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Old 11-14-2010, 04:19 PM   #81
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BTW: in general I think any of the designs suggested so far are improvements on the existing IO dialog but I'm very wary of non-standard UI elements unless they're really needed. Personally, I think if it can be done clearly with tabs, sliders and standard Windows buttons then don't reinvent the wheel.
i agree. if for no other reason, familiarity.
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Old 11-14-2010, 04:23 PM   #82
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i agree. if for no other reason, familiarity.
Yes - the problem with inventing new UI elements is you risk low affordance: basically if the button or whatever doesn't immediately communicate its purpose, people either won't know how to interact with it or won't know what will happen if they do. Either way they may just not use it.
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Old 11-14-2010, 04:31 PM   #83
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One thing I would like to see is the ability to reassign an already existing send to a different track. Maybe make each send name clickable giving you a drop down to choose a different track?
+1

Also I'd like to be able to select these send/receive panels just like the MCP panels (multi-select with Shift and Ctrl).
Benefit :
* hit del to remove selected panels.
* sliders are grouped (linked) when multi-selected.
* possibility to insert a send/receive after selected panel. <-- disregard this ! ^^

Last edited by Bernstraw; 11-14-2010 at 05:13 PM.
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Old 11-14-2010, 04:33 PM   #84
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Airon, what is missing in Bernstraw's mockup that you added to yours? As far as I can tell both mockups contain the exact same information (except Bernstraw's is missing metering) but Bernstraw's mockup fits more than twice the amount of sends in the same size window.

As far as I can tell the only difference in the two mockups is the placement of the buttons... I don't think it's particularly more difficult to access the buttons in Bernstraw's mockup, I actually prefer that it is organized in a way where all the buttons are together, just visually cleaner to me. And they are all still near the send name if that is really important, but I don't think it is hard to see which track the controls are associated with in Bernstraw's mockup anyways.

The fact that sends are already adjustable in the MCP is irrelevant to me because I mix in the TCP, and I also like to control sends from the receiving track most of the time. I can open the I/O window for my reverb bus and control the reverb mix for all the sending tracks from one window. This is not possible using the small controls in the MCP.

Even in the compact mockup, it takes up as much space as Bernstraw's but displays less information.

Sorry I am not trying to dismiss your hard work, your mockup is still excellent I just don't see the need for the send panels to be bigger than the MCP panels. A lot of us do work on laptops as well sometimes and using a quarter of the whole screen to display 4 send faders is a little excessive when you can fit 9 with Bernstraw's design and still see all of the same info.
Space is not an issue for me. Tiny screens are not my biggest concern any longer and I simply can't see the need to adjust it all to such a low denominator, not at the price that compactness requires.

Sorry mate, my priority is usability.

Bernstraw, I think your panel is a great alternative for some folks, but it has some caveats that for me make it less desirable to use than the other design.

The faders have a very small travel range. You can go finetune on them, but I do prefer more clarity on the spot when reviewing my receives for a bus or reverb. Like I said, space is not the issue for me, especially for a temporary display like this that I do not wish to study, but take in at a glance.

There's lots of stuff between the small send/receive name and the control I most often use, the fader. I'm constantly scanning back and forth, whereas with the bigger and more colourful mockup I find tracks not just by their large name but also by colour pretty much instantly. There's only the pan between the fader and the send/receive name that can visually clutter things up.

This distance the eyes must travel is one the things I tried very hard to minimize and make as easy as possible in the design, and it's what I miss here.

The slider pan is probably history and should pretty much die out IMHO, since up/down motion with the mouse and a knob is a much more efficient choice for mouse use and indication.

What stands out in your design is a matrix of buttons, drawing attention away from the send/receive name and the fader.

Two of those buttons you'll probably only use once during the entire project, stereo/mono and invert. This matrix for me creates a visual stumbling block. It promotes having to spend a lot of effort keeping focus on a fader far away from the send/receive name. The two shades you use as a background don't help as much as you may think. I tried that as well quite a lot.

If the focus is lost, the user has to retrace his steps, starting with the send/receive name, then moving down across all those stand-out elements.

It's a problem some consoles have when there are a lot of controls that look the same. You have to start looking for a hook, then run your finger up or down the channel to find the control you need. The routing matrix of Reaper is much the same, though more extreme because it on the other hand is completely plain.

Here in the I/O view, the only remedy for your design I can think of at the moment is to introduce colours for the entire panel that reflect the track colours of the send/receive target/source.

