MU.LAB 2.0 PreRelease D

[MuTools]

Ok, glad it's solved

Thanks for letting us know.

[MuTools]

Not really a bug, just a little thing:
after unlocking the free version with my key to the unlimited version, the start screen still appears as "free" version. If i use the help/about mulab menu, than it says "unlimited".
greetings T.

Thanks, will be fixed in the next version!

[robenestobenz]

Grr.. KVR keeps stopping my from posting 'cos of nested quote numbers, yet they aren't even nested more than one level!!

On topic, I have a bug.

Basically, if I stop playing and the play position is during an audio part in a track routed to a rack where the first active element is a VST, I get an awful buzzing sound. The buzz reflects the volume and pitch of the point in the audio part which playback stopped on, so I figure it's just repeating the same block of samples or something.

But if I move the VST-A down a slot in the rack, and place a new VST, VST-B, in the slot above and turn VST-B's processing off, I don't have the problem. If I insert a MUX instance in the slot above VST-A, I also don't have the problem even if the MUX instance is processing.

I've never had a similar issue in any other host. I'm running Windows XP64 with a MOTU Ultralite interface.

I don't get it, the name and mute button are displayed. Not on your system?

Sorry, me being an idiot and rushing the response at work. I meant solo only (i.e. the solo you get to in the context menu) and input source, not target -- as multitrack isn't in yet, the latter doesn't apply.

Robenestobenz said: "Composer & Sequence editors:
- Grid resolution - this would be good moved to the main panel, I reckon, rather than being buried in nested menus."
Goal is to keep the interface as light as possible. I guess the reason why you want it more upfront is for access speed. Once key shortcuts are implemented, you'll be able to switch grids by keypress, which will be very fast.
Would that solve the issue for you?

Yes, it'd certainly solve it for me, I'm a big user of shortcuts. I disagree that hiding this stuff away makes the interface lighter though. Yes, in terms of the total number of elements on screen, but it makes the interface heavier in terms of work.... i.e. in the sense that people have to hunt around in menus for common functionality.

Robenestobenz said:"- As far as I can tell, when you replace a rack element with another and select 'Keep in MPA', it doesn't seem to do this." How do you replace it? When using "Replace", it is really replacing it, so then it's not kept in the MPA.

Sorry for the unclear phrasing; I meant replace by shift+dragging items in the rack.

Robenestobenz said:"I personally think there's a bit too much common functionality buried in context menus, yet there's also a lot of screen space going spare at the moment. It's reasonable for the features that are unlikely to be used very often to be contained in context menus, but as a general interface rule I reckon the time and number of steps to access a functionality should be inversely proportional to how often it is likely to be used." Goal is to keep the interface as light as possible.

It's a noble cause, because there's nothing worse than opening up a program and staring at such a huge, meaningless city of lights and icons that you feel as if you've just booted up an aircraft cockpit simulator, but I do think Mulab's interface is a bit too sparse. The amount of context menu action reminds me of my bedroom - yes, 'hello, stupid analogy.' - I've got a ton of stuff stashed under the bed to keep the room looking neat and spacious. The problem is, it's stuff I use and need quite a lot, so although the room looks great, I find myself crawling around under my bed much more often than I like.

Recording audio in MU.LAB 2.0 is simple and straightforward.

That's an advantage.

But at the same time i understand it may not yet answer the needs of real multitrack recording.

There already are plans on the mutools dev desks regarding the evolution of record audio in mu.lab.

Lets recap in the future.

It's simple and straightforward if you're going to be recording one track throughout a session. If you want to record to another track afterwards, it's still simple and straightford but it's also much slower than it needs to be. Still, without multitrack, this can't be improved much.

- I love the click+drag on the audio toggles on the track headers! Very cool feature.

Thanks (but i don't immediately know what you mean)

The little mute on/off toggles, I realised you can drag a box around them, which toggles all the states of all selected. Cool stuff.

- Pre+post implementation on the racks is excellent. It would be augmented well with the rack element position swapping though, so there would be less steps involved in moving elements around without deletions.

Can you please elaborate a bit on how you see this.

Heh, I'm not even sure what the hell I was on about now. I think I need to think about what I said some more

I meant dragging note lengths here, sorry. This pop-up should definitely be done away with, I reckon.

Ah that one. Mmm, not sure if i agree. Hey, it only takes the first letter of the option to choose that option. So just change the length and press [A] (if you want all selected notes to have the same Absolute length as that edited note) I guess it's more a matter of habitude... And this way, users don't have to read the docs, it's self-explanatory!

Fair enough. I still think it's a bit cumbersome to be interrupted by a dialogue box and have to choose the right key, but as you say, it'll become natural after a while and in 90% of situations it'll be [A] for absolute anyway.

