What's new

Full EQ and 3D Surround editing land in Simple mode, the Enhanced HRTF model is now free for everyone, plus a big batch of stability, contrast, and layout fixes.

• NEW Aura now shows a brief notification when it recovers from a common audio hiccup: a device reconnecting after being unplugged and replugged, an app losing exclusive-mode access and falling back to shared mode, or the engine failing to start. These events were previously silent unless you went digging through the log file.
• NEW Simple mode: each processor's preset dropdown (Gate, Compressor, EQ, 3D Surround) now has a "Default" entry at the top that resets it to factory values — no more saving a "reset" preset yourself just to undo experimenting.
• NEW The "Enhanced" HRTF model (synthetic pinna cues, sharper localization than the default Generic model) is now available on Free — previously bundled with the measured/imported models under one Premium gate, even though it's fully synthetic and carries none of their licensing cost. Simple mode now also selects it automatically the first time you turn on 3D Surround if you're on Free (Premium still gets "Immersive" by default, unchanged).
• NEW Simple mode: the EQ island on both sources and outputs has a new gear (⚙) that opens the full band editor (the same one Advanced uses) — drag bands, change type, add/remove, save presets. Previously Simple mode's channel EQ could only pick a preset (no band editing at all), and output buses had no EQ editing whatsoever beyond an on/off switch.
• IMPROVED The parametric EQ editor (Advanced and Simple's quick-edit modal) moved its preset list out of a side panel and into a "PRESET ▼" dropdown in the title bar, matching how 3D Surround's presets work — apply or save without a dedicated panel eating into the layout. The selected band's controls (Gain, Q, Hz, Type, On/Delete) were also tidied into a single compact card instead of being split across a stretched box, and the curve display grew to fill the freed-up space.
• IMPROVED Custom HRIR: importing a .sofa file only pays its slow one-time parsing cost once per file. Previously the same large SOFA file was re-parsed from scratch every time it was resolved — a different channel using it, an app restart, or a repeat selection — which made working with several large imports at once needlessly slow.
• IMPROVED The Gain node's quick panel (Input → FX → Gain) now has its ON/OFF toggle right next to a redesigned "Edit bands →" button, both sitting just under the preset picker, with the EQ curve preview moved below that row.
• IMPROVED The FX chain "Arrange" button (Input → FX) now fills each row to 5 nodes before wrapping to a new one; if the chain doesn't divide evenly, the leftover row aligns to the right instead of the left.
• IMPROVED Channel Type (Input → Setup) moved to the top of the panel, since it decides which source-specific section is shown below it — previously it sat at the very bottom, below the section it controls.
• IMPROVED Bus → Setup's "Output Device" section is now "Output Destination" (a bus can also be a process-capture target, not just a physical/virtual device) and reorganized: Output type now leads instead of being buried in a grid below the device picker, the Bit Depth/Sample Rate fields were removed (they're fixed values across the whole app and never told you anything), the Windows Sound Settings shortcut moved into the section header, and the Premium banner for Volume Normalization moved to the top of the whole panel instead of dwarfing the feature it was labeling. An "Application (capture)" bus no longer shows a device picker — it always plays silently on the system's default device, since you never monitor it yourself.
• IMPROVED "Virtual (cable)" is no longer offered as a channel or bus type — today it behaves identically to Physical (both just pick a device from the same list), and it's reserved for a signed Aura driver that isn't shipped yet and will assign it automatically. Anything already set to Virtual now behaves as Physical.
• IMPROVED Input → Setup reorganized: Channel Mode and the live capture-status indicator (previously repeated identically in every source-type section) now live once in a shared "Source" section at the top, next to Channel Type. In the Application Process section, the process list's filter row moved up next to the process picker it belongs to, and "Include child processes" moved next to it too, instead of being paired with Channel Mode at the bottom (which has since moved elsewhere).
• IMPROVED Simple mode no longer shows the active preset's name next to each processor's title (Gate, Compressor, EQ, 3D Surround) — it was taking up space without adding much in an already compact layout. The preset dropdown itself still shows what's selected.
• IMPROVED A bus's LUFS compliance-target dropdown (Home tab) now has a tooltip explaining what it does — picking a platform (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, EBU R128, ATSC A/85) colors the loudness readout above green/yellow/red against that platform's published spec.
• IMPROVED The Spatial diagram (Input → Spatial) is noticeably bigger, and its background elements (crosshair, range rings, front-arc highlight, inactive speaker labels) now use proper theme colors instead of near-black values that were barely visible.