Some of this is personal preference. I prefer to be able to read the send/receive names with almost no effort. I don't like searching the GUI for things I need, and your compact design makes me search a bit harder than I'd like.

There are also a lot of people who do not have the eyesight to deal with small text on such important identification markings. I routinely scan for tracks in my sessions purely by colour, but never by track name first. It's just quicker for me, and probably for a lot of folks.

On that note, I think I can make the whole thing a little more compact by making the midi activity monitor two horizontal rows instead of one vertical and by placing it underneath the midi config section.
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Old 11-14-2010, 04:39 PM   #85
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Originally Posted by Bernstraw View Post
+1

Also I'd like to be able to select these send/receive panels just like the MCP panels (multi-select with Shift and Ctrl).
Benefit :
* hit del to remove selected panels.
* sliders are grouped (linked) when multi-selected.
+1

Quote:
* possibility to insert a send/receive after selected panel.
So far the order was determined by track order in the session. Why would you need to disconnect this from the track order ? I'm curious.
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Old 11-14-2010, 05:00 PM   #86
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I seldom use more than 2 sends per track and never adjust send levels from the receive end because I'm used to a physical mixer. For my usage I'd prefer a larger more comprehensive and/or more clearly laid out section per track than trying to cram too much into too small a space and I don't care much about seeing/editing the receives at all.

How many sends and receives per track is typical and what are the likely maximums? If we have a horizontal layout on a widescreen display, how wide can the sends/receives be to avoid scrolling in the typical case?

How common is adjustment of receive ends of sends? Should receives be visible by default?

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Old 11-14-2010, 05:09 PM   #87
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So far the order was determined by track order in the session. Why would you need to disconnect this from the track order ? I'm curious.
Oops, you're right no need for this !

This thread is called "better design for IO routings", and we're not quite there yet imho.
The "standard UI" mockup I did wouldn't satisfy me either, it lacks track colors as you said and an overview of the whole track's IO so I won't defend it in any way.
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Old 11-14-2010, 05:17 PM   #88
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This thread is called "better design for IO routings", and we're not quite there yet imho.
To be honest I think we should be questioning whether the functionality bundled together in this dialog really belongs together.

I think send levels should be more accessible (i.e. directly from the mixer by default without having to add each send manually) and that recording/input monitoring settings should go in a separate screen entirely.

However, I'd also like an input trim, input monitoring not to be dependent on track arming and EQ per track by default so I'm a bit of a heretic!

Last edited by not relevant; 11-14-2010 at 05:25 PM.
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Old 11-14-2010, 07:27 PM   #89
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Space is not an issue for me. Tiny screens are not my biggest concern any longer and I simply can't see the need to adjust it all to such a low denominator, not at the price that compactness requires.

Sorry mate, my priority is usability.
Not to be difficult but you must have a lot of issues with the MCP then as well?

The benefit to large screens and high resolution monitors is increased workspace. There is no gain in workspace when you start making all of the elements larger to compensate for the fact that an increased resolution makes things appear smaller. At that point you might as well just reduce your resolution because you are not reaping any of the advantages of the increased resolution by wanting everything to be so big.

On a large high resolution monitor, if something is too big you can easily reduce your resolution. The reverse is not true on a small monitor. Personally, I nor any other users I have talked to have had any trouble with the MCP panels being too small, so I don't see the need for send panels to be bigger than that either.

I have no problem with the actual layout of either mockup, it's just the size of the elements that seems unnecessary to me in yours, airon. Keep everything the same size as the rest of the UI, no need to make the panels 1.5 the size and the text labels double the size and bolder.

Bernstraw's mockup still seems great to me, I just instinctively like it and feel like I would enjoy working with it. It could easily be adapted to be taller if the fader range is a concern, no problem there. I really don't see what about it makes it hard to discern which buttons/faders belong to which tracks, it seems well organized to me.
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Old 11-15-2010, 01:43 AM   #90
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Space is not an issue for me. Tiny screens are not my biggest concern any longer and I simply can't see the need to adjust it all to such a low denominator, not at the price that compactness requires.
Don't be surprised if people are recording and mixing in their smartphones and tablets a year from now (netbooks already happening)

What I am saying is: small screens are back with us, they are not to be dismissed. They can be, as a personal preference, but not as a whole.

I don't like compactness that sacrifices readability/usability, as much as I don't like bloat that wastes a lot of space.

