rs-met

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Fri May 29, 2009 10:41 pm

with regard to your suggestion for representing the panorama position in the plot: well, to be honest - when i looked at the picture, my immediate gut reaction was like: "i have no idea what i see there". even though it might be desirable to adjust the pan postion from within the plot, i think the price of loosing an immediate intuitive understanding of the plot (without requiring much explanations) is a bit too high. i think, software user interfaces should ideally be understandable by intuition and exploration and should not require any explanations. the concept of the pan-plane within the normal plane...that's a bit...mmm...say...less then obvious.

Chester Desmond · Post by **Chester Desmond** » Sat May 30, 2009 1:38 am

that would imply to have different colors for the nodes. i think, it will be obvious from the distances (succesive spikes belonging to one group will be at equal distances). and as soon as the user grabs a node and moves it, s/he will see the group of spikes moving along.

I see what you mean and agree that this would be fairly intuitive.

Ironically, the first time I opened Delay Designer I assumed that the central line (O) was the center pan indicator

As far as my image is concerned, I can certainly see how it looks confusing given all the arrows and labelling. The secondary 'feedback' items are likely more confusing than useful.
Consider for a moment the left-most nodes only. The reddish amplitude node is sitting at approx 0.4 of the amplitude scale (which runs the height of the plot) and the blue node is panned to about 50% right (with the bounds being the upper and lower borders of the blue shaded area).
The second set of nodes have amplitude at approx 0.80 and the pan at Center. and so on.
The light blue pan 'strip' is not another plane per se, but rather a region superimposed on top of the plot. This allows the rather difficult task of showing 2 separate data (with different units of measure) in a single x\y plot. Their position in time is immediately viewable and each node's value is also apparent from its position within its own unique region of measurement. It is also easy to see one node's relation to others which are in different positions in time, whether you wish to compare amplitude or pan position.
I'll agree that it may not be immediately obvious but it's certainly not difficult to grasp once understood. I can't really comment on how intuitive it would be to a first time user, since it was my idea, but the fact that it was confusing to you tells me there's something wrong.
Obviously I'm not taking issue with your comments but just further explaining my line of thinking to be sure it was understood correctly.

Chester Desmond · Post by **Chester Desmond** » Sat May 30, 2009 2:18 am

By the way I should also mention that the plugin as it is right now, is intuitive and a joy to use. The viualization aspects would simply be icing on the cake.

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 9:03 pm

Chester Desmond wrote: Consider for a moment the left-most nodes only. The reddish amplitude node is sitting at approx 0.4 of the amplitude scale (which runs the height of the plot) and the blue node is panned to about 50% right (with the bounds being the upper and lower borders of the blue shaded area).
The second set of nodes have amplitude at approx 0.80 and the pan at Center. and so on.

i understand the plot now *after* these explanations but without them, i would have not. intially the plot looked to me like some barbells floating around. nonetheless, i certainly appreciate suggestions of that kind - so thanks for taking the time to work that out. however, i have now implemented the feedback visualization and a visualization of the pan-position via the horizontal lines sticking out of the nodes. here is the new version:

www.rs-met.com/software/betas/DelayDesigner_beta005.zip

i'm not yet entirely sure, whether this is the best way of visualizing the pan, but at least something

PaulSC · Post by **PaulSC** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 12:03 am

This is trivial compared to most of the issues discussed in the thread so far, but if this is planned as a commercial release, there may be problems with the working product name, since it duplicates the name of a plug-in in Apple's Logic 8 -- Delay Designer

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:49 am

PaulSC wrote:This is trivial compared to most of the issues discussed in the thread so far, but if this is planned as a commercial release, there may be problems with the working product name, since it duplicates the name of a plug-in in Apple's Logic 8 -- Delay Designer

damn. true. i stumbled upon this myself a couple of days ago. thanks for the heads up. i think, i will look for an alternative name then. suggestions are welcome.