I reckon adding a context menu with delete/copy/paste and enabling the delete/copy/paste key here would be consistent with the rest of the program.

It does! See the context menu in the curve editor itself, not at the left side.

Again, it's that pick-up-and-go feel which is hurt by things not working as people might expect, or in ways that are inconsistent throughout the program.

If that's the case, please feedback!

In the above case, i think it's in there in a quite consistent way.

Agreed?

It is and it isn't consistent... it's consistent in that right clicking on things brings up a context menu which has, amongst other things, the common cut/copy/delete commands. It isn't consistent in that in most other parts of Mulab that list objects, you can right click on the list entries for common functions - e.g. parameter map list, object management editor

Play position makes sense actually, I should have read the manual. I'd still support the dialog-box way, but as it's likely to be the less commonly used of the two methods, I would keep this option in a context menu.

My conclusion is to also use the dialog way in the sequence editor, because of consistency. And it only takes an [Enter] or [Return] to confirm the default position = play position.

Fair enough.

(re. vst groups from folders) But that doesn't solve the problem that many/most vsts have their own folder in order to collect their resource files (plugin graphics, patches, docs, ...)

Or am i missing something?

Ah, depends how you store your plugins I guess, and I think you do it differently to me. See, like a lot of people I've noticed on KVR, I have a plugins folder which contains not plugins, but subfolders: Effects, Filters, Instruments, FSU, Dynamics, Stereo image etc, each containing a load of that type of plugin. If you save each plugin to its own directory, obviously this command wouldn't be so useful. The excellent find as you type feature offsets this a bit, but only if you already know the plugin you want. If I'd like to browse through my effects, and I have 109 plugin dlls in my effects folder, it's a bit more tricky. Also, if the user has spent the time to set them up, it suggests to me that they're expecting to use the groups a lot. So it'd be good if groups appeared all together at the top of the list IMO, rather than being alphabetically sorted with the plugins. Or they could be moved to the same level of the tree as the VST node? I dunno, what are your thoughts?

Another marathon response from me, sorry for these. Despite the lack of multi-track recording, I'm really getting more and more hooked on the program, once the bug gets fixed I'll be buying straight away. Thanks for the great host.

[MuTools]

On topic, I have a bug.

Basically, if I stop playing and the play position is during an audio part in a track routed to a rack where the first active element is a VST, I get an awful buzzing sound. The buzz reflects the volume and pitch of the point in the audio part which playback stopped on, so I figure it's just repeating the same block of samples or something.

Confirmed. Will be fixed asap.

I meant solo only (i.e. the solo you get to in the context menu) and input source, not target -- as multitrack isn't in yet, the latter doesn't apply.

Separate solo is on the future whishlist because of multiple requests.

I disagree that hiding this stuff away makes the interface lighter though. Yes, in terms of the total number of elements on screen, but it makes the interface heavier in terms of work.... i.e. in the sense that people have to hunt around in menus for common functionality.

I understand your point.

And i agree from advanced user perspective.

But MU.LAB targets the rather novice user, while still offering deep functionalities where needed.

And so the balance will be on a light-weight interface.

I'm confident the future key shortcut system will speedup the workflow for advanced users like you and me and others.

I meant replace by shift+dragging items in the rack.

True, there is an issue with the "Keep in MPA": the plug is kept, but it's not visible; Fixed in the next version.

Goal is to keep the interface as light as possible.

It's a noble cause, because there's nothing worse than opening up a program and staring at such a huge, meaningless city of lights and icons that you feel as if you've just booted up an aircraft cockpit simulator, but I do think Mulab's interface is a bit too sparse. The amount of context menu action reminds me of my bedroom - yes, 'hello, stupid analogy.' - I've got a ton of stuff stashed under the bed to keep the room looking neat and spacious. The problem is, it's stuff I use and need quite a lot, so although the room looks great, I find myself crawling around under my bed much more often than I like.

That's a funny comparison

And it's a working one too!

I agree with your point that a GUI can be too simple too.

I'll certainly keep this in mind.

By the way, note that there is a preference that auto-expands all menus, maybe that already helps : "UseUnfoldedContextMenus".

See http://www.mutools.com/mulab/docs/preferences.html for more details.

Ah that one. Mmm, not sure if i agree. Hey, it only takes the first letter of the option to choose that option.

Fair enough. I still think it's a bit cumbersome to be interrupted by a dialogue box and have to choose the right key

Otherwise you would have to search/think about which of 4-5 possible key combis was the one you need at that time.

but as you say, it'll become natural after a while

I'm convinced of that. I even don't look at the dialog anymore, i just know it comes and i specify what i want (Absolute, Relative, ...)

and in 90% of situations it'll be [A] for absolute anyway.

