Manuals are still the elephant in the room
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- KVRian
- 965 posts since 12 May, 2019
The GoPro manual is nice. I find it rare to encounter a great manual that is searchable, well-laid out, aesthetically pleasing, and thorough.
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- KVRian
- 1094 posts since 23 Sep, 2006
I agree that the core of the issue is that the help is modular, like the features/tools themselves. The 'manual' is really just a print out of the individual generic/global help for each parameter, rather than tailored to each plugin.
Personally, I think a lot of it would be helped by the inclusion of a single 'help' page for each plugin that gives an overview of what the product is for, how it works, how best to operate it and where to get started. Then leave with a messaging saying 'for more info, click the help for each control or panel.
With the current system, we get all the specific detail, but no overview of how it all ties together. So new users get instantly confused.
If I had more time I'd be happy to write this up myself for melda, but... time is rarer than toilet paper and hand sanitizer for me.
Personally, I think a lot of it would be helped by the inclusion of a single 'help' page for each plugin that gives an overview of what the product is for, how it works, how best to operate it and where to get started. Then leave with a messaging saying 'for more info, click the help for each control or panel.
With the current system, we get all the specific detail, but no overview of how it all ties together. So new users get instantly confused.
If I had more time I'd be happy to write this up myself for melda, but... time is rarer than toilet paper and hand sanitizer for me.
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- KVRAF
- 2702 posts since 9 Jul, 2015 from UK
Agreed.vectorwarrior wrote: Fri Apr 24, 2020 8:19 pm I agree that the core of the issue is that the help is modular, like the features/tools themselves. The 'manual' is really just a print out of the individual generic/global help for each parameter, rather than tailored to each plugin.
Personally, I think a lot of it would be helped by the inclusion of a single 'help' page for each plugin that gives an overview of what the product is for, how it works, how best to operate it and where to get started. Then leave with a messaging saying 'for more info, click the help for each control or panel.
With the current system, we get all the specific detail, but no overview of how it all ties together. So new users get instantly confused.
If I had more time I'd be happy to write this up myself for melda, but... time is rarer than toilet paper and hand sanitizer for me.
Jason @ Melda Production
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- KVRist
- 60 posts since 19 Mar, 2020
The Cubase manuals are very helpful. They don't give ANY extra info or about how to use features, but they are fairly complete just saying what the feature or function is for, they notable do not give many details like data fields, ranges or types and the like, that a user could find useful. I suspect this absents of detail allows them to change many design implementations without generating required documentation changes. It leaves the user to figure out data fields by them selves and still often to view videos and tutorials.
For the Melda documents it would be a welcome change not to have to read through all the boiler plate of the common features for each plugin. Those details are helpful but only the first couple of times and does make it harder to find important information particular to each plugin and sometimes some of it does not seem to apply to the plugin the manual is supposed to be about I does get confusing.
I like videos that provide examples and details - Chandlers videos are really helpful, but they don't cover all the plugins and there are multiple tutorials on the same plugin.
There are some Melda plugins that I have no idea how to use. Like the MChannelMatrix I cannot figure out what it it for. Routing I guess but how. Its manual talks about modulators, controllers, midi channels, note controllers and so on, but I don't see those in MChannelMatrix. The image on the MeldaProduction pages shows like 8 channels, the one in the manual is like the one on my system shows just 2 channels - it remains mysterious - I don't see any other videos or anything - my guess is that since I don't know what it is - that I maybe don't need it, and if I get so I do need it maybe I will understand it.
BUT - the Melda plugins that I have seen videos on and there are some pretty good videos by Plugin Boutique and Computer Magazine on the MAutoDynamicEq are REALLY informative - Melda plugins are so Awesome and useful - so I can really enjoy those I can use.
For the Melda documents it would be a welcome change not to have to read through all the boiler plate of the common features for each plugin. Those details are helpful but only the first couple of times and does make it harder to find important information particular to each plugin and sometimes some of it does not seem to apply to the plugin the manual is supposed to be about I does get confusing.
I like videos that provide examples and details - Chandlers videos are really helpful, but they don't cover all the plugins and there are multiple tutorials on the same plugin.
There are some Melda plugins that I have no idea how to use. Like the MChannelMatrix I cannot figure out what it it for. Routing I guess but how. Its manual talks about modulators, controllers, midi channels, note controllers and so on, but I don't see those in MChannelMatrix. The image on the MeldaProduction pages shows like 8 channels, the one in the manual is like the one on my system shows just 2 channels - it remains mysterious - I don't see any other videos or anything - my guess is that since I don't know what it is - that I maybe don't need it, and if I get so I do need it maybe I will understand it.
