RhythmEcho private beta

[rcrath]

You can edit the old one. It should come up when you go to the feedback page. Fill out as much as you like. I'm grateful for the feedback

[rcrath]

RhythmEcho v0.9.8m is out.
I thought this would be a quick and insubstantial release with just a couple of convenience features. One of those features opened a Pandora's box of future problems, so I completely redid the underlying logic of the gui.

The GUI looks almost the same -- with the striking replacement of attack and decay with a three-part bezier curve based envelope. This adds whole news dimensions to the soundscaping possibilities from gentle panning tremeloes based, as always, on your playing rather than a BPM or LFO, to jagged polyrhythmic gating, to more mundane things like getting the repeats out of the way of the kick or even out of the way of themselves. Try it out along with the rewritten reverse and pitch change buttons for brand new sounds.

Despite the familiar look, I've redone the underlying architecture to connect to the DSP more logically, sort out a bunch of glitches in preset recall, and make bug tracking much simpler in the soon-to-be bug-free future (see note on Utopias as useful fantasies). In the process, I was able to get at the audio processing in a much finer detail. You will find the not-unpleasant effect of warbling is mostly gone. If you want it back, go for short delay times with a little feedback against a longer delay. Nothing lost but a huge gain in sound quality that opens up whole new vistas of less glitchy, more usable delays. Not that glitchy is a bad thing.

Finally, and thanks for new tester Bill D, I have brought back the max delay at the other end of the min delay to deal with a case where sparse playing led to short controlled echoes followed by space to have an awkwardly long first delay time on resumption. Now just set the max delay to the longest delay you want in your piece and the problem is solved.

~Rich

RhythmEcho is free while in beta. Windows, macOS, Linux:, 64 bit, ARM, Silicon, Universal Binary, au, clap, Linux 64 and arm, yep. all there.
https://way.net/rhythmecho/installers/

[pekbro]

Thanks, I for one think it looks better, easier to look at for some reason, softer color better definition. I tend to prefer less corner rounding myself, maybe that's it. Anyway

Have you thought about doing something interesting for the visualization? Maybe propagating waves or something, since you're in Hawaii and all. That might be cool.

[rcrath]

thanks. look and feel is next up. getting a pro for that. re: the visualization, the current one is actually kind of subliminally helpful once you know what it is doing. Each new delay time comes in at the line below the previous one, wrapping back to the top when it reaches the bottom. the length of the delay is the length of the trail, and the trials fade out as they repeat in their lanes. Link on and you get a mirror image. Link off and Ch A and Ch B each show their own pattern, Ch A center to left, and Ch B center to right. I like this for two reasons 1. informational once you know. 2. uses built in graphics. I really want to keep it light on CPU/GPU. I just did a project running five at once and my computer barely worked up a sweat. I will run the waves idea past whoever I hire though, also giving them free rein to try some stuff out too.

[pekbro]

thanks. look and feel is next up. getting a pro for that. re: the visualization, the current one is actually kind of subliminally helpful once you know what it is doing. Each new delay time comes in at the line below the previous one, wrapping back to the top when it reaches the bottom. the length of the delay is the length of the trail, and the trials fade out as they repeat in their lanes. Link on and you get a mirror image. Link off and Ch A and Ch B each show their own pattern, Ch A center to left, and Ch B center to right. I like this for two reasons 1. informational once you know. 2. uses built in graphics. I really want to keep it light on CPU/GPU. I just did a project running five at once and my computer barely worked up a sweat. I will run the waves idea past whoever I hire though, also giving them free rein to try some stuff out too.

I get it, though if it were up to me, I'd leave it as it is and just make the colors customizable for user, including borders. Add a rounding preference for the shapes maybe. The UI is not bad imo, and certainly unique. I'm not sure what a designer could accomplish without adding the weight of image maps. IMO with all the best and most efficient UI's, the beauty is predominantly in the code. Take a look at the UI for my friend Hakan's EQ. Nov SVG's at all just font's, it's ridiculously efficient. A designer might improve layout and color here to some degree, personally I don't see it being worth the cost.

balance.PNG

[rcrath]

that looks great. theming is post 1.0 but on the list. can you show me a UI without rounding on the buttons? I'm open to the idea, but not into flat tiles, which is all I can imagine non-rounded buttons would like like. His buttons are rounded!

I'll stew some more on the UI. Maybe there are some other visualize-instead-of-name type things I can do like with the envelopes to make it less sliderfest. There are all too many controls to do knobs. I immediately go to the next plugin when faced with a wall of knobs. the sliders have some cool advantages. no dragging...just click where you want to go, and you get a readout of where that is before you clock. no guessing of "now do I drag this knob up? Sideways? Around in a circle?" The sliders "fold up," there are two layers of collapse for simplicity, Sane/Fafo and Linked/Unlinked. You can add complexity incrementally as you need it instead of all or nothing. Everything stays right where it is when you change these, object fixity is an important principle for me and it is key to not frustrating the user like on zoom where you have to hunt around for which control is where for which view this week (or the latest iOS for another one). Another non-negotiable, I could save space and make it look nicer with submenus and tabs (i cheat a little on tabs -- see eq and envelope) but for my use case, less clicks=better, especially since I use this for performance as much as recording tricks. I have a set of design docs for it when I do have someone else have a go at it. they may be idiosyncratic, but nothing is on the gui by random order.

Anyway, I am glad you like this one better, and I am homing in on the parts you pick out for improvement, but beyond the architecture, in the look-and-feel department my reach exceeds my grasp, but I'll bring someone in soon to have a go at that. I like the rockheyday stuff. and would love to bring your friend in to the conversation for any constructive advice they might have.
Cheers, Rich