kyran's Forum Page

Thanks for all the answers.

I think we’re on the same track with the embedded editors.

I personally could live with just the global record option.

Ronin made me think: is a seperate record arm button for each fx track needed. Can’t you just slave that to the group record arm button.
Is there a usecase where this useful? (I can’t see one at the moment, but I’m sure someone will tell me why this is useful) If not you could get rid of that button.

Also with some tinkering I think the track select button can double as the E button. (although it might result in a more awkward workflow, and may not be worth it).

@Zynewave wrote:

@Zynewave wrote:

A final remark: you’re stepping away from the integrated gui of the z plugins with the inspector then? Your current design doesn’t really leave room for these.

In a later release I’ll remove the embedded plugin editor from the track panel, and instead insert it into the group panel, just below the combobox where the effect is selected. That will allow a zPEQ editor to be open when the source track is selected, and it also allows multiple embedded editors to be open at the same time. For this purpose, there will be a new button next to the current ‘E’ button, which will open/close the embedded editor.

Which reminds me:

With plugin editors embedded in the group panel, would it not make sense to rename the “group panel” to “rack”?

I also plan to extend the current group panel options into perhaps 3 separate configs. That way you can quickly switch between different layouts, without having to toggle each individual option in the inspector menu. Instead of the “Group Panel” button at the top of the inspector, there would be buttons for “Rack 1”, “Rack 2” and “Rack 3”. Good idea, or overkill?

I see. I think moving the embedded editors to the group panel is a good move. Renaming it to rack too.
The embedded editors are much handier now with this new layout, because it’s a lot more simple to select a certain track so it’s editor opens in the track panel.

I don’t really get what you mean with those config options. A bit like the editor profiles?

What I’m missing now, after playing a bit with the new layout is a quick way to reorder the fx tracks. I’d really like to be able to do this with drag and drop. I think that this is quite essential.

The other panels feel quite redundant now, all their functionality is (much more intuitive) taken over by the group panel. I think you can remove those and gain quite some real estate in the inspector.

You could also gain real estate by changing the sends to knobs, instead of the current selector + fader + menu etc. These knobs could be placed next to each other as well.

Now here comes the wishfull thinking request: embedded editors for all vst’s. Each vst should have an embedded editor with 8 knobs (think racks in live). Like you have “add parameter track” option in the menu now, you could also have “link parameter to knob”, which will map that vst parameter to the knob, so you have it available for instant tweaking. You could also save this mapping in the plugin template so it’s restored each time you use it.

I ordered it on their site. International shipping is 2 euro extra. So it’s about 7.9 to get it shipped anywhere in the world (instead of the german 5.8 euro price)

Just use qt or juce. You can include the libraries in your binary, so the user doesn’t need to worry about downloading them.
Besides, they give you crossplatform compatibility out of the box.

If you’re going for a desktop application I’d go with qt (check out qt developer as your IDE, it’ll set it all up for you with minimal hassle), for real time audio I’d use juce. (you can still use qt developer, but it’ll be just as handy as visual studio now)

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

@H-man wrote:

I found that after never using it, I have switched to using the embedded editor exclusively.

Same here! Turned out to be as nice as I imagined it when I suggested this recent change. In fact, if it’s possible at all, I would request an option to only ever use the embedded editor. By that I mean when you double-click an event, the EE should pop up (if minimized) instead of the new window.
Might be kind of silly, I know, since I’m probably the only one who still does minimize the editor/mixer! 😛

I wouldn’t do that. If you have a very big midi file (say an orchestral score with keyswitches), it’s very handy to see it in a big editor so you have a good overview. They both serve their purpose.

The thing is that new tracks have track colour turned off, which means that the colourpicker in the inspector doesn’t show.

Just switching the colour checkbox on for new tracks would be an improvement.
Also: you could still set it to the default track colour of the colour templates. I mean: all colours set by the user are known by the program, so it should be possible to determine good track colours from those, or at least make sure the new track colours are sufficiently different from certain colours specified in the colour scheme. (allthough this will probably be harder to implement than just changing the default state of a checkbox)

I suggest you look at C++ toolkits like juce or qt.

They both bring you crossplatform support out of the box and have a lot of the hard work done for you. It will make C++ much easier to handle too. Not at the “easy of coding” level of C# or java, because you still have to manage memory, but still.

Juce is especially suited for real time audio apps. It’s made by the guy who later on made tracktion IIRC.

Both are free of charge if you open source your app. (Qt is LGPL, so you could make a commercial packet with that one)