Doug B's Forum Page

@super_crunchy wrote:

before you go down that path, maybe it’s time to try reversing the order of the heirarchy… instruments at the top, followed by FX, and eventually all tracks trickle down to the master out.

Are you mind reading again SC? 🙂

My thoughts exactly. Reverse the visual heirarchy as you said-like it or not THAT is what users are used to in other hosts/sequencers.

I haven’t thought through the implications of such a move, but I think it would be worth trying to see if all users would benefit from such a change. I suppose, the comfort would come from the fact that in most places in the western world (probably the majority of users, correct me if I’m wrong!) we read from top left to bottom right, so if the signal flowed in the same way it would be easier to understand.

Again, conventions guide how we do things. Unless there is a demonstrable benefit to turning the routing upside down, leave it be. Different for different’s sake is not an improvement; if that is indeed the case here.

I wouldn’t go down the way Tracktion does it (yet) but try reversing the direction

Again, I have to agree. Tracktion’s chain is just right to left, which is how we read. But we also read top to bottom. Personally I find top to bottom far more usefull for Podium than just right to left. Now how about combining both approaches-top to bottom AND left to right. Hmmm….

duplicate

@acousmod wrote:

The “hierarchical” thing in Podium is somewhat different.
It is for me like “matriochka” puppets, where one can be put in another, which can be put in another etc. with a big difference in that we can put several ones together in one, change their sizes and their places etc…

But how does that benefit users? Flexibility? Many users don’t find Logic/Cubase/Traktion/exT etc all that inflexible for their needs. Sure, some users do, but how much flexibility do we really need? Is there a point where too much flexibility gets in the way of workflow? 😕

For me, it allows to do some kind of routings that I can only do in modular softwares (Audiomulch, EnergyXT etc.), and that could be possible in some other hosts by sparing bus sends in a complicate way.

Ok, I can see cases where it would be useful to have one chorus work with five different tracks or have five different choruses work on each track. Keeps your options open.

It is also very simple to change the order of the tracks.

Please explain and elaborate. In Cubase SX, you just drag and drop track six so that it is now between tracks 1 and 2.
Do you mean something like that?

The drawback is that for simple things we must define or use the “mappings”, and that we must use some tracks which are not really tracks but supports to mappings.

Right-like pointers in programming. A sign post that points to the memory location, not the memory location itself. It would be nice if there was a ‘default ‘ mapping so that Podium knew the default vstplugin folder to look for effects in instead of having to do a plugin search for each project. Users often work on more than one project at once, often several.

For me, the ideal multitrack software… will have no track but only objects that the user can organise in the “hierarchical” way directly on a time space.

That’s an old concept, much like Object Oriented Programming-everything’s an object.

It is visually more obvious to organize the sounds and the effetcs than the track way, because we can really see the objects that are inside other ones etc…

But right now, I don’t find Podium to be that visually more obvious. As I mentioned before, it seems upside down and backwards sometimes. And that is tremendously frustrating to users. I fully understand that it may be due to habits previously learned in other hosts and sequencers. I also realize that it takes time to learn new habits. But right now, all I know is that it feels awkward and not quite right-like there’s something wrong, but I don’t quite know what. And that makes me feel distinctly uneasy and uncomfortable.

I suppose that other people will have some very different points of view 😉

Yup, YMMV. 8)

@Conquistador wrote:

THE biggest single problem from my own experience and others trying out Podium is getting any sound out of it. I had to pretty much forget about it for about a year because I just could not work out how to get a simple beep out of Podium!

Same experience here-I gave up on Podium for a few months because the effects setup just did not make sense.

It seemed upside down to me after using several other hosts. Most other hosts add effects to an instrument. They don’t add an instrument as a subset of say a chorus effect.

To this day, I do not see why Podium was designed this way, which is visually and conceptually backwards. That is part of the complexity and confusion.

Many have tried and struggled to get a sound out of Podium.

I saved a default project to use as a template with eXT loaded on a couple of tracks. That way I could add instruments or tracks faster and easier to Podium. But the whole time I was working that way with eXT, I kept telling myself ‘It shouldn’t have to be that way.’ Then I finally started understanding the native Podium effects setup, iit still didn’t feel right, even though I can now more or less set up effects per track.

@Zynewave wrote:

The Standard/ClearType option you find in the display control panel only applies to fonts.

Thanks, I thought that it might only apply to fonts.