Musical Gym · Post by **Musical Gym** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 4:18 am

Delayed Reaction

Yo D'Lady Who

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 12:27 pm

maybe any combination of (Delay/Echo/Reflection/...) with (Designer/Composer/Architect/...) would be suitable. or just Reflector/Reflex. but my current favourite would be 'EchoLot'.

@gym: i just see, that i missed to reply to a question sent via email:

Robin, do you have an idea of how many presets you want from each tester/designer? Is there a deadline for submission?

as it is relevant for all testers (or preset contributors), i think it makes sense to answer here:

well, as the contribution of presets is entirely voluntary there is no such thing as an expected number. as for the deadline: it would of course be good to have them prior to initial release (for which i don't have a date as of yet). however, i will also happily add presets that come in later. i'm planning to include subdirectories in the preset folder for each contributor which may have a name of your choice (either your real name or some pseudonym or whatever else you prefer). and maybe a textfile inside this directory with some info about you and/or your presets.

Chester Desmond · Post by **Chester Desmond** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 2:10 pm

I really like the new "feedback view" feature of beta5. makes it very easy to see what's happening with your sound. Not entirely sold on the pan 'spike', but it does do its job. Only real issue there is that once you get a lot of feedback present, it becomes harder to tell what's happening because the pan spikes kind of join together, but this is going to happen with any solution I would think once a certain density of echoes is present.

maybe any combination of (Delay/Echo/Reflection/...) with (Designer/Composer/Architect/...) would be suitable. or just Reflector/Reflex. but my current favourite would be 'EchoLot'.

some name ideas:
EchoPlot
Echoview (echovu)
Visual Delay
Delay Vision
Echovision

Musical Gym · Post by **Musical Gym** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 3:39 pm

Thanks for reply, Robin.
Echo Tech
Echo Park
Echotextural Dream Delay
Tangerine Echo
Echo Chamber
Echo Lab
Echo Echo

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 5:42 pm

Chester Desmond wrote:I really like the new "feedback view" feature of beta5. makes it very easy to see what's happening with your sound. Not entirely sold on the pan 'spike', but it does do its job.

same here.

Only real issue there is that once you get a lot of feedback present, it becomes harder to tell what's happening because the pan spikes kind of join together, but this is going to happen with any solution I would think once a certain density of echoes is present.

yes, i see the problem. how about a lane on top and bottom (corresponding to left and right channel) in which the echos appear as color/brightness intensities (just a quick random idea)

EchoPlot
Echoview (echovu)
Visual Delay
Delay Vision
Echovision

EchoView - not bad.

but gym's EchoLab is my new favourite - i find this kinda cool because it emphasizes the 'engineering' thing

thelizard · Post by **thelizard** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:21 pm

Echolab's a cool name.

Personally, I love the new feedback visualization. That is something I've never seen before on a delay, and it works well. It's very useful for creating sub-rhythms that turn on after the original tap's feedback terminates. Now, my preset folder is getting hefty hahah

pedrorf · Post by **pedrorf** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:28 pm

The new feedback view looks excellent indeed! Quite useful.

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:22 pm

thelizard wrote:Echolab's a cool name.

yes, i think this will be it! thanks musical gym for the good suggestion!

Now, my preset folder is getting hefty hahah

want!!

bk · Post by bk » Sat Jun 06, 2009 5:08 am

Wow! I've missed out on two Beta versions!
The new feedback display is killer! Not sure the pan is that useful, but it didn't get too much in the way.

My biggest request...How about changing the color of the selected node, rather than changing its appearance. I think that would make it much easier to see what you're actually working with.

Does anyone else feel that when "snap" is on, the time slider should also be quantized? It makes sense to me, but maybe there's a reason it isn't.

This delay really gives you the ability to generate some cool custom reverbs, if you take the time to do it. I have one I'm still tweaking to send you, Robin.

Demo mode works as expected in Tracktion 3. I'll be emailing my details to get a key to see if that works as well. I'll be doing further testing in Sonar and Reaper, shortly.

Robin, keep up the awesome work. This plugin is shaping up rather nicely.

rs-met

KVR Audio

EchoLab - (closed) beta test - release candidate 1