2CAudio B2: Full Body. Maximum Attitude.

[e@rs]

@Galbanum: Happy with the explanations, thanx.

I'm demoing Aether and B2 again, and this time I bothered to read the manuals (and found B2's unfinished state not very professional ).

Also found out about settings to lower the CPU usage I wasn't aware before. Even disabling that VU Meter on Aether reduced the load, even if the manual says otherwise... So, I'll stop calling them CPU hogs from now on. They only are CPU hogs when one wants them to be.

And as soon as you release that middle size GUIs (see what I just did? ), I'll probably have no excuse not to get them.

[Andrew Souter]

what were you looking up that you wanted to know that you could not find?

That is a million $ question right now...

I'll give a hint: Little blue dots on "Width", and "Cross" parameters...?
I know what is it, but there is no explanation in the manual.

Width "dot" does phase inversion between channels to get extra wide "super stereo" kind of stuff.

Cross dot reverses/swaps Left and Right channels, which can be used to create spatialize slap-back things or other various uses when combined with dual engines...

...but ya I guess it should go in the manual.

[Andrew Souter]

So, I'll stop calling them CPU hogs from now on. They only are CPU hogs when one wants them to be.

I've been telling everyone that for years, but at some point I started to feel like an a-hole for saying the same thing again and again.

CPU usage is most effected by:

• Density Diffusion Switch (Nano, Med, Hi, XTRM). XTRM is easily 10 times the CPU usage as Nano!
• Over-samapling. 2x = 2x. 4x = 4x or more. Don't use it if you don't have a fast computer.
• Dual engine : same as running two instances of a single engine = 2x CPU.
• Modulation on/off med/hi. Modulation can consume significant CPU. Some things such as convolution verbs and even some algo verbs such as EX Phoenix don't have modulation, so it's perfectly acceptable to turn if OFF for SOME presets. And for some presets it is an important part of that "huge" larger-than-life, "doesn't quite happen in real spaces on earth, but sounds damn good anyway is abused so much over the past decades that people assume this is what huge real spaces sounds like" (tm) kind of things.
• Some of the filter options lower in the list such as "Air" add CPU.
• ...and other things.

It is completely variable and is easily over a factor of 100 comparing lowest to highest possible preset in terms of CPU usage.

And as soon as you release that middle size GUIs (see what I just did? ), I'll probably have no excuse not to get them.

It's a venerable choir of voices singing the same song today. I suppose we should listen.

[Cinebient]

I tested nearly all reverbs i could imagine (in software) but still nothing can beat B2 in terms of pure depth of the sound. Combining with Kaleidoscope and Dust it is wonderful.
I could imagine some wonderful binaural tools from 2CAudio as well

[aMUSEd]

It's a venerable choir of voices singing the same song today. I suppose we should listen.

On 1080p the B2 HD gui is literally just a few pixels too wide - it exactly fits 1080pix but that means in practice it always loses a few one side or another, it's very hard to perfectly fit it to the screen. So even 5% smaller would be just the right size for 1080p, unlike Aether it is at least the right depth.

[Andrew Souter]

It's a venerable choir of voices singing the same song today. I suppose we should listen.

On 1080p the B2 HD gui is literally just a few pixels too wide - it exactly fits 1080pix but that means in practice it always loses a few one side or another, it's very hard to perfectly fit it to the screen. So even 5% smaller would be just the right size for 1080p, unlike Aether it is at least the right depth.

The way we have made our GUIs does not make it easy to simply arbitrarily scale things such as by 95% for exmaple. It is easy for us to do integer scaling factors or 2x, 3x, etc. And with some careful planning 1.5x for example is possible also and I have done that already for the next version of Kaleidoscope for example (although the biggest size in the next Kaleidoscope basically DOES require a 4K monitor, and the medium one still ends up at 1920px wide). But since we are using pre-rendered png images in our GUIs and xml files to tell the plug where to put all these pngs in in terms of x-y locations in INTEGER pixels, we can not simply arbitrarily resize everything by 95% for example b/c

1) The exactly correct x-y positions will no longer be integer and so the realized values will get rounded/floored to integer so some positions will be "wrong" by a pixel or two -- making some things touch or causing annoying alignment issues that will just look wrong/sloppy...

2) small detail-y things such as icons and buttons and even knobs will not look as crisp do to some resize anti-alias filtering... it will look sloppy/unprofessional and we don't like that.

3) any textures that rely on exact pixel sizes such a thin lines and grids will be more or less ruined...

so sad to say, we can't just magically resize by 95% for example...

I guess you are using windows? Mac OS hosts don't usually add any border on the L or R, right? Or the most recent logic started adding a border for some dumb reason maybe -- I haven't looked at logic for a while?

IDK why Miscrosoft insists on putting thick borders around things. (Maybe they are a Trump supporter? ) We should yell at them.

A quick and dirty solution for L-R border sizes would be to simply truncate/eliminate the LR borders in B2. I could do that instantly to the R border for example. The L one would require shifting the placement of all GUI elements, but that's not too bad a task. But it seems maybe the windows border is even thicker than the B2 margin/border so even then I am not sure if it would quite solve the issue? And it would not look 100% nice.


