Waveform 9 review...

[Robert Randolph]

I'm currently doing a review series on Waveform 9.

I'm not much for self-promotion, however in this case I'm posting it here in case anyone has specific corrections to make, or suggestions for things that you'd like to see discussed about Waveform 9.

Of course, I'd like to make sure the developers see the review as well

There will probably be 6-8 parts to the review.

Current parts here:

• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... orm-9.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-1.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-2.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-3.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-4.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-5.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-6.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-7.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... art-8.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... eview.html
• http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/ ... usion.html

[gesslr]

Hi.

I’ve always enjoyed your reviews/articles.

I have not finished the review, but this part is incorrect:

Racks do not have ‘control signals’. You can not route automation data or modulation Data. You can add ‘modifiers’ to racks, but not inside of racks, which is unfortunate and confusing when you have a single rack across your project. I will discuss modfiers in a later post, but they are a way to modulate parameters outside of automation. The implication of having no control signals is that affecting changes beyond what’s written is impossible. Slight adjustments must be made at the source, and there’s no ‘modulation of modulation’.

On my way out of the door, so I can’t give you the answer here, but if you search this forum, you will find a thread on adding modulators inside of racks. It’s fairly simple, but not obvious. I’ll try to circle back later.

[gesslr]

Here’s the thread....

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=498790&p=6993802#p6993802

[Robert Randolph]

Thanks, this is exactly the sort of thing Im looking for. Ill update the post asap.

[jabe]

On a couple of quick read-throughs, having a heading that says "No scripting" and then immediately saying there is scripting makes the header inaccurate.

The "No menus" header is also inaccurate; there are context-specific right-click menus in many places, and the Properties Panel does a very good job of giving you whatever you need for whatever you highlighted. One of the main reasons I rejected Cubase many years ago was because it had a menu bar across the top with a million nested options making trying to find a particular option laborious, but you claim this tedious searching is a good thing: "This search lets me search through all menu items and find what I need." Who needs or wants to search thought "all menu items" when stuff is in the obvious place?

"OS shortcuts don’t always work" - but you can change the Waveform shortcuts. It's not always possible to get a piece of software to react in the same way to each OS shortcut (and I do use them when I can, being brought up on DOS). Context is everything with Waveform, but there are inevitably places where - for bad example - trying to copy something is ambiguous.

I'd strongly take issue with "you need to basically relearn how to use a computer to interact with Waveform".

[gesslr]

Thanks, this is exactly the sort of thing Im looking for. Ill update the post asap.

That’s great. I wish more reviewers would do this type of thing...

[gesslr]

On a couple of quick read-throughs, having a heading that says "No scripting" and then immediately saying there is scripting makes the header inaccurate.

I must have not gotten to this part yet, but if I am interpreting this comment correctly, Waveform in fact has a very powerful macro scripting engine available if you know a bit of JavaScript. There’s a thread pinned to the top of the forum talking about it.

Granted, you need to be willing to work with a bit of code to realize it’s full potential (similar to ReaScript I guess), but what’s there gives a lot of power.

[Robert Randolph]

On a couple of quick read-throughs, having a heading that says "No scripting" and then immediately saying there is scripting makes the header inaccurate.

I think that you are not reading the context of this, and the _very next_ sentence where I say "Waveform does offer some scripting". I will have an entire section on Waveform's scripting in a future post as well.

The context of that section is about native integration. Waveform does not allow easy scripting with native OS provided scripting solutions or third party alternatives.

I feel like I explained this well.

The "No menus" header is also inaccurate; there are context-specific right-click menus in many places, and the Properties Panel does a very good job of giving you whatever you need for whatever you highlighted. One of the main reasons I rejected Cubase many years ago was because it had a menu bar across the top with a million nested options making trying to find a particular option laborious, but you claim this tedious searching is a good thing: "This search lets me search through all menu items and find what I need." Who needs or wants to search thought "all menu items" when stuff is in the obvious place?

This is once again about native menus. I'll make this more clear.

"OS shortcuts don’t always work" - but you can change the Waveform shortcuts. It's not always possible to get a piece of software to react in the same way to each OS shortcut (and I do use them when I can, being brought up on DOS). Context is everything with Waveform, but there are inevitably places where - for bad example - trying to copy something is ambiguous.

You can't add OS-level short-cuts. Like on mac with ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-b, etc... You also are unable to map global shortcuts.

Once again this entire section is about native integration. Being able to assign shortcuts in Waveform is completely irrelevant.

I'd strongly take issue with "you need to basically relearn how to use a computer to interact with Waveform".

It seems that this section isn't making sense to you for some reason... I'm going to look over it again and see if I can clarify somehow.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you are used to how your OS or Window Manager does things, Waveform does not provide a natively integrated experience. Switching windows, editing text, positioning windows, screen capturing, etc...

I can understand how this may not matter if you don't use your operating system's, or window manager's, native capabilities much but in that case you can simply skip this section. I will make that more clear.

Edit: I have clarified this better I hope. There is now a disclaimer of sorts at the top of the section to help better explain the context of these criticisms.

Thank you for bringing this up.

[Robert Randolph]

Here’s the thread....

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=498790&p=6993802#p6993802

So I investigated this more. It appears that this method does not add a modifier inside of the rack. The modifier lives on the track and is assigned to a parameter inside of the rack.

If the track disappears then the modifier disappears, meaning that it's not part of the rack but instead part of the track.

