two things:

• RESET — the graph empties instantly.
• Save and reopen — it comes back exactly as it was. The measurement travels inside the project.

If nothing has been measured yet it reads NO MEASUREMENT. Stems don’t show it, because they don’t measure.

6.4 The name IS the group

At a glance. Two PRISM Connects with the same STEM NAME are not two meters: they are one meter with both summed inside. Put one on ambs, another on wallas, call them both AMBIENCES and you get a single ambience meter. That’s the whole grouping mechanism.

The limits and the small print:

• Up to 16 members per group.
• Up to 8 groups at a time per machine.
• Both must have the same channel format. If they don’t match, they don’t sum: you get two entries with the same name in the source list, with no warning. If you see duplicate names, check the formats.

6.5 Inside the Mac and out of it

There are two paths, and it pays to keep them straight:

• Inside the same computer (Connect → Analyzer): direct, instant, no network, nothing to configure and independent of who is Master. That’s why the Analyzer sees all your stems even if none of them is set to Master.
• Out to the iPad or another Mac: that means going over the network, and a single instance handles it: the Master. It gathers its own track plus every stem on the machine and sends it all down one connection. Stems never open connections of their own.

Hence the rule: exactly one Connect set to Master per machine for the second screen to work.

7. The second screen, step by step

The goal: your session’s measurement showing up on an iPad propped on the desk, on a Mac next to you, or on a second monitor of the same computer — no video cables, and without stealing room from Pro Tools.

7.1 What you need

1. A PRISM Connect set to Master on the computer running the session. Without it there is nothing to see.
2. PRISM Monitor on the receiver: the iPad app, or PRISM Monitor.app on a Mac.
3. If the receiver is on another machine, both on the same local network. If you use the Mac app on the session’s own computer, no network is needed at all: it connects to itself and works exactly the same.

7.2 About the network: read this before you wire the studio

A 7.1.2 stem is ten channels of real-time audio. With the master and several stems at once the bandwidth adds up — and Wi-Fi has a real ceiling that has nothing to do with PRISM.

• Ethernet whenever you can. On the session Mac, use a cable. It’s the difference between working and always working.
• For the iPad, a network adapter is strongly recommended as soon as you go beyond watching the master and start pulling several stems. A USB-C to Ethernet adapter removes the whole problem.
• On Wi-Fi, the Wi-Fi matters. A domestic router shared with half an office, the 2.4 GHz band, or a room full of metal will degrade reception, and you will see it: the picture stutters or stems take a while to appear. A decent 5 GHz access point, close by and without competition, holds up fine.
• PRISM helps where it can: only the audio of the stems you are actually watching travels over the network. A stem whose module isn’t on screen costs nothing. If your network is tight, keep only what you need in view.
• No AirDrop-style device-to-device links: it has to be a real network, from the router.

7.3 Pairing

1. Open the session and check that the master’s PRISM Connect is set to Master and passing audio.
2. Open PRISM Monitor: the app on the iPad, or PRISM Monitor.app on the Mac.
3. The first time, the system asks whether the app may find devices on your local network. Say yes. If you say no, the app will never find anything (fix it in Settings → PRISM Monitor → Local Network).
4. Don’t touch anything else. The app searches on its own, finds the computer and connects.

You’ll know it worked when the top bar goes from SEARCHING… to CONNECTED · <MAC NAME> with a green dot, and the label next to it reads something like 7.1.4 · 48K · STREAMING.

That’s it. Place modules, save a preset and get to work.

On the session’s own computer the process is identical and even shorter: open PRISM Monitor.app, it finds itself and connects. It’s the comfortable way to have every meter on the second monitor with the plug-in window closed — which also happens to be the cheapest option in CPU.

7.4 Several rooms, several computers

If there is more than one studio running PRISM in the building, the app sees them all but listens to only one. The selected room is the pill in the top bar; tap it and the list opens:

• AUTO · LOCAL — the factory option.
  • On the Mac: AUTO picks the room on this very machine and no other. If it can’t find it, it waits and says so (WAITING FOR THE LOCAL ROOM). It will never wander off to the neighbour’s room.
  • On the iPad (which has no room of its own): it settles on the first room it sees and doesn’t move by itself after that.
• A machine from the list — you pin it. A pinned room always wins, even when it goes down: it stays selected, waiting, and reconnects by itself when it comes back.
• RECONNECT SELECTED — forces a reconnect to the current room.