BUT - the Melda plugins that I have seen videos on and there are some pretty good videos by Plugin Boutique and Computer Magazine on the MAutoDynamicEq are REALLY informative - Melda plugins are so Awesome and useful - so I can really enjoy those I can use.
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Starship Krupa Starship Krupa https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=337746
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 303 posts since 13 Sep, 2014
That is so very valuable. The closer that the people making something can get feedback from people who are actually using it the better, in my opinion and experience. If those using your product have to use "workarounds" and such, then you need to revise that feature or provide a feature that negates the need for the workaround.Held wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 11:04 am They have someone who's also active in the forums and is always looking for ways to improve the user guide if people struggle with it.
There's a shopping center near my home with a fence near the rear of it that has constantly been breached since the place was built. The fence stands between a sidewalk that is the walking path from the Bay Area Rapid Transit station to the shopping center. The sidewalk is up a small embankment. Otherwise to get to the center, you have to walk a long distance around the fence, for no real reason. It's a shopping center, it's wide open to the public 24 hours a day. The fence isn't protecting anything, it's just there to prevent people from taking that path. So the chain link fence gets repaired and then someone breaks it again so that people can hop over it and it always looks like hell.
I was walking over near it with my girlfriend and she was clucking her tongue at how people kept breaking the fence, and I said the problem wasn't vandalism, it was that there needed to be a gate there, or just a person-wide opening in the fence, and some nice, safe concrete or stone stairs made in the embankment. Instead of paying to fix the stupid useless fence over and over again, make an easy, safe walkway into the shopping center through the back, which is obviously what people coming and going from BART want. If I were walking to the station from my house, and I had stopped to get coffee at the Peet's in the market I would hop the fence myself. It's much more direct.
Over the span of my career, it's been crazy-making to see the amount of potentially valuable information in the form of user feedback that the companies I worked for just ignored or were never aware existed.
One example: all of the shrink-wrap (as we called it at the time) software companies had front-line support staffs, and that was considered the bottom rung of tech employment. These people were paid to be on the phone all day long with users who were struggling with the software.
They were picking up an amazing amount of information as to what was and wasn't working about the product. However, the connection to the product management staff was usually minimal. The information did flow, but it was usually a trickle when in my opinion it should have been a flood. They had a free 8 hours a day focus group every day and the UI decisions were being made by a handful of cloistered geeks.
So it's great and wonderful that Vojtech reads the forum and interacts with us from time to time and makes decisions taking into account user feedback.
He is a brilliant engineer. Brilliant engineers often will rather be working on the next amazing thing than documentation for the last one, which to them is "paperwork."
There's also the discouraging matter that the percentage of users who will read the manual may be under 50%. Documentation is a feature that may get a lot of (to engineers) boring effort and then not get used.
So it can be tough. I used to have to try to shake it out of them. It was my job (at one point) to try to turn engineers' notes into usable manuals. I was enthused about being part of the project and doing a good manual, but to them the "project" was already done and what we were doing was akin to having to sit down with the accountants and go over your expense reports.nto usable manuals.
Last edited by Starship Krupa on Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Starship Krupa Starship Krupa https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=337746
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 303 posts since 13 Sep, 2014
duplicate, sorry!
Last edited by Starship Krupa on Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Starship Krupa Starship Krupa https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=337746
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 303 posts since 13 Sep, 2014
But a well-written explanation can be so valuable.
Take another example, everyone's favorite compressor, MModernCompressor. I call it "everyone's favorite" because only two members of this forum confess to actually using it on our tracks, and otherwise it seems to be owned by people who received it in bundles.
When I first purchased MModernCompressor I got all hung up on the "auto settings" feature, kept trying to get it to deliver usable settings, I guess I was expecting it to work like iZotope Neutron or something. I thought that was the defining feature, that I was buying a Meldaproduction compressor that could analyze a track and kick back good settings that I could tweak by ear. Please nobody buy it expecting it to do that. The way I was using it I'd have had the same luck hitting the Random button.
Finally I turned to the forum and jmg8 came to my rescue with a detailed reply that is still coming to the rescue of many a poor boy years later. What he said was that I already understood enough about compression to ignore that feature, that what I had actually bought was a compressor with a dynamic range distribution analyzer and here was how to use it. And PS, if I was really missing that great meter from MCompressor, here's how to enable one that will show me a running histogram of the input signal, what the detector is doing, the output signal, whatever I want. It's really an application note!