I believe there can be a sweet spot for both compactness and usability on big or small screens. Coupled with some flexibility in customizing the end result.

But now, more than ever, we have the widest variety of devices and screen sizes and resolutions. Flexible UIs are of great importance.
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Old 11-15-2010, 02:36 AM   #91
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Don't be surprised if people are recording and mixing in their smartphones and tablets a year from now (netbooks already happening)
Those people will constitute a very small proportion of the REAPER user base and the rest of us shouldn't have to compromise with unusably small interfaces just to accommodate them.

Plus I don't think even the most powerful ARM Cortex CPUs have the floating point grunt to run a full version of REAPER anyway, so if/when REAPER is customized for these CPUs, the interface can be customized at the same time.
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Old 11-15-2010, 03:14 AM   #92
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A full and compact view of the current design (v23):



One thing missing is the output section with volume, pan, mute and channel count of the track. What would you guys think of an output section horizontally placed along the bottom. Since the main track fader is something not often touched in this view, and the channel count not often changed, it could do well at the bottom. If it doesn't work, I'll put it at the top .

The hardware and midi hardware output page would probably differ a bit from the send/receive views as well.
comlete ownage!
this is so fkkin badass! <3<3<3<3

but please keep everything unnecessary outa the gui- f.e. i never ever touched the send panning. if you let the user hide what he doesn´t want.
aaaaaand please make the send/recieve colors more obbious. this would rly help.
thx
can´t wait anymore, want reaper 4 NOW!
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Old 11-15-2010, 03:40 AM   #93
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That alternate idea for the routing matrix is awesome, and I voted yes.

Hell I would be happy with the rows, and columns in the routing matrix just being the same color as the custom track color. When you have 40+ tracks... yeah enough said.
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Old 11-15-2010, 06:54 AM   #94
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Those people will constitute a very small proportion of the REAPER user base and the rest of us shouldn't have to compromise with unusably small interfaces just to accommodate them.
Agreed. But even netbooks have relatively low resolution displays (600pixels vertical is common). Some people are using netbooks now (with the inefficient Atom CPU), as a portable recording platform. Fast-forward 6months-1year from now, and it's not hard to imagine netbooks becoming a powerful option for a portable studio. And Reaper is an excellent candidate for when that happens.

I don't like unusably small interfaces either. I like flexibility. Thinking that we're all living in a 24"+ monitor era is very... inflexible thinking.

I'd like to be able to use Reaper comfortably on my next year's netbook, as well as my dual-monitor DAW. Not that it would ever be the same experience of course.

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Plus I don't think even the most powerful ARM Cortex CPUs have the floating point grunt to run a full version of REAPER anyway, so if/when REAPER is customized for these CPUs, the interface can be customized at the same time.
Don't think now, think a year ahead. x86 is coming to portable devices big time. If not phones (which is the least of our concerns), tablets and netbooks for sure. AMD is entering the game in 2011 in these sectors so things will really start moving forward (competition).
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Old 11-15-2010, 07:17 AM   #95
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If this is honestly "unusably small" you guys need to get new glasses or increase your screen resolution. How on earth do you use the track panels in the mixer window if you find this too small? They are virtually the same size!




Making everything enormous because of high resolution monitors is the silliest argument I've ever heard. High resolution monitors are meant to increase workspace by allowing you to have more windows on the screen. If you are making all of those windows twice as big you haven't gained anything and you have wasted a ton of money on your nice display.

Look how much space the other mockup takes up when displaying the same amount of sends in comparison. Each panel is about 1.5 times the size of a mixer panel, it just doesn't seem necessary:



I still think Brice's mockup is great, it appears busy because of the color choices but even his is not "unusably small."

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Old 11-15-2010, 07:44 AM   #96
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@AdamWathan

That's a good mockup. It reminds me of the control panel for some audio interfaces (m-audio delta?)

A few comments about that particular mockup:

1) It's MIDI, not Midi

2) There's too much small text, packed in a small place. And it's all plain Arial. That's a general thing around Reaper I know. But even with a single typeface, the clever use of regular+bold text, text+background color, and text size can make things a lot more readable.

Plus, the use of icons can help, like the labels 'Audio' and 'MIDI' could be icons instead (a waveform or speaker for audio, and the MIDI socket or official logo for MIDI)

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Old 11-15-2010, 08:02 AM   #97
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OK, the next iteration.