The choice is remembered between launches. And the isolation is total: audio, stems, measurement, bridge configuration and resets only ever arrive from the selected room. You will never find yourself looking at the studio next door’s measurement by accident.

7.5 When you see nothing, the app tells you why

Instead of leaving you with a black screen, PRISM Monitor shows a banner with the diagnosis. These are all of them:

Programme silence does not trigger any banner: if your mix goes quiet, the screen simply goes still.

7.6 If automatic discovery fails

Some corporate networks block discovery. There is a manual route:

Gear (top-right) → GLOBAL SETTINGS → CONNECTION · MANUAL (LEGACY) → type the address and port shown in the PRISM Connect window under RECEIVER TARGET → GO.

A hand-typed connection reaches exactly the same place and brings the master and every stem, just like automatic discovery.

GO pins that machine permanently and turns AUTO off. To go back to automatic behaviour, open the room list and choose AUTO · LOCAL.

7.7 Trying it without a session: RUN DEMO

While there is no connection, a RUN DEMO button appears in the top bar. It generates a test signal and fills every module, so you can build your layout, learn the settings or show the app without the studio switched on. STOP DEMO turns it off and the app goes back to searching.

7.8 How many screens at once

Four receivers at a time per computer. You can have the iPad, a Mac in the next room and two more.

The fifth is turned away, but it is told: its screen shows ROOM FULL instead of going blank. As soon as you close PRISM Monitor on any of the others, it gets in by itself.

8. PRISM Analyzer: the window

The header

Left to right:

The timecode follows the host and turns amber while the transport rolls. With no timecode it shows --:--:--:--.

The green dot on the second line lights up when audio arrives and goes out a few milliseconds after it stops. It’s the fastest check for “this is getting signal”.

As you narrow the window the header folds itself up: first the wordmark, the Kaizen lettering and the preset arrows go, and + MODULE shrinks to +; narrow it further and the preset bar disappears entirely. Nothing ever overlaps.

Right at the bottom, a discreet strip with the name and version on the left and CPU use on the right (amber as it climbs, red when it spikes).

9. The board: cards, settings and sources

9.1 Adding and removing modules

Everything comes from the + MODULE button:

• MODULES ON BOARD — the list of all 17 cards, ticked where they’re placed. Click to add or remove.
• ADD ANOTHER — creates a copy of a module so you can point it at another source. That’s how you get one meter per stem. Almost all of them can be copied; SCOPE, DOWNMIX and MULTI-METER BRIDGE cannot.
• CLEAR LAYOUT — empties the board in one go.

9.2 Moving, placing, stacking

• Each card is dragged by its header and resized from the bottom-right corner.
• Bring them close and they snap to each other and to the edges, always leaving a small channel between them: aligned to the bone without touching.
• Cards may overlap, like playing cards on a table. Clicking anywhere on a card brings it to the front.
• The dot on the left of the header switches the module on and off: the card stays, the content goes dark.
• The ✕ on the right removes it from the board (on copies, it destroys them).

9.3 The gear and its two buttons

Every card’s gear is at the bottom-left. That’s deliberate: the bottom-right corner belongs to the host’s resize grip.

It opens a floating window, scrolling if needed, always with the same rules:

• Changes apply live while you move them.
• ACCEPT simply closes: what you’re looking at is already what stays.
• CANCEL, the Escape key or a click outside the panel all do the same thing: undo everything and leave things as they were when you opened it.
• Actions (buttons like RESET or HEAL) are the exception: they happen at once and CANCEL does not undo them.

9.4 Sources: metering the master or a stem

At a glance. Modules you place from MODULES ON BOARD always meter your own track. To meter a stem, add a copy of the module with ADD ANOTHER: only copies carry the source selector in their header.