So I sat down some more and got the metering working, didn't make much use of the "defining feature," it's kind of the antithesis of "use your ears." But at least I didn't waste more time on the features I understood that I wasn't interested in, and I started to poke around some more and found out that it has this dragstrip-ready detector system with choices of different responses, including "psychoacoustic," which delivers on its promise. This wonderful feature was so buried in the original manual that I missed it. Man, if you want to stomp on a leading transient, try the fast modes on this.
2 years on, every so often I hit that "Analyze" button just to see what the fuss is about, and I'm kind of starting to see the appeal. I still dial in gain reduction quicker with a plain old bar graph or needle, but whatever. If MModernCompressor itself is never going to be updated, at least it gets the not inconsiderable benefit of the regular kernel updates. I just don't expect much from the Preset Exchange!
The point of all this ramble is that without jmg8's app note, I would have wasted a lot more time in frustration, and maybe even have binned the thing entirely. instead of having it be a secret weapon that I know nobody else uses.
(it reminds me of certain women I've loved: difficult to figure out, not conventionally beautiful, everyone who's tried to love it wants it to be something it's not, gets insufficient love from its father, in order to appreciate it I had to overcome some surface frustrations, but somehow, the detector locks on to my signals like no other)
Take another example, everyone's favorite compressor, MModernCompressor. I call it "everyone's favorite" because only two members of this forum confess to actually using it on our tracks, and otherwise it seems to be owned by people who received it in bundles.
When I first purchased MModernCompressor I got all hung up on the "auto settings" feature, kept trying to get it to deliver usable settings, I guess I was expecting it to work like iZotope Neutron or something. I thought that was the defining feature, that I was buying a Meldaproduction compressor that could analyze a track and kick back good settings that I could tweak by ear. Please nobody buy it expecting it to do that. The way I was using it I'd have had the same luck hitting the Random button.
Finally I turned to the forum and jmg8 came to my rescue with a detailed reply that is still coming to the rescue of many a poor boy years later. What he said was that I already understood enough about compression to ignore that feature, that what I had actually bought was a compressor with a dynamic range distribution analyzer and here was how to use it. And PS, if I was really missing that great meter from MCompressor, here's how to enable one that will show me a running histogram of the input signal, what the detector is doing, the output signal, whatever I want. It's really an application note!
So I sat down some more and got the metering working, didn't make much use of the "defining feature," it's kind of the antithesis of "use your ears." But at least I didn't waste more time on the features I understood that I wasn't interested in, and I started to poke around some more and found out that it has this dragstrip-ready detector system with choices of different responses, including "psychoacoustic," which delivers on its promise. This wonderful feature was so buried in the original manual that I missed it. Man, if you want to stomp on a leading transient, try the fast modes on this.
2 years on, every so often I hit that "Analyze" button just to see what the fuss is about, and I'm kind of starting to see the appeal. I still dial in gain reduction quicker with a plain old bar graph or needle, but whatever. If MModernCompressor itself is never going to be updated, at least it gets the not inconsiderable benefit of the regular kernel updates. I just don't expect much from the Preset Exchange!
The point of all this ramble is that without jmg8's app note, I would have wasted a lot more time in frustration, and maybe even have binned the thing entirely. instead of having it be a secret weapon that I know nobody else uses.
(it reminds me of certain women I've loved: difficult to figure out, not conventionally beautiful, everyone who's tried to love it wants it to be something it's not, gets insufficient love from its father, in order to appreciate it I had to overcome some surface frustrations, but somehow, the detector locks on to my signals like no other)
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- KVRAF
- 1759 posts since 11 Nov, 2009 from Northern CA
Well, my curiosity is definitely piqued. I tried to locate the thread you mention and could not. Any chance you could supply a link? I have never once looked a MModernCompressor ... so many plug-ins, so little time! But if it does something that no other compressor does, or at least does it better or more effortlessly, then I'd like to learn more.Starship Krupa wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:22 am Finally I turned to the forum and jmg8 came to my rescue with a detailed reply that is still coming to the rescue of many a poor boy years later. What he said was that I already understood enough about compression to ignore that feature, that what I had actually bought was a compressor with a dynamic range distribution analyzer and here was how to use it. And PS, if I was really missing that great meter from MCompressor, here's how to enable one that will show me a running histogram of the input signal, what the detector is doing, the output signal, whatever I want. It's really an application note!
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- KVRAF
- 6081 posts since 27 Jul, 2001 from Tarpon Springs, Florida, USA
Where would I find a list of all the MManuals to download?
On my C drive I have a folder "All Manuals" and would love to have the Melda manuals there also.
On my C drive I have a folder "All Manuals" and would love to have the Melda manuals there also.
