Topic: Plugin Overhaul Needed in Podium

Well, tubby, if you really want to know what my opinion is of forum posts on the Net and the unwritten ‘rules’ that some apply, I’d have to say that the whole thing is one entire stink. The pseudo ‘hipness’ of responding and being obscure within users’ posts is more of a waste of time to me than someone who takes the time and effort to be detailed and very clear about what point is being made and the support for it.

There’s nothing ‘hip’ at all about the inability to read, comprehend well and focus one’s attention on a matter for more than 15 seconds. I don’t live and communicate in sound bites. I won’t elaborate too much here, either, since I know it’s so hard to read more than a few lines. George Burns yacked on the Telly ceaselessly every time he was on. Part of his humour was his ramble, a half mumble at times.

I’d laugh out loud if it wasn’t such a sad reality, but in regards to the general public and their use of the internet, it hasn’t seemed to make the public smarter. No, nowadays nobody can spell, no one can write a full grammatical sentence, no one actually writes letters to close friends anymore; in fact, people hardly send email of any real substance anymore; instead just tweets and phrases. God forbid you ever have a real problem about something on a forum, because it’s 50/50 that the responses you get will be clear enough to understand and apply.

This and more has been said mostly of the generation of what are called The Millennials, a generation of ignoramuses, and many lazy also. I find it odd that the PC, invented partially to free us up and make life easier, has, like so many other inventions similarly touted, in the end turned around to enslave us.

I rarely bother sharing any tips, wisdom, discoveries, etc., anymore on forums. Why? Simple — one jerk will flame you, another’s a troll, another whines about length, another misses the entire point no matter how clear, another simply shows up with a bad attitude and no manners. Either way, one ends up a target. Screw it. I know many others with my length of time in music who don’t share on forums anymore. It’s easy to see why. That’s a loss to all the young snots with little or no experience. They’ll just have to learn the hard way, if at all. That’s just tough, isn’t it? And if this post is too long, well, that’s just tough too.

Brevity in a highly technological age is a recipe for disaster.

Let me answer this one ‘backwards’ if you will. I think the bit about ‘brevity’ here is a basic misunderstanding between our words or usage. A great case in point is a comparison between Reaper’s and Podium’s Guides. Reaper goes long and into great detail with each topic and how to use any very technical feature. I believe you cannot come away from their somewhat long-winded chapters without feeling extremely confident. In Podium’s, topics tend to be breezed over, often in short paragraphs and with little or no illustrations, arrows or support. I was actually doing rather better with Podium before I decided I ought to read the Guide, yet after each attempt I usually had a headache and was left confused as to what exactly was being discussed.

Regarding my own writing as in these threads, so, it seems now that it is not the usual length as much as my recent subject matter. Unfortunately, I am not a newbie here, so I can’t post a troublesome yet very different problem each thread. However, after the lot of us recently rehashed all feature requests, posting comments and a poll or two, following which I took an entire evening to post a sort of ‘Podium Critique”, we then experienced a groundswell of deafening silence concerning practically all of it. Now, imagine my dismay concerning that and also the fact that I had recently licensed and put in a truly huge amount of time learning Podium and attempting to make workarounds for each lack of a feature as I encountered them, one by one. Please add to that the fact that I was attracted to Podium in part by Zynewave’s own words on its home page, talking about the many ‘user-driven’ and forthcoming upgrades, and how Frits, though a one-man dev show for sure, was in a spot to devote all his time to improvements.

Well, apparently, things had changed, the page had not been updated, and I was completely unaware of this. Knowing then that my cause was futile, I decided to take a season to annoyingly drive home a few choice points of fact. Do keep in mind that I have always been among the first and loudest to praise Zynewave and Podium for its virtues and achievements. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. But I am meanwhile not of the sort to suffer well anything second rate in either myself, others, or the products I employ. I am no proponent of mediocrity, and there certainly is entirely too much of that in this world of DAWs and today’s digital recordings and personnel. The larger shame is that many of you put up with it well enough, don’t you, aye?

It should be noted — or perhaps you have seen — that I have since then moved on to other things, including a much heavier reliance on Reaper, among other things. Being no quitter, though, I am still trying to work with Podium as much as is possible. This forum continues to intrigue me as well — it varies from a quiet and sometimes peacefully refreshing place to rather uninspiring, even perhaps depressing at times, and certainly not on fire with much new thought or creativity — all a reflection of the DAW it supports.

Yes, sorry, this one ran long. I normally do not care to explain my motives for posting whatever it is I have, but I thought I’d make an exception this one time, perhaps able to benefit another forum member.

Cheers!