A copy’s header shows a small chip reading OWN or the stem’s name. Click it and choose: Own track or any live PRISM Connect on the machine.

Two modules can never be pointed at a stem: SCOPE and DOWNMIX. The MULTI-METER BRIDGE isn’t routed as a card either — each source is chosen inside the bridge itself.

Separately, the spectral modules (RTA, SPECTROGRAM, SPACE · SPATIAL) have their own selector for which part of the signal they analyse, inside their gear: Full Mix, L+R, L, R, Center, Side (L-R), Downmix, Max L-R.

10. The modules

Seventeen modules, grouped by what they do. Each entry: what it is, how to read it, and what’s in its gear.

One thing that recurs: the colour palette used by almost every colour setting has 16 entries — Blue, Cyan, Green, Yellow, Amber, Orange, Red, Violet, Cream, Teal, Lime, Gold, Coral, Magenta, Ice, Slate.

10.1 Level meters

PEAK · DBFS

One bar per channel, in the global Film/SMPTE order. Peak, optional RMS, peak hold, clip LED, over counter and numeric readout.

Clicking anywhere on the module resets the clip LEDs, the infinite holds and the max-RMS markers.

It has the deepest gear in the suite. Five sections:

SCALE

BALLISTICS

OVER

ZONES

READOUTS

VU

Classic moving-coil meters, one dial per channel, in the global order. A −20…+3 scale with the red zone past 0 VU, 300 ms ANSI ballistics and a clip LED per dial. Below the rest threshold the needle stays parked at the left.

DOWNMIX

Stereo fold-down compatibility: Lo and Ro derived with the same ITU coefficients as the Kaizen Downmixer, so this meter agrees with it. Peak and RMS per side, a dBFS readout and a CORR correlation bar between the two.

Orientation is automatic: a tall card draws columns, a wide one draws rows. Colours follow the PEAK · DBFS module.

The badge reads RECOVERY LOCK · ITU while the fold is the ITU table verbatim, and ITU + LFE if you fold the LFE in.

MULTI-METER BRIDGE

Several real meters side by side, one per source: the same meter as PEAK · DBFS, with siblings. Switch it on from MODULES ON BOARD.

With the bridge empty, the whole card is the picker. Click the sources in the order you want them — each one is numbered — and confirm with ADD n TO BRIDGE. If there are no stems yet, it tells you: no sources yet — insert PRISM Connect on your stems.

Inside the gear:

Below that, the list of available sources and, for each source already added: arrows to reorder, a custom label field, CLPS (collapse a multichannel stem to a single max bar), a scale button cycling AUTO / −60 / −50 / −40 / −30 / −20, and the colour, with the T chip (follow the theme) plus the 16 palette circles. You can also reorder by dragging each column’s header.

And finally, the complete meter settings catalogue for the bridge.

The measurement is one. Ballistics and over detection are always shared across the whole bridge and the main meter: one engine, one measurement. What changes per source is how it’s drawn.

10.2 Loudness

The four loudness modules share target, true-peak limit and the colour zones. Change the standard in one place and they all follow.

LOUDNESS

The delivery control panel. MOMENTARY and SHORT-TERM boxes, a large INTEGRATED with its deviation in LU, a bottom strip with LRA · TP · RMS, and a QC badge reading PASS or the signed deviation.

There’s a RESET button on the card itself (see section 14).

LOUDNESS · TL

Loudness over time, anchored to session timecode, with up to 24 hours of history. Inside, on the left, the distribution histogram (DIST) sharing the same scale; the divider between the two can be dragged and its position is saved with the preset and with the session.

Also on screen: the green target line, the short-term mountain with its colour zones, the momentary trace on top, the playhead cursor, and along the bottom an overview strip showing the whole measured programme with a box marking where you’re looking. You can drag the graph to navigate; an arrow at the bottom-right takes you back to live.

Top-right, the session timecode with TC LOCK or FREE.

Below the settings live the two big measurement actions: RESET LOUDNESS HISTORY and the HEAL LOUDNESS block. Both are explained in section 14.

LOUDNESS · BARS

Three bars — M, S and I — in hardware-meter style: colour zones over the scale, a clear target mark across each track, optional peak hold and the numeric readout beside it.

