Manuals · SELANCE Capture

SELANCE Capture manual.

Turn any track into a reference — capture the audio playing on your Mac and save tonal-balance curves that land straight in SELANCE.

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What SELANCE Capture does

SELANCE Capture is a companion app for the SELANCE mastering plugin. It listens to whatever is playing through your speakers or headphones — a playlist, a record, your DAW, another browser tab — and measures its tonal balance in real time as a live spectral curve, next to a momentary loudness meter.

When you stop the capture, the tool computes the integrated balance of that listening session and lets you save it as a named reference curve. That curve is written directly into the file SELANCE reads, so it appears in the plugin's My References — and, if you tag it, in the per-section references picker.

Nothing you play is ever recorded or stored — only the aggregate spectral statistics of the capture are kept.

Capture workflow

  • Click Iniciar Captura (Start Capture).
  • Play the reference material you want to capture — your Mac routes it to SELANCE Capture automatically.
  • Watch the live curve and the loudness meter while it plays. The longer and more representative the material, the more stable the saved profile.
  • Click Detener Captura (Stop Capture) when you're ready.
  • Give the curve a name, optionally pick a section tag, and click Guardar Curva (Save Curve).
  • The curve is now available in SELANCE → My References.

A capture only becomes saveable once real audio was detected — silence can never be saved as a target.

The capture screen

  • Status indicator — Ready, Starting, Capturing, Stopping or Error. While capturing, the dot pulses in the accent colour.
  • Live curve — thirty-one third-octave bands from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, drawn as a smooth teal curve. The horizontal grid runs from 0 to −60 dB and the axis is logarithmic.
  • Loudness meter — a segmented meter from −50 to 0 LUFS with the current momentary loudness shown as text (e.g. −24.5 LUFS, or – ∞ before signal arrives).
  • Elapsed time & sample rate — e.g. "00:34 · 48000 Hz". The rate appears once the capture starts.
  • Resolution picker — Low (2048), Medium (4096, default) and High (8192) FFT sizes. Higher resolution shows finer detail; lower responds faster.
  • Start / Stop button — the same control toggles between Iniciar Captura and Detener Captura.

Absolute meter vs. relative curve

These two reads answer different questions.

  • The meter is absolute. It measures loudness in LUFS (ITU-R BS.1770-5) and changes with your system volume — it tells you how loud the material is playing.
  • The saved curve is relative. Each band is expressed against the total energy of the capture, so the balance never depends on system volume. A quiet listen and a loud listen of the same track produce the same target.

SELANCE Capture measures the same six macro-bands SELANCE uses — Sub, Low, Low-Mid, Mid, High-Mid and High — so the curve lands in the plugin exactly as the plugin expects.

Saving a curve

After stopping a capture, type a name, pick an optional section tag and click Guardar Curva. The save button stays disabled until there is a valid capture with signal and a non-empty name.

The tag decides where the curve is available in SELANCE:

  • Global Target — the default; appears in My References as a general target.
  • Intro / Verse / Chorus / Bridge / Outro / Other — tagged curves also become assignable to the matching section in SELANCE's Sections References picker.

Saved curves include their integrated loudness (LUFS) and capture date, stored in the same format SELANCE's reference library reads.

The Saved Targets list

  • Every saved target is listed with its name, date and section tag, newest first.
  • Select a target to preview its six-band curve, date and loudness.
  • Re-tag — change a saved curve's section tag without re-capturing it.
  • Delete — remove a target with the × control.

Permissions & troubleshooting

The first time you try to start a capture, macOS may ask for permission to record system audio. If capture fails, a card explains the fix:

  • Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → System Audio Recording and enable SELANCE Capture.
  • Quit and reopen the app.
  • Make sure an output device (speakers or headphones) is active — system audio needs a destination.

Use the Reintentar (Retry) button to try again once everything is set. SELANCE Capture always uses your system's default output device; the app itself only stores spectral statistics, never audio.