My Studio: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7760&p=7777146#p7777146
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- KVRian
- 975 posts since 10 Jan, 2007 from London
On the Melda site scroll to the bottom> Support> All Documentation. It's all the manuals in one zip.Kalamata Kid wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:09 am Where would I find a list of all the MManuals to download?
On my C drive I have a folder "All Manuals" and would love to have the Melda manuals there also.
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- KVRAF
- 6081 posts since 27 Jul, 2001 from Tarpon Springs, Florida, USA
Wow! that was so easy. Thanks.goldglob wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:47 amOn the Melda site scroll to the bottom> Support> All Documentation. It's all the manuals in one zip.Kalamata Kid wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:09 am Where would I find a list of all the MManuals to download?
On my C drive I have a folder "All Manuals" and would love to have the Melda manuals there also.
MY feeling is that they should use "Manuals".
Too bad other developers with many apps do not do this or they do and I just did not see it.
My Studio: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7760&p=7777146#p7777146
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Starship Krupa Starship Krupa https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=337746
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 303 posts since 13 Sep, 2014
viewtopic.php?f=138&t=490914&hilit=mmodern&start=15dmbaer wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:09 pm Well, my curiosity is definitely piqued. I tried to locate the thread you mention and could not. Any chance you could supply a link? I have never once looked a MModernCompressor ... so many plug-ins, so little time! But if it does something that no other compressor does, or at least does it better or more effortlessly, then I'd like to learn more.
I used to think it didn't do anything that MTurbo doesn't do, except I just looked at MTurbo, as I am taking advantage of the free 3-month subscription to live like the rich folks.
I opened up the Edit settings and scrolled through the Mode settings for the FOLLOWERS and son of a gun, my favorite, Psychoacoustic, is nowhere to be found. Nor are Super Smooth, Super Fast, or Super Fast Attack. Instead there's Opto, Linear, Linear 2, Automatic, Automatic Fast, and Manual.
Well. Okay, MModernCompressor ignorers, chew on that. Next time you're working on a lead vocal or a snare, pull up MModern and try Psychoacoustic mode starting with at least a 5mS attack and see if it tickles your ears the way it does mine. Or if you want to stomp the leading edge of a transient, Super Fast. You can watch the detector at work in the Time Graph. There's my "app paragraph."
One of my presets is a dbx 160 copy using the Psychoacoustic detector, called "Psycho X".
Thank you very much, mbaer, for asking to learn more, because I would never have known that. I think it would be great if the MModernCompressor page on the website emphasized this unique feature that I stumbled upon by chance and really liked.
If it only had a "Processing Shape" display it would be everything.
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- KVRist
- 254 posts since 21 Jun, 2018
In MTurboComp you can find the psychoacoustic setting in EDIT mode, FOLLOWERS tab, under settings button in each follower panel.Starship Krupa wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 7:40 amviewtopic.php?f=138&t=490914&hilit=mmodern&start=15dmbaer wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:09 pm Well, my curiosity is definitely piqued. I tried to locate the thread you mention and could not. Any chance you could supply a link? I have never once looked a MModernCompressor ... so many plug-ins, so little time! But if it does something that no other compressor does, or at least does it better or more effortlessly, then I'd like to learn more.
I used to think it didn't do anything that MTurbo doesn't do, except I just looked at MTurbo, as I am taking advantage of the free 3-month subscription to live like the rich folks.
I opened up the Edit settings and scrolled through the Mode settings for the FOLLOWERS and son of a gun, my favorite, Psychoacoustic, is nowhere to be found. Nor are Super Smooth, Super Fast, or Super Fast Attack. Instead there's Opto, Linear, Linear 2, Automatic, Automatic Fast, and Manual.
Well. Okay, MModernCompressor ignorers, chew on that. Next time you're working on a lead vocal or a snare, pull up MModern and try Psychoacoustic mode starting with at least a 5mS attack and see if it tickles your ears the way it does mine. Or if you want to stomp the leading edge of a transient, Super Fast. You can watch the detector at work in the Time Graph. There's my "app paragraph."
One of my presets is a dbx 160 copy using the Psychoacoustic detector, called "Psycho X".
Thank you very much, mbaer, for asking to learn more, because I would never have known that. I think it would be great if the MModernCompressor page on the website emphasized this unique feature that I stumbled upon by chance and really liked.
If it only had a "Processing Shape" display it would be everything.
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- KVRAF
- 37533 posts since 14 Sep, 2002 from In teh net
https://madronalabs.com/media/aalto/AaltoManual.pdfHexspa wrote: Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:13 pm The GoPro manual is nice. I find it rare to encounter a great manual that is searchable, well-laid out, aesthetically pleasing, and thorough.