By default the module follows LOUDNESS · TL (a small → TL says so): target, work zone, red point, scale and colours come from there. Set SOURCE to Custom and the module starts from the timeline’s current values and goes its own way.

RADAR

Loudness history in a circle: a fixed graph with a head sweeping clockwise, painting the new and fading the old just before it catches up. Around it, a 270° LED arc with the live momentary and the target pinned at twelve o’clock. Inside, concentric rings with the LU scale.

The card header shows the active revolution: RADAR · 1 MIN, RADAR · 5 MIN…

Colour is inherited from LOUDNESS · TL. This is also the only gear where WARN and OVER are edited, and they are shared.

10.3 Spectrum

RTA

Fractional-octave band levels, IEC 61260-1 base 10, from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, with a dB scale on the left and Hz along the bottom.

SPECTROGRAM

Scrolling spectrogram, frequency axis from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

FFT SIZE and WINDOW are the same setting in RTA and SPECTROGRAM: change one and the other moves.

SPACE · SPATIAL

A vertical spectral panorama: frequency going up and left/right balance across. At a glance you see which range lives in the centre and which is spread to the sides.

10.4 Space and phase

SCOPE

The top-down disc: where each thing is sounding around you. Not a diagram — particles, each one a frequency band placed where it sounds.

How to read it:

• Angle = direction. FRONT at the top, REAR at the bottom, L and R literally.
• Distance from the centre = concentration. Right at the rim, it sounds from one speaker; near the centre, spread between opposite speakers — a diffuse field.
• Brightness and density = level.
• The small squares around the perimeter are the bed speakers, and they pulse with their channel’s level.
• If the format has height, the height energy appears as a screen-door pattern over the particles, and the word height shows top-right.

The particle engine behind SCOPE, VERTICAL SCOPE and CEILING is the same one as the AXIS Upmixer visualiser, adapted here for metering: the controls are named the same and behave the same, so what you know from one carries over.

The three COLOUR modes: Frequency colours by frequency (a spatial spectrogram); Layer uses two colours, floor and ceiling — the mode for judging how much you’re sending up top; 3-Band is a traffic light for lows, mids and highs.

VERTICAL SCOPE

Another view of the same field: the frontal screen. Azimuth across, floor to ceiling up, with the horizon line at ear height and the corners labelled CEILING and FLOOR.

CEILING

And one more: the ceiling seen from below, with its own height markers on an inner ring.

“Following the main scope”, at a glance. Both modules open with OVERLAY MAIN SCOPE SETTINGS = On: they mirror the SCOPE’s look and their controls appear dimmed. Set it to Off and each gets its own independent look — but you have to close and reopen the gear for the controls to come alive. The window itself tells you so.

With the override Off, both offer the same LOOK and PARTICLES sections as SCOPE, with these differences: CEILING has ARC WARP and VERTICAL SCOPE doesn’t, and the grid row is called MARKERS / FRAME on the vertical and MARKERS / RINGS on the ceiling.

PRISM

The surround surface analyser: a live polygon showing where the energy sits, with per-pair phase markers around the bezel and the field’s centre of gravity marked in the middle. Bed and ceiling carry different colours.

VECTORSCOPE

A goniometer with a phosphor trail, with the L and R axes on the diagonals and +S / −S at the sides.

CORRELATION

Correlation bars per group — L/R, LS/RS, LSR/RSR, SIDE/REAR, HEIGHTS, BED/TOP — with a −1 to +1 scale and the numeric value. Only the groups that exist in your format appear; if there are none, the card reads NO STEREO CONTENT. Plus a front Mid/Side triangle.

11. Global settings

The header gear. Three sections, and none of them is automatable, by design: a meter has to read the same on every pass.

The theme tints everything set to Theme colour, including the scope particles and the halo on the cards.

Window size is remembered per user, not per session. That’s deliberate: Pro Tools re-applies session data at moments other hosts don’t, and kept stomping the setting. Last resize wins.

12. Layout presets

A preset stores the arrangement and every module’s settings, not just where the cards are.

