Making MuLab More Obvious & Easy

[robenestobenz]

@robenestobenz:
Yeha but as I said just up there a tad, we're not all like you. Not everyone here is an expert wanting perfection with the most powerful systems. If I'm honest I'm pretty shite at making music If you heard it you'd be shocked! But, I enjoy it and at the end of the day that's really all that matters.

I'm no expert! Also, didn't make any reference to power or storage or anything. I just mean the basics of moving notes around etc. You obscure the very thing you are interested in with a touch screen. The same problem would occur with any other domain where manipulation is best done by pointing at the thing you wish to interact with -- e.g. moving vertices around in a vector drawing.

On the other hand, I think touch screens are very cool for stuff like MIDI control where you do not need visual feedback to know what you're doing, because you're using the screen as an interface rather than that AND a display.

[sl23]

I understand what you are saying, I assume you're talking about the piano roll and other small stuff? But what if there was a different way of doing those things. All touchscreen dev's have to work that out. Think what the best way to do things from a users point of view. Just because piano roll, for example, has been the norm for the last however many years, doesn't mean we have to keep using it when new tech appears. As tech changes so must the way we use it.

One thing I've found though with touchscreens, there's nothing like a knob to turn or a button to press!

Anyway don't forget you can pinch/spread to change sizes.

[EvilDragon]

32 real cores to play with @10 Ghz

We have technologically already reached the GHz limit. It does not make sense to go above 5 GHz (way too much instability in the transistor traces on the chip), so what we're going to see is CPUs having more and more cores on the same amount of space. Say hello to 16, 32, 50, 100, 200, 400, etc. cores in the CPU.


The problem with this is that not all programs utilize this multiprocessing ability. Those that do will continue to reap the benefits.

[sl23]

Yeah I read that GPU's were going to start being used as CPU cores or something. I never realised the GHz limit had been reached though. Is that one of those things impossible to overcome, sounds like that from what you said.

If that's the case, apps will surely be updated with all that in mind?

It also reduces heat doesn't it making it better for mobility?

[EvilDragon]

GPUs produce heat like mofos. See any top-shelf graphics card and 3/4 of it is the damn cooler! GPUs are highly parallel devices (having hundreds of CUDA cores, basically), so they're not absolutely suited for all applications. But they are excellent for video rendering and obviously anything that has to do with image, also software like AutoCAD, or Mathematica, etc.

What's reducing the heat is shrinking the micron process used for making CPUs. You get to fit more transistors on the same space - smaller transistors draw less current, so they don't produce as much heat.

[leggie]

32 real cores to play with @10 Ghz

We have technologically already reached the GHz limit. It does not make sense to go above 5 GHz (way too much instability in the transistor traces on the chip), so what we're going to see is CPUs having more and more cores on the same amount of space. Say hello to 16, 32, 50, 100, 200, 400, etc. cores in the CPU.


The problem with this is that not all programs utilize this multiprocessing ability. Those that do will continue to reap the benefits.

Will there be a point where the sync of all these cores defeat the audio stream?

[robenestobenz]

I understand what you are saying, I assume you're talking about the piano roll and other small stuff? But what if there was a different way of doing those things. All touchscreen dev's have to work that out. Think what the best way to do things from a users point of view. Just because piano roll, for example, has been the norm for the last however many years, doesn't mean we have to keep using it when new tech appears. As tech changes so must the way we use it.

One thing I've found though with touchscreens, there's nothing like a knob to turn or a button to press!

Anyway don't forget you can pinch/spread to change sizes.

Small stuff or high object density, exactly. It's not the piano roll in particular (although I think pitch / time axes are the simplest way possible), but more that in general, pointing at the object you want to interact with will always be the simplest, most logical and intuitive way of working. Pointing at what you don't want to interact with is obviously not a clever way, and having some separate object representing what you want to interact with is a duplication and still not as intuitive (text selectors on Android/iOS is an example of this).

I'm a big fan of pinch to zoom as a method, but zooming itself is a non-productive cost. I have to do quite a bit of it now, and that's on a 24 inch monitor with a mouse. I'd have to do an insane amount of it on a 12 inch tablet with my fingers -- assuming the pitch across time piano roll paradigm holds.

It's an interesting discussion, and I think you're right that touchscreen devices will continue to see an increase in their share of the time people spend computing. In their current form, I can't see them replacing many kinds of activity though (CAD, music, 3d modelling, drawing, coding/IDE, to name but a few). Tough time to be a developer, because you can't do a great touchscreen and pointer user experience at the same time...

[sl23]

GPUs produce heat like mofos. See any top-shelf graphics card and 3/4 of it is the damn cooler! GPUs are highly parallel devices (having hundreds of CUDA cores, basically), so they're not absolutely suited for all applications. But they are excellent for video rendering and obviously anything that has to do with image, also software like AutoCAD, or Mathematica, etc.

Oh? I read that GPU cores would be used as they are can be made to cope better by using lower power GPU's but add more cores thus the heat is reduced.

[EvilDragon]

Link to article, please?

[DHR53]

No disrespect folks but the topic was "How to make MuLab more obvious and easy?" I'd like to review some of the things that I think I heard in there, and some others.

1. Cmnd. keys to access menu items and or modifiers for dialog boxes. Possibly right click for some items?

2. Make unique sequence, or true cutting of parts as opposed to duplicate?

3. Autoscroll and mouse scrolling behavior... i.e. zoom as opposed to scroll. Preference or menu item?

A few items I think could be adjusted or added to accomplish the original topic question... And I still get this dialog box when saving from my template, which won't let me highlight the cryptic MuSession 201303556... "name" info to rename.

[sl23]

@ EvilDragon:
Sorry, it was in a magazine some time ago? You think I lie?

@ DHR53:
You're right sorry for the diversion, no more.

[dakkra]

As I said earlier to make Mulab "easier" to work with maybe a notepad would be nice. I had one in FLStudio and in LMMS and it came to be very useful when leaving an unfinished project for another day.

[sl23]

If it's any help there's a free VST called VSTNotes quite old now but still works afaik. But would be a good addition to MuLab

[Crackbaby]

melda's free bundle has one i think

here it is: http://www.meldaproduction.com/plugins/ ... d=MNotepad

[dakkra]

Problem with a VST is that it'll consume more cpu and ram than I really want. Just need a note editor, not a word processor