• IMPROVED Stereo mode's Spatial diagram: the Balance dot can no longer be dragged off its horizontal axis (Stereo has no front/back parameter to move it on). The old width arc was replaced with two dots that spread apart as Width increases — and now reflect the actual combined effect of Width and Mid/Side ratio together, matching what the engine applies, instead of Width alone. Haas Delay now shows as a faint trailing dot on the right image, since that's the channel it actually delays.
• IMPROVED Binaural HRTF (point-source) Spatial diagram: the dot now moves on a real polar plot — Azimuth sweeps it around in an arc and Distance moves it toward/away from center, instead of both being squashed onto a straight X/Y grid. Distance Attenuation now visibly fades the dot the further out it sits. Elevation moved to its own small vertical gauge next to the diagram, since a flat top-down view can't show a third axis without taking over one that already means something else.
• IMPROVED Simple mode's "3D Surround" tile has a new gear (⚙) that opens a quick-edit window with the same diagram, position controls, and Stereo/Binaural HRTF mode switch as Advanced — previously, Simple mode could only ever force Binaural HRTF on, with no way to reach Stereo's own Width/Balance/Haas/ Mid-Side controls at all. The tile itself is simpler now (the preset picker and HRTF model picker both moved into the new window, alongside its own SP ON/OFF toggle) — the tile keeps its own ON/OFF for a quick toggle without opening anything.
• IMPROVED The Model HRTF picker (Input → Spatial → Binaural HRTF) is now a row of buttons instead of a dropdown — all four models and their Premium lock state are visible at a glance instead of hidden until you open the menu.
• FIX Workshop: removing your own published item from the Workshop, or publishing one, could fail silently with no error shown if something went wrong partway through — the confirmation dialog's callback wasn't actually waiting for those (asynchronous) actions to finish, so a failure after the first step just vanished instead of surfacing.
• FIX Binaural HRTF: moving the position (Azimuth slider or the Spatial diagram dot) across certain angles could produce an audible click or crackle. The DSP crossfades between the two nearest speaker HRIRs and internally tracked their processing state by an arbitrary "role" (first/second) rather than by which physical speaker it belonged to — so a speaker that stayed continuously active across a crossfade boundary could still have its in-flight audio state wiped just because its internal role flipped, producing a brief dropout. Most noticeable while smoothly dragging through a position rather than jumping directly to it.
• FIX Custom HRIR: importing a large .sofa file (tens of MB, thousands of measurement positions) could freeze the whole window for a minute or more with no feedback, and switching Advanced Config tabs mid-import could drop the result. Import now runs in the background with a progress notice explaining the wait, keeps going even if you switch tabs, and reports success or failure with a toast when done.
• FIX Dragging the Gain node's knob (Input → FX → Gain) could visibly stutter or briefly freeze the UI — every drag tick was triggering a full mixer recalculation instead of a lightweight live update.
• FIX The Gain node's ON/OFF button didn't actually bypass the gain stage — toggling it off left the trim applied.
• FIX The Balance slider (Input → Spatial → Stereo) only applied its new value once you released the mouse, instead of live while dragging like every other Spatial slider.
• FIX The app-loopback process picker (Input → Setup) could list Aura Mixer's own processes as capture targets — picking one of those could create an audio feedback loop.
• FIX The Limiter and Delay preset pickers on an output bus used a plain dropdown that looked out of place next to the matching preset picker style used everywhere on the input side. Unified.
• FIX Per-speaker surround VU meters (multichannel channels, HomeTab/SpatialTab) stayed frozen at their last live reading after stopping the engine instead of dropping to silence, alongside the correctly- behaving stereo meters.
• FIX Gate/Compressor: the blue operating-point indicator on the threshold graph could disappear entirely once the incoming level dropped low enough (e.g. after an upstream Gain reduction), instead of resting near the bottom of the graph like the rest of the display.
• FIX Binaural HRTF: dragging the Azimuth position past ±170° could produce a brief click as the source crossed directly behind the listener — the two-speaker blend used there could snap to a different speaker pair instead of fading between them smoothly. Sweeping through that area is now smooth.
• FIX Stereo: double-clicking the Mid / Side ratio slider to reset it now returns it to 50% (its actual default) instead of jumping to 100%.
• FIX Binaural HRTF: new channels now start with Distance at its 1 m reference position instead of 0 m — previously, Distance Attenuation had no audible effect until Distance was also moved away from its effective starting point.
• FIX Removed the non-functional Room Reverb slider from the Binaural HRTF panel — it never affected audio. A real implementation is tracked for a future release.