The bar in the centre of the header: ‹ · the active preset · › · SAVE.

SAVE opens a window with the NAME field and the list of what’s already saved (ALREADY SAVED). As you type, the window tells you what is about to happen:

• A new name → the button reads SAVE.
• A name that already exists → an amber warning, the row highlights and the button becomes OVERWRITE. Nothing is replaced by a click that looked like it was creating something.
• Default is the factory preset and cannot be replaced.

Saving over an existing preset and deleting one both ask for confirmation in a dialog — the same ones you’ll see on the iPad and the Mac. Enter saves.

Your presets live in ~/Documents/PRISM Analyzer/Layouts/. They’re ordinary files: copy them, back them up or move them to another machine.

Recalling one of your presets also restores the window size it was saved with. Recalling Default rearranges the board but leaves your window alone.

13. PRISM Monitor: what only the app has

Same app on iPad and Mac, same modules, same sources. It’s free.

13.1 What the app has and the plug-in doesn’t

• LISTEN — the button in the top bar plays a stereo fold-down of what you’re receiving from the master, on the iPad (or the Mac). No controls: on and off, and the volume is the device’s own. It only becomes available when there’s signal.
• RUN DEMO — a test signal for building your layout without a session (7.7).
• STEM SYNC — in global settings, a manual per-stem delay (in 5 ms steps) so a stem’s meter lines up with the master.
• Reset layout and Clear layout in the modules menu, instead of the Default preset.
• Factory presets: the app ships with seven ready-made layouts — Default, FULL & LOUDNESS, IMMERSIVE STEMS, LOUDNESS ONLY, SIMPLE CLASSIC, SIMPLE SURROUND, TOTAL BRIDGE. They never overwrite a preset of yours with the same name.

13.2 The app’s global settings

Open them with the gear in the top bar. Same ACCEPT / CANCEL rules as the plug-in.

WINDOW · FLOAT ON TOP set to DAW keeps the window on top only while the DAW is the front app — what you want 90 % of the time. There’s also a pin in the top bar that cycles the same setting.

KEEP SCREEN ON stops the iPad going to sleep while metering. It’s on by default; it costs battery, so it works best with the iPad plugged in.

STEM SYNC and the manual connection are immediate actions: CANCEL does not undo them.

13.3 Modules: what differs from the plug-in

The same modules are available in the app, with the same free arrangement and the same settings. They duplicate the same way from ADD ANOTHER, with a single exception: LOUDNESS cannot be copied in the app (it can in the plug-in).

Modules that always look at the master: LOUDNESS, SCOPE, DOWNMIX and the MULTI-METER BRIDGE. They are programme QC: they meter the complete mix and don’t follow a single stem.

13.4 Presets and rotation

The app’s presets are orientation-aware: saving captures both landscape and portrait at once, so rotating the iPad later still honours the preset. On the Mac there is only one orientation, and the preset also stores the window size.

The files live in the app’s Layouts folder: on the iPad you can see them in Files → On My iPad → PRISM Monitor → Layouts; on the Mac, in ~/Documents/Layouts/.

13.5 The Multi-Meter Bridge travels with the session

Edit a bridge on any screen and the Master Connect saves it with the project: sources, order, labels, colours, collapse. Reopen the project next week and each screen gets its own back.

Two details worth knowing:

• Each device keeps its own. The iPad and the Mac can have different bridges in the same session without stepping on each other.
• Sources are matched by stem name, so it doesn’t matter where you configured them.
• The preset decides how many bridge windows there are; the session only fills the ones already in your layout.

A source whose Connect has been silent for a few seconds dims and shows OFFLINE. It does not happen on programme silence — only when the sender is genuinely gone.

13.6 You don’t start from zero when you connect

As soon as the app connects, the Master sends it the loudness measurement it already has. LOUDNESS · TL appears already drawn, INTEGRATED comes up valid, and the distribution and the radar are populated. It doesn’t matter that you arrived mid-session.

And if the Master switches to serving another project, the screen zeroes itself: you will never see two sessions’ measurements mixed together.

