Experimental audio effect (Free plugin) - very unique sounds!

[mjolnir]

If anybody had trouble with the YouTube link, I was able to download from here:
https://www.effective-fx.com/downloads/ ... downloads/

thanks for this interesting VST3 effect.
although, on my Manjaro Linux the GUI was blank and when I tried to switch to GUI-less mode in REAPER it crashed REAPER. I could hear the audio working, but with no GUI I can't keep it.

[plexuss]

Ok. Sounds pretty cool. I love the MVP UI. lol... would love to resize it larger, its small and hard to use on my 4K. You are definitely onto something here I think...

Dude thanks for the kind words! I did this by myself with little background in the UI/UX department - so I'm glad you're forgiving of that and see the potential regardless

You're definitely not the first to mention the size - do you think making the screen resizable would be necessary if it was just bigger?

I dont think its going to matter if the resizing is graduations (50%, 75%, 100%, 125% etc) or if its fluid (grab the corner and go). But resizing will help a lot. If you go with graduated sizes, make sure the sizes make sense for different screen resolutions. In other words, test it on small med and large res screens to make sure the sizes are going to usable for people.

Also, for the tabbed interface, if you could bring all the parameters from the tabs out into panels you can do away with the tabbed interface and have everything visible and usable more easily.

[EffectiveFX]

If anybody had trouble with the YouTube link, I was able to download from here:
https://www.effective-fx.com/downloads/ ... downloads/

thanks for this interesting VST3 effect.
although, on my Manjaro Linux the GUI was blank and when I tried to switch to GUI-less mode in REAPER it crashed REAPER. I could hear the audio working, but with no GUI I can't keep it.

So you were able to run it on Linux!? The macOS version I'm assuming? There's no specific Linux build but hopefully when I get a Linux version up in the near future, it will be fully useable.

[EffectiveFX]

Ok. Sounds pretty cool. I love the MVP UI. lol... would love to resize it larger, its small and hard to use on my 4K. You are definitely onto something here I think...

Dude thanks for the kind words! I did this by myself with little background in the UI/UX department - so I'm glad you're forgiving of that and see the potential regardless

You're definitely not the first to mention the size - do you think making the screen resizable would be necessary if it was just bigger?

I dont think its going to matter if the resizing is graduations (50%, 75%, 100%, 125% etc) or if its fluid (grab the corner and go). But resizing will help a lot. If you go with graduated sizes, make sure the sizes make sense for different screen resolutions. In other words, test it on small med and large res screens to make sure the sizes are going to usable for people.

Also, for the tabbed interface, if you could bring all the parameters from the tabs out into panels you can do away with the tabbed interface and have everything visible and usable more easily.

You're definitely not the first to mention the size - do you think making the screen resizable would be necessary if it was just bigger?

If I dare to chime in :
- Resizable GUIs are quite standard nowadays, so I think it would be a good thing and make your FX more future-proof.
- Also, GUI-wise, I must say I don't really like tabbed interfaces, because you can't see all the parameters are once, and it's slower to setup... did you consider a single-tab interface?

That's great advice on graduated resizing. I'm a huge fan of the way ValhallaDSP plugins (shoutout Sean who is a huge inspiration to me) resize ("grab corner and go") and in a perfect world would have implemented things that way, but I went with a static interface for now because of time/resource constraints. Graduated scaling might be a good compromise between the two!

And as for the tabbed interfaces, it would mean x4.5 times the dials on the screen if you could see everything at once which is why I crunched things down, but I agree it's kind of annoying to have to flip through the tabs. What about two display modes, one that shrinks the interface into tabs and one that expands everything out?

This is really great feedback guys - I plan on making many more effects in the future so the effort invested into the interface will pay dividends in the future.

Poltergeist free downloads.

[Vee Ess Tee]

As soon as I started the plugin. I am asked for my registration email to authorise the plugin. On a commercial plugin, that would make some sense but for a free plugin it's just nonsensical. I guess you wouldn't want to risk revenue loss from people stealing a free plugin, right?

[sinkmusic]

And as for the tabbed interfaces, it would mean x4.5 times the dials on the screen if you could see everything at once which is why I crunched things down, but I agree it's kind of annoying to have to flip through the tabs. What about two display modes, one that shrinks the interface into tabs and one that expands everything out?

I tried a quick sketch to see how many parameters could be put without changing the GUI size or ratio. With that rough try, I managed to stack 3 out of 5 sections (I lost the IN gain and MIX pots, but the concept still work imho).


I personally don't find this too intimidating. With a little work on the fonts and maybe using colors for each section, I think it could work quite fine.

[EffectiveFX]

As soon as I started the plugin. I am asked for my registration email to authorise the plugin. On a commercial plugin, that would make some sense but an a free plugin it's just nonsensical. I guess you wouldn't want to risk revenue loss from people stealing a free plugin, right?

I understand your concern! There is a banner ad at the bottom of this plugin that goes away if you contribute any amount to my Buy Me A Coffee, and that email is used to identify supporters. And I also plan on releasing paid software in the future, so this plugin is a testing ground for email-based registration.

[EffectiveFX]

And as for the tabbed interfaces, it would mean x4.5 times the dials on the screen if you could see everything at once which is why I crunched things down, but I agree it's kind of annoying to have to flip through the tabs. What about two display modes, one that shrinks the interface into tabs and one that expands everything out?

I tried a quick sketch to see how many parameters could be put without changing the GUI size or ratio. With that rough try, I managed to stack 3 out of 5 sections (I lost the IN gain and MIX pots, but the concept still work imho).


I personally don't find this too intimidating. With a little work on the fonts and maybe using colors for each section, I think it could work quite fine.

You're right, that doesn't look to bad! The interface itself is quite small too, so could definitely expand to accommodate more dials.

Thank you again for your thoughtful feedback - it's really hard sometimes to make these kinds of design decisions when you work by yourself

[EffectiveFX]

Poltergeist free download

[beeellecee]

Liking the possibilities with Poltergeist - agree the interface could be improved without tabs though. Great to see some new developers.

[EffectiveFX]

Liking the possibilities with Poltergeist - agree the interface could be improved without tabs though. Great to see some new developers.

Thank you for the kind words! This is only the beginning for me! (but probably the end of tabbed interfaces)

[EffectiveFX]

Thanks again everyone for all the enthusiasm for this project! If you're interested, I wrote up a little retrospective about how releasing Poltergeist went.

Also, if you enjoy Poltergeist, want to banish the banner ad, and support me ahead of my next plugin release, I want to offer a substantial discount to do so.

It's very cheap for you and will help me test the checkout system! Just click this link for checkout with the discount.

[3lu5iv3]

Poltergeist sounds like a cool plugin. Will experiment with this after lunch. Thanks.

[EffectiveFX]

Poltergeist sounds like a cool plugin. Will experiment with this after lunch. Thanks.

Awesome! Feel free to drop a link to anything you make with it - I love hearing what people are able to do!

[pough]

I think it might be a good idea to make the registration process a bit more clear, at least to old guys like me. "Enter registration email" sounds to me like you are asking for an email address that has already been used to register and this step will communicate with your server to confirm that the plugin has already been registered to an email address.

Something like "Enter your email address here to register plugin" would have saved me several minutes of confused website searching. And also maybe including that as a part of the website's installation instructions as well. It doesn't seem to say that the registration process is done through the plugin and not the website. It just doesn't mention that important step at all (that I could find.)