• FIX Surround (5.1/7.1) sources could go silent on the centre, LFE and rear/side speakers. If nothing played on the front-left/right channels for about two seconds, the channel's processing was suspended as if the input had gone quiet — so anything arriving only on the other speakers was dropped. Most noticeable when testing individual speakers (e.g. Windows' speaker setup test), where every speaker after the first few produced no sound at all. Surround channels are now detected across all their speakers, not just the front pair.
• FIX The app's embedded browser component was storing its cache/profile data (tens of MB, growing over time) inside the install folder itself instead of alongside the rest of Aura's saved data. This also meant it wasn't cleaned up if you chose to remove your data on uninstall. It now lives next to your sessions, presets and settings, and is covered by that same removal prompt.
• FIX A few leftover files from the project template (an unused placeholder image, a boilerplate "about this folder" text file, a developer-only note) were being installed even though nothing in the app used them. Removed.
• FIX Recalling a saved scene changed the sound correctly but didn't refresh what the Gate/Compressor panels (and several other tabs) displayed on screen — you had to touch something unrelated before the visible knob positions caught up to what was actually playing.
• FIX Saving a new preset (Gate, Compressor, Limiter, Delay, Spatial, EQ) didn't add it to that preset's own dropdown until something unrelated forced the screen to refresh — the save itself always worked.
• FIX VCA group overview: the color legend showed a raw color code (e.g. var(--success)) instead of a readable name, and each member channel's tile always showed 0.0 dB regardless of that channel's actual fader position until something else forced a refresh.
• FIX A channel's Home tab always showed a placeholder for Peak and Clip at the top (never the live values), and its routing summary always read "→ Main L+R" regardless of where the channel was actually routed.
• FIX In a channel's Sends list, the "App" badge on a process-output bus had no styling at all (plain text, no color or background), and the "Phys" badge there used a different color than the same badge everywhere else in the app. Both now match the rest of the UI.
• FIX The "SYS" badge on system FX nodes, the background track on rotary knobs across Advanced, a bus's "POST" label and "CLR" button, the VCA group member list's remove button, and a VCA group's "Remove group" button all had contrast too low to read comfortably against the app's dark theme — several of them were colors that only ever got checked against a light background. All now use the same visible, theme-aware color the rest of the UI does.
• FIX Several labels in the Spatial tab (format/mode labels, section headers, per-channel speaker labels and their level values) used a font size the app's own style sheet explicitly documents as "too small for normal text" — bumped to a readable size, and the per-channel numbers/labels bumped one step further since they're the main content of that screen. A HRTF hint line was also using a color variable that doesn't exist, so it wasn't rendering with its intended muted color.
• FIX A VCA group's member list showed each channel's type as plain text instead of the same colored badge used everywhere else in the app.
• FIX A VCA group's Setup fields (Name, Icon) had no spacing between them and looked stuck together.
• FIX A freshly created channel or bus could start with an icon that didn't match any option in its own Icon picker — the picker showed the wrong one (or blank) until you manually picked something, because the icon it started with had never actually been added to the picker's own list. The same applied to new VCA groups. Fixed for all three.
• FIX A capture-status hint line in Input → Setup ("runs at the per-process session layer...", shown for Loopback and App Loopback channels) and the "Windows sound settings" shortcut across all of Input → Setup's source sections had the same low-contrast color issue as elsewhere in this batch — fixed.
• FIX Removed the non-functional "ISP caught" counter from a bus's Limiter panel — it never counted anything, and the DSP limiter never tracked inter-sample-peak catches to begin with. A real implementation is planned for a future release, same as the Room Reverb slider above.
• FIX The "Default output for all channels" note on the Main bus's Home tab had the same low-contrast color issue as elsewhere in this batch — fixed.
• FIX Simple mode: picking a Gate or Compressor preset (or the new "Default" reset above) changed the sound correctly but didn't move the Thresh/Attack/Release/Ratio knobs to match — they only caught up after switching to Advanced and back. The knobs now update immediately.
• FIX A newly added output bus could appear on a page you weren't currently viewing instead of right where you'd expect it — pagination (Simple and Advanced) always shows existing buses first and never jumped to show a fresh one. New buses now always appear immediately; if you have enough of them to need pagination, it's the older ones that page away, not the one you just created.
• FIX The installer now cleans up files left behind by an older version instead of leaving them in place after an update, and detects if Aura Mixer is still running before installing over it (previously only automatic updates handled this — a manually re-run installer could try to overwrite files still in use).
• FIX Changing an output bus's position (e.g. reordering buses) could leave a physical output bus completely silent — the meters kept showing signal, but no audio actually reached the device — until the app/engine was restarted. Reordering now correctly reconnects each bus to its intended output.
• FIX A 5.1/7.1 channel's per-speaker input meter (Home tab) only used about half of its available width, leaving the rest of the column empty.