14. The loudness measurement: RESET and HEAL

The programme measurement is a single one across the whole system: the plug-in, the master Connect, the iPad and the Mac all look at the same thing. That’s why the two operations that change it are global.

RESET

Where it is:

• The RESET button on the Analyzer’s LOUDNESS card.
• The RESET LOUDNESS HISTORY button in the LOUDNESS · TL settings.
• The RESET LOUDNESS button in the PRISM Connect window (Master only).
• In the app: the RESET pill on the LOUDNESS module, or the same button inside TIMELINE SETTINGS.

What it does: wherever you press it, everything clears at once — the plug-in, every stem, the master Connect and every connected screen. Gone are the integrated, the LRA, the distribution, the whole timeline, the radar, the momentary, short-term and true-peak maxima, and the over counters.

It doesn’t ask for confirmation. And it erases the session’s measurement: save afterwards and the project reopens clean. To keep a measurement, close without resetting.

HEAL

What it is: a one-off trim of the measured past. You type an in and an out timecode, confirm, and everything outside disappears. The timeline, the integrated, the LRA, the distribution and the radar are recalculated from what’s left only.

It’s for the usual thing: getting the rehearsal, the head tone or the wrong chapter out of the measurement without losing the good part.

After the trim the meter keeps measuring perfectly normally. It does not go deaf outside the range.

Where it is: in the LOUDNESS · TL module settings, below the RESET button. The HEAL LOUDNESS section has two fields, TC IN and TC OUT — you type digits only and the colons appear by themselves, as in Pro Tools — plus the HEAL LOUDNESS and CLEAR buttons. It’s the same in the plug-in and in the app.

What it tells you: a result line, green if it applied and red if it was rejected. For example Healed to 01:00:00:00 → 01:12:30:00 (750 s kept)., or TC OUT is before TC IN. Nothing was changed. — a reversed range is rejected, not silently fixed. If the session gives no timecode it tells you that too: without a session clock, a timecode range means nothing.

CLEAR removes the trim window so the full range is measured again, but it does not bring back what was deleted: Heal window removed — new programme is measured again. What the heal deleted does not come back.

The trim leaves no mark on the graph. The only visible trace is that the overview strip at the bottom now starts at the first kept point.

15. DAW notes and known limitations

Pro Tools

• Native AAX, Pro Tools 12.8.4 or later.
• PRISM does not change the track format: you insert it on the bus as it is, in whatever format it already has. It does not appear in the list with Stereo → X variants.
• After installing or updating: Cmd+Q and relaunch (Pro Tools caches the plug-in list between launches).
• The loudness measurement and the Multi-Meter Bridge configuration are saved inside the session.

Logic

• Via Audio Unit. Both plug-ins appear under Audio FX → Kaizen Audio.

Nuendo / Cubase / Studio One

• Via VST3, with each DAW’s named buses.

Reaper and hosts with generic buses

• When the host doesn’t say what the format is and only hands over a channel count, PRISM resolves it by the count and picks the most common format for that number (with 8 channels it assumes 7.1; with 14, 9.1.4). If your session uses the other format with that same count, the speaker positions in the scopes won’t be yours, although the levels will still be correct.
• Counts with no real equivalent (7, 9, 11, 13, 15 channels) are rejected: the plug-in can’t be inserted. That’s deliberate — a meter that pretends to know where each channel is, is lying.

Ambisonics

• Not accepted. W/X/Y/Z are not speakers, and metering them as if they were would give false positions and weightings.

Unsupported formats

• 9.1.2 is not there: Pro Tools Ultimate does not offer it as a native bus format.

16. Troubleshooting

The plug-in doesn’t show up in Pro Tools. The AAX lives in /Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins/Kaizen Audio. Pro Tools only scans at launch: quit it completely (Cmd+Q) and relaunch.

PRISM doesn’t show up in Logic. Check you have the latest version and restart the Mac (it forces an Audio Unit rescan).

The Analyzer only shows the activation screen. The licence isn’t valid. See section 4.

The iPad can’t find the computer. In order: did you grant the app local network permission? Are both on the same network? Is it a normal network, not a guest one with client isolation? As a last resort, the manual connection in 7.6.