Not sure, musically;

but of course that depends on the user, the music, ...

It isn't consistent in that in most other parts of Mulab that list objects, you can right click on the list entries for common functions - e.g. parameter map list, object management editor

To recap: it's about the event curve editor.

I still don't see your point, sorry, may be me.

Ah, depends how you store your plugins I guess, and I think you do it differently to me. See, like a lot of people I've noticed on KVR, I have a plugins folder which contains not plugins, but subfolders: Effects, Filters, Instruments, FSU, Dynamics, Stereo image etc, each containing a load of that type of plugin. If you save each plugin to its own directory, obviously this command wouldn't be so useful. The excellent find as you type feature offsets this a bit, but only if you already know the plugin you want. If I'd like to browse through my effects, and I have 109 plugin dlls in my effects folder, it's a bit more tricky. Also, if the user has spent the time to set them up, it suggests to me that they're expecting to use the groups a lot. So it'd be good if groups appeared all together at the top of the list IMO, rather than being alphabetically sorted with the plugins. Or they could be moved to the same level of the tree as the VST node? I dunno, what are your thoughts?

Well, it doesn't cost too much to copy the plug's parent folder name into the "Group" name of MU.LAB's plugin manager, so i'll add such function (lateron).

Also grouping multiple selected plugs in 1 go is on the whishlist.

I guess you're right the groups should come at the top of the subtree, like folders do.

Another marathon response from me, sorry for these.

No prob, interesting stuff!

Cheers!

[MuTools]

What do you think of this:

http://www.mutools.com/mulab2-demo.html

Good or bad?

(not that i want to invest too much time in it, rather just want a simple but nice teaser)

[pljones]

It's a bit static -- it might as well have been a set of images on a web page as a video. I'd have liked to see a little bit of work flow -- recording midi and audio, arranging parts, linking to players, setting up racks, wiring stuff in the MPA. Definitely creating a MUX item and using it. Showing the features in isolation isn't - to me - what makes MU.LAB special: it's the workflow.

[MuTools]

I see what you mean, agreed.

It would then almost be like an 'overview tutorial'.

The main prob is i don't have a flash creator tool on site.

And buying Flash for 699 USD is not in the budget.

Does someone know about an easy free graphical flash creator? Googled around but no fish.

[SQ4]

Does someone know about an easy free graphical flash creator? Googled around but no fish.

http://www.3dfa.com/

[robenestobenz]

I've Wink in the past for tutorials, which was absolutely awesome and really easy to set up and get going with. It exports to flash and .exe amongst other things. The only concern is that it might not support cool enough looking section transitions etc - I dunno, I haven't used it in years.

Definitely a very good option for creating straight-up tutorials though, if you're ever planning on doing some more interactive help for your software.

While I'm here, the unfold menus option in Mulab.txt has been an excellent timesaver for me. Thanks for the heads-up on that.

[MuTools]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I tried them both and 3D Flash Animator is definitely an interesting tool!
I'm just struggling a bit with finding an efficient workflow.

Wink is a bit less interesting i found because it seems that if you use the same picture in different frames, then the swf file size grows and grows as if the same picture is stored multiple times. But i agree that Wink is very straightforward though.

[MuTools]

The MU.LAB 2 demo movie has been updated:

http://www.mutools.com/mulab2-demo.html

[pljones]

Waaaaaay better! But maybe a couple more slides on MuSynth / MUX / MPA and maybe caption the plugins as they slide past (the captions might not add much but they looked good on the other slides and the plugin ones seemed bare without).

[pljones]

Not exactly bug report:
Stand-in Piano could do with the Amplifier gain turned down unless you only play one fingered.

Defintely bug report:
Synthia doesn't let the gain go below 70%.

[MuTools]

Waaaaaay better! But maybe a couple more slides on MuSynth / MUX / MPA and maybe caption the plugins as they slide past (the captions might not add much but they looked good on the other slides and the plugin ones seemed bare without).

Ok, done.

[MuTools]

Not exactly bug report:
Stand-in Piano could do with the Amplifier gain turned down unless you only play one fingered.

Ok, finetuned.

Defintely bug report:
Synthia doesn't let the gain go below 70%.

In fact it's not a bug, though i understand it may look like a bug.

Thing is that the Gain parameter in the Amplifier subpanel is also controlled by a meta parameter on the front panel i.e. "Limiter".

If Limiter is all down, then Gain = 70%, if Limiter is all up, then Gain = 100%.

And so when changing the Gain parameter itself, this meta parameter connection is taken into account.

At this point i'm not sure how to make this more clear; (besides disabling the Amplifier subpanel so to avoid confusion)