I guess I kinda consider 1920*1080 or less displays "user error" in 2017. Half joking. Only half.

[Andrew Souter]

I tested nearly all reverbs i could imagine (in software) but still nothing can beat B2 in terms of pure depth of the sound. Combining with Kaleidoscope and Dust it is wonderful.
I could imagine some wonderful binaural tools from 2CAudio as well

Thanks!

[e@rs]

No idea if it's of any help, but here's how the HD skins look on my 1920x1080 Samsung screen:

[aMUSEd]

It's a venerable choir of voices singing the same song today. I suppose we should listen.

On 1080p the B2 HD gui is literally just a few pixels too wide - it exactly fits 1080pix but that means in practice it always loses a few one side or another, it's very hard to perfectly fit it to the screen. So even 5% smaller would be just the right size for 1080p, unlike Aether it is at least the right depth.

The way we have made our GUIs does not make it easy to simply arbitrarily scale things such as by 95% for exmaple. It is easy for us to do integer scaling factors or 2x, 3x, etc. And with some careful planning 1.5x for example is possible also and I have done that already for the next version of Kaleidoscope for example (although the biggest size in the next Kaleidoscope basically DOES require a 4K monitor, and the medium one still ends up at 1920px wide). But since we are using pre-rendered png images in our GUIs and xml files to tell the plug where to put all these pngs in in terms of x-y locations in INTEGER pixels, we can not simply arbitrarily resize everything by 95% for example b/c

Yeah I do understand that, my point was just (as the image here demonstrates) you seem to have designed your larger GUIs to almost perfectly not fit 1080p

[Andrew Souter]

Yeah I do understand that, my point was just (as the image here demonstrates) you seem to have designed your larger GUIs to almost perfectly not fit 1080p

IDK, B2 looks kinda cool that way, full screen. Aether, ya, sure it's a an issue since it's too tall.


But, to be perfectly clear I didn't "design our HD GUIs not to fit". It simply took our existing GUIs, which do fit perfectly fine of such systems, and have since their original release years ago and function just fine for thousands and thousands of people, and simply multiplied by 2. That's it. They are simply a perfect doubling of the original sizes for reasons explained.

I didn't so something in-between, bc at the time, we had no easy way to do it. This request has come up a bunch since then, and so while working on our current project (a KS update) I took this info into consideration and made the changes needed so we could do a 1.5x size GUI as well as 1x and a 2x.

When next we update B2 and Aether with anything larger than a simple maintenance update, I will accommodate this request. You have my promise.

[aMUSEd]

Great, thanks - yeah the thing with B2 though is it isn't quite full screen in that there's always a niggling little bit (just a few pixels) that don't quite fit and because it's so close lining it up is a PITA. A proper full screen mode (as in Fabfilter ProQ2) where everything snaps to the screen edges would be very welcome though

[Andrew Souter]

Great, thanks - yeah the thing with B2 though is it isn't quite full screen in that there's always a niggling little bit (just a few pixels) that don't quite fit and because it's so close lining it up is a PITA.

what host? what OS? how many pixels? take a screen shot. in the studio one shot above, I don't see any Left-Right border, so B2 does actually fit? Or am i blind? Oh, yes I am, it has a 4px border or so? Hard to tell exactly since it is a jpeg.

A proper full screen mode (as in Fabfilter ProQ2) where everything snaps to the screen edges would be very welcome though

That is a different kind of GUI altogether. This is called "procedural' and there basically are no fixed pre-rendered images. The whole thing is "drawn live" by code, and therefore is freely scalable. It's something of interest certainly.... I'd be lying if I said we haven't thought about it... we'll see...

[aMUSEd]

You can actually see it in the image above - just a few pix more on the left than right. The point is to get it almost perfectly lined up as fiddly because it's so exactly 1080p. For me it's always just a bit more showing on one side than the other - here I have lined it up on the right but it sacrifices a little on the left (host seems irrelevant)

Screenshot 2017-02-26 14.56.55.jpg

[Andrew Souter]

and these few pixels of asymmetry make B2 unusable at this size?? I must admit I don't fully "get it" in the case of B2. (Aether is clear.)

B2 HD has 16px margin in the design on both L and R sides. This is basically non-functional and just there for aesthetic design. As mentioned, i could instantly chop off 8 from the right edge and not have to do anything else and then it would fit in hosts/OSs that add 4px boarder on either side.

but then the GUI is (ever so slightly) asymmetric and would basically just be what you are doing manually. But you would still get to see those pretty 4 extra pixel from the host/OS if that is really want you want?

or I could more perfectly do it to both sides and spend several hours editing the GUI xml file to shift all GUI element positions...

but some hosts on Win (I am looking in Assoustica stereo editor at the moment) add a lot more than that! 20px on both sizes, and there is no easy way to chop off 40px from the B2 GUI without moving things around.

so it wouldn't fully solve the (debatable) "problem" fully, and if I am doing anything that takes significant time, I would prefer just to rethink it completely to address this in the most perfect way possible...

[aMUSEd]

Don't think anyone has said the B2 skin is 'unusable' - just the Aether one. I don't use the HD B2 one because I find it fiddly to line up and it's never just right so it seems a shame that it couldn't have been just a teensy bit smaller but that's more a comfort thing than usability.