The iPad says MASTER CONNECT NOT FOUND. Every PRISM Connect on that machine is set to Stem. Set one to Master.

The iPad says PRISM NOT ACTIVATED. The Connect is there but unlicensed, and unlicensed it publishes nothing. Activate it in the DAW.

The iPad says MASTER CONNECT IDLE. There is a licensed Master, but its track isn’t passing audio: check whether it’s inactive or the plug-in is bypassed.

The iPad says ROOM FULL. That room is already serving four screens, which is the maximum. Close PRISM Monitor on one of the other devices and this one will get in by itself, without touching anything.

A stem doesn’t appear in the Analyzer. The Analyzer only lists Connects that are live on the same machine. Check the plug-in isn’t bypassed, that the track is passing audio and that the Connect is activated.

Two stems have merged into one meter. That’s the grouping mechanism doing its job: they have the same STEM NAME. Give them different names to split them (6.4).

I see two sources with the same name. They have the same name but different channel formats, so they can’t be summed. Or you have two instances set to Master and one of them is acting as a stem under its stored name (6.2).

My module won’t let me choose a stem. Modules placed from MODULES ON BOARD always meter your own track. Add a copy with ADD ANOTHER and use the selector in its header (9.4).

I changed the look of CEILING or VERTICAL SCOPE and nothing happens. They’re following the main SCOPE. Set OVERLAY MAIN SCOPE SETTINGS to Off and close and reopen the gear.

I changed the FFT size in the RTA and the spectrogram changed too. It’s the same setting in both modules. That’s on purpose: it’s a single analysis.

I changed the RADAR revolution and my history was wiped. That’s what it does: changing the time scale invalidates what was painted. The warning is in the name of the setting itself.

The plug-in window comes back the wrong size. Size is stored per user, not per session, and the last resize wins. Set it once and it sticks.

“Online validation failed” on screen. The plug-in can’t reach the server (no internet, VPN, proxy?). You have 14 days of grace with the deadline in sight; get back online before that date (4.6).

I want to move the licence to another Mac. Kaizen logo → MANAGE LICENSE → Deactivate on the old machine; activate on the new one (4.5).

The scopes are smooth but the interface stutters in huge sessions. The scopes run on the GPU; the rest of the interface depends on the DAW’s interface thread, which saturates in very heavy sessions. It affects neither the audio nor the measurement. Closing plug-in windows you aren’t looking at saves a good deal — and that, precisely, is what the second screen is for.

Support: hello@kaizen.audio — write from your account’s email and include the plug-in version, DAW and system. The error messages in the licence panel can be selected and copied directly.

17. Specifications

How it measures

• M 400 ms, S 3 s, 100 ms hop — EBU Tech 3341.
• I — the BS.1770 two-stage gate: −70 LKFS absolute, −10 LU relative.
• LRA — Tech 3342, P95 − P10, −20 LU relative gate. It says so when it isn’t stable yet.
• True peak — ITU-R BS.1770-5, 4× oversampled.
• Channel weighting — BS.1770 Annex 3: 1.41 for surrounds between 60° and 120°, and 1.00 for every height channel. Weighting heights at 1.41 is the classic immersive-meter bug; PRISM doesn’t make it.

Delivery standards

The measurement never changes from one preset to another. The engine always integrates per ITU-R BS.1770-4/-5 with the EBU R128 two-stage gate, and measures true peak per BS.1770-5. What a preset chooses is the target, the tolerance and the true-peak ceiling you are graded against — the QC criterion, not the way of measuring.

The streaming platforms’ targets are their normalisation reference, not a ceiling that rejects a delivery: they turn the gain down, they don’t send the master back. Engineers still master to them, and they’re just as valid for QC.

The PASS badge requires both things: the integrated within tolerance and the maximum true peak below the ceiling.

From engineers to engineers.

PRISM Immersive Visualizer is a product of Kaizen Audio Group SL — kaizen.audio Pro Tools and AAX are trademarks of Avid Technology. Dolby and Dolby Atmos are trademarks of Dolby Laboratories. All trademarks cited belong to their respective owners.