Here's an animated gif of me doing the process so you can see if I'm doing something incorrect:



I believe that my original statement is correct at this point. I will attempt to clarify it though.

[Robert Randolph]

I'd made changes to clarify the language in the issues brought up.

Thanks folks! Keep em coming.

[jabe]

I'd made changes to clarify the language in the issues brought up.

Thanks folks! Keep em coming.

Part of the problem I have, Robert, is that some people will just scan headers and headlines without reading further. Most mornings, to get my eyes accustomed to being awake, I read through the Google Play News Stand on my phone, and I pick articles based on the headlines. In some cases a headline can tell me all I need to know, but if the headline doesn't reflect what's in the article (and I've seen that numerous times), I end up with a mistaken impression.

[jabe]

On a couple of quick read-throughs, having a heading that says "No scripting" and then immediately saying there is scripting makes the header inaccurate.

I think that you are not reading the context of this, and the _very next_ sentence where I say "Waveform does offer some scripting". I will have an entire section on Waveform's scripting in a future post as well.

I don't want to put a damper on what you're trying to do, but this feels like your argument against what I said it to repeat exactly what I said. As I pointed out in the post above, some people will only read the headers.

[jabe]

"OS shortcuts don’t always work" - but you can change the Waveform shortcuts. It's not always possible to get a piece of software to react in the same way to each OS shortcut (and I do use them when I can, being brought up on DOS). Context is everything with Waveform, but there are inevitably places where - for bad example - trying to copy something is ambiguous.

You can't add OS-level short-cuts. Like on mac with ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-b, etc... You also are unable to map global shortcuts.

Once again this entire section is about native integration. Being able to assign shortcuts in Waveform is completely irrelevant.

Perhaps there are more such OS shortcuts on Macs than on PCs, which may have misled me. I was thinking more of standardised shortcuts on PCs that are meant to be standard but operate on software rather than Windows. Ctrl-a, ctrl-b, ctrl-r, ctr-v/c/x, etc, all operate on software and not the OS. There's no reason one couldn't assign most of those to appropriate Waveform functions.

[Robert Randolph]

"OS shortcuts don’t always work" - but you can change the Waveform shortcuts. It's not always possible to get a piece of software to react in the same way to each OS shortcut (and I do use them when I can, being brought up on DOS). Context is everything with Waveform, but there are inevitably places where - for bad example - trying to copy something is ambiguous.

You can't add OS-level short-cuts. Like on mac with ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-b, etc... You also are unable to map global shortcuts.

Once again this entire section is about native integration. Being able to assign shortcuts in Waveform is completely irrelevant.

Perhaps there are more such OS shortcuts on Macs than on PCs, which may have misled me. I was thinking more of standardised shortcuts on PCs that are meant to be standard but operate on software rather than Windows. Ctrl-a, ctrl-b, ctrl-r, ctr-v/c/x, etc, all operate on software and not the OS. There's no reason one couldn't assign most of those to appropriate Waveform functions.

Yes, there's definitely more shortcuts provided by native libraries and OS-based facilities offered by macOS. Similar for Linux based window managers.

For instance when I type, I very frequently use alt-arrow keys, ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-f-, ctrl-b. These work in nearly every macOS text box but they don't work in Waveform and there's no way to change that.

Likewise I often like to use Applescript or hammerspoon to create scripts that rely on native library functions to automate tasks (or create global shortcut integration with the software). Waveform does not support any of these things since it does not expose functionality that way.

I did update the very first sentence of that section to say that this might be a good thing, and that the criticism was from my perspective.

The title of the section is 'Non-Native' as well, if you have a better suggestion for communicating my issue in this regard I'm willing to change it.

Thanks again!

[jabe]

"OS shortcuts don’t always work" - but you can change the Waveform shortcuts. It's not always possible to get a piece of software to react in the same way to each OS shortcut (and I do use them when I can, being brought up on DOS). Context is everything with Waveform, but there are inevitably places where - for bad example - trying to copy something is ambiguous.

You can't add OS-level short-cuts. Like on mac with ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-b, etc... You also are unable to map global shortcuts.

Once again this entire section is about native integration. Being able to assign shortcuts in Waveform is completely irrelevant.

Perhaps there are more such OS shortcuts on Macs than on PCs, which may have misled me. I was thinking more of standardised shortcuts on PCs that are meant to be standard but operate on software rather than Windows. Ctrl-a, ctrl-b, ctrl-r, ctr-v/c/x, etc, all operate on software and not the OS. There's no reason one couldn't assign most of those to appropriate Waveform functions.

Yes, there's definitely more shortcuts provided by native libraries and OS-based facilities offered by macOS. Similar for Linux based window managers.

For instance when I type, I very frequently use alt-arrow keys, ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-f-, ctrl-b. These work in nearly every macOS text box but they don't work in Waveform and there's no way to change that.

Likewise I often like to use Applescript or hammerspoon to create scripts that rely on native library functions to automate tasks (or create global shortcut integration with the software). Waveform does not support any of these things since it does not expose functionality that way.

I did update the very first sentence of that section to say that this might be a good thing, and that the criticism was from my perspective.

The title of the section is 'Non-Native' as well, if you have a better suggestion for communicating my issue in this regard I'm willing to change it.

Thanks again!

That seems fair. I'll have another look later.

I have to admit (and I think a search of my posts on here would back it up) that I can get rather defensive when I feel criticism of the DAW or TSC has been less than fair, and I did pick up a bit of a negative tone ("The mixer sucks!"), though I probably concentrated most on "The Bad" section.