Strata is available at a special launch price of US$25 during December 2025. The standard price will be US$75.
Actually, no one has ever asked us these questions. I just made up a bunch of questions that I thought you might ask, and answered them. :-) So let's go!
Q: What if I deploy Strata Track to lots of tracks in my project and something goes wrong with my Strata licence. won't my entire project go silent?! Will I be forced to go through all the tracks in my project deactivating or deleting Strata Track to get my project working again?
A: No. Strata Track will ALWAYS pass your audio through, even if there is valid licence certificate. You never have to worry about this.
Q: So I have to put this thing on every track? Won't that crash my DAW?! I don't need another plugin that might crash my DAW!
A: I sympathise, but I am really aware that Strata is worse than useless if it crashes your DAW, so I have taken great care to ensure that Strata Track and Strata Vision are rock solid plugins with no memory leaks or crashes or such. The best way to realise how solid Strata is is to try it for yourself. But please don't buy five other plugins and deploy them at the same time, and then blame all the crashes on Strata!
Q: What if I deploy Strata and love it, but later on run out of CPU? What do I do then? Do I have to remove all instances of Strata Track to recover?
A: Maybe. It depends on how low on resources your DAW project is. But you should know that Strata Vision has a control panel that allows you to turn off most Strata Vision and Strata Track processing with one click to conserve CPU. In addition, some DAWs (such as Bitwig) allow you not just to turn off an instance of a plugin, but also to deactivate it (so it no longer uses CPU or RAM). So if you use Bitwig and are concerned about resources, you can deactivate all the instances of Strata Track (manually) so they no longer use CPU and RAM, but leaving them in place so you can use them again if you upgrade your computer or reduce CPU load in other parts of the project.
Q: So I have to put this thing on every track? Won't that use lots of CPU and RAM and slow down my project?
A: No, not unless you are extremely resource constrainted. Each Strata Track instance uses ~10MB of memory (~30MB if sandboxed) and ~1% of a CPU core. So if you have 50 tracks, Strata Track will use about 0.5GB of RAM and about 50% of a CPU core. It might use far less RAM than this if you don't have plugin sandboxing turned on. Strata Vision typically uses about 70% of a CPU core. The total load is not insignificant, but should not impact most DAW projects unless you are right on the edge of your resourcess.
Q: If I add Strata Track to the end of each plugin chain, Strata Vision's graph won't show the effect of my track faders!
A: Correct. This is a significant problem for Strata and can be addressed in three ways: 1. If you don't care that Strata Vision shows the relative volume of your tracks, and you just want to see where each track is in the frequency spectrum, then this problem doesn't matter. 2. Set all your track faders to 0dB and add a "Tool" or "Utility" plugin to each track (just behind Strata Track) to set the track volumes. 3. Create a new "monitoring" track for each track in your project and route each track to its corresponding monitoring track. Then place an instance of Strata Track on each of the monitoring tracks. This is a clumsy solution but allows you to keep using your faders.
Q: If I copy an instance of Strata Track and paste it into another track, it's going to screw up isn't it? I have to create a brand new instance of Strata Track for each track don't I?
A: No. Strata has been specifically designed to allow you to copy and paste its instances to deploy it quickly on multiple tracks. It will all work.
Q: I tried putting Strata Vision on the master track, but Strata Vision complained about this. Why?
A: Strata Vision is "just" a monitoring plugin. It doesn't do anything except display a graph. It doesn't NEED to be anywhere. So there's no need to put it signal chain at all. It's safest to keep it away from ther signal chain on it's own dedicated track.
Q: How can I get rid of annoying things on the screen such as the track list?
A: In Strata Vision, open the control panel at the bottom. You will see lots of control panels for turning features on and off.
Q: Does the graph show the tracks behind each other?
A: No. The track spectra are NOT behind each other. They are simply stacked on top of each other. That's why the plugin is called "Strata": because it's like geological Strata. This means that it's immediately obvious what the relative decibel volume of each track is at any frequency.
Q: In the Strata graph, what is the Y axis?
A: The Y axis is decibels. Each track's spectrum is plotted with its thickness being its height above a "Min dB" setting (which you can set in the Amplitude control panel). By default the Min dB is -72dB. So if a track contains white noise and has a volume of -60dB, it will be plotted as a flat line (subject to the slope parameter) that is 12db high on the graph. Another similar track with a volume of -66dB will be plotted as 6dB high on the graph and will look half as high.
Q: Will Strata automatically pick up the track names and colours from my DAW project?
A: By default, Strata uses "rainbow" colours, but if you want it to automatically pick up the track names and colours from your DAW project, open the Strata control panel (at the bottom) and go to the Palette control panel and set it to "DAW" mode. Warning: While Strata will pick up the track names from all supported DAWs, it can't pick up the colours from Logic Pro, Garage Band, or Studio One. I hope to fix this in a future version, but cannot guarantee it.
Q: Can Strata display mid/side?
A: Yes, sort of. Most plugins that do mid/side allow you to see or work with both mid and side at the same time. The current version of Strata can display mid and side, but only one at a time. I hope to fix this in a future version (and do both left/right too), but cannot guarantee it.
Q: Can Strata display left/right?
A: Yes, sort of. Most plugins that do left/right allow you to see or work with both left and right at the same time. The current version of Strata can display left and right, but only one at a time. I hope to fix this in a future version (and do both mid/side too), but cannot guarantee it.
Q: Does Strata display the low end of the frequency spectrum accurately?
A: Yes. The actual resolution depends on the Strata processing block size (not the DAW's block size). By default, Strata analyses the audio signal in blocks of 4096 samples. This results in a minimum detectable frequency of 11.72Hz and frequency bin width of 11.72Hz. This is a pretty good resolution for the low end, but if you want even better resolution, you can set the block size to 8192 samples for a resolution of 5.86Hz or 16384 samples for a resolution of 2.93Hz. You won't want better resolution than that unless you are making music for whales.
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