The full view is a bit more compact. Here I tried to illustrate what full colour could look like. I didn't have time to do it for the compact view(-edit- now coloured). The Input section can be hidden in a classic way, and would probably need to stay that way.

Adam, I see you're not using any colour in that session. I work with colours at all times, so perhaps a simpler approach with higher contrast really is more suited to the way you work. Bernstraws mockup certainly stands out better against the somewhat monochromatic background in the example shot, whereas the other mockup get slightly more lost.

Anyway, here's it is, the WIP :



Also, here's a version at about roughly 80% of the others size. Link only.
https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/437516/...gn_24_80pc.png
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Old 11-15-2010, 11:07 AM   #98
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If this is honestly "unusably small" you guys need to get new glasses or increase your screen resolution. How on earth do you use the track panels in the mixer window if you find this too small? They are virtually the same size!




Making everything enormous because of high resolution monitors is the silliest argument I've ever heard. High resolution monitors are meant to increase workspace by allowing you to have more windows on the screen. If you are making all of those windows twice as big you haven't gained anything and you have wasted a ton of money on your nice display.

Look how much space the other mockup takes up when displaying the same amount of sends in comparison. Each panel is about 1.5 times the size of a mixer panel, it just doesn't seem necessary:



I still think Brice's mockup is great, it appears busy because of the color choices but even his is not "unusably small."
Sorry, I wasn't clear - I don't think any of the layouts proposed so far are 'unusably small' and I don't want or expect everything to be made 'enormous' either.

I don't agree though that the only purpose of larger and/or higher resolution screens is just to pack more stuff in. Spending those pixels on larger, clearer, more easily recognizable UI elements isn't by definition silly - sometimes being able to read a screen quickly and/or from a distance might be more useful than cramming the most information-per-pixel in just to get your money's worth.
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Old 11-15-2010, 11:30 AM   #99
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Agreed. But even netbooks have relatively low resolution displays (600pixels vertical is common). Some people are using netbooks now (with the inefficient Atom CPU), as a portable recording platform. Fast-forward 6months-1year from now, and it's not hard to imagine netbooks becoming a powerful option for a portable studio. And Reaper is an excellent candidate for when that happens.

I don't like unusably small interfaces either. I like flexibility. Thinking that we're all living in a 24"+ monitor era is very... inflexible thinking.

I'd like to be able to use Reaper comfortably on my next year's netbook, as well as my dual-monitor DAW. Not that it would ever be the same experience of course.



Don't think now, think a year ahead. x86 is coming to portable devices big time. If not phones (which is the least of our concerns), tablets and netbooks for sure. AMD is entering the game in 2011 in these sectors so things will really start moving forward (competition).
I don't mean to be inflexible but I think REAPER leans towards being too flexible in some cases and usability suffers for it. I'd rather Cockos didn't spend limited development resources on the thin ends of the normal curve. (This is just my opinion obviously - I'm not demanding they or anyone else do anything just because it would suit me)

I agree that it'll be interesting to see if a netbook with AMD Bobcat turns out to be powerful enough to run REAPER.

I'm not convinced about tablets - I think the combination of poor floating point performance, low memory bandwidth, limited storage, low screen size, no keyboard, etc. would mean a custom REAPER version targeting the strengths and weaknesses of the hardware might be preferable to trying to shoehorn in regular REAPER.
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Old 11-15-2010, 11:58 AM   #100
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I just think the size of things needs to be consistent across the UI and should follow the theme structure. All tabs in the program should be the same, all instance of track names should be the same, etc.

Here's airon's mockup text compared to the regular text in Reaper:



The tab titles need to match the existing UI tabs. If you want to alter your theme so your existing tab titles are bigger and bolder then of course go nuts, but I don't think everything needs to be big black crayon sized text by default, it needs to be clean and match the rest of the UI. I think that is a lot of the reason that airon's mockup comes across to me as blown up and out of proportion compared to the rest of the program and why Bernstraw's fits better to my eyes. It's just a better use of space and makes more sense with what we already have.

Of course the functionality is what we are requesting here, and by that token I think airon's mockup is fantastic (as is Bernstraw's). But I just wanted to interject and make sure that my reasonings for wanting a consistent aesthetic across the whole UI are understood.
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Old 11-15-2010, 02:03 PM   #101
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I just think the size of things needs to be consistent across the UI and should follow the theme structure. All tabs in the program should be the same, all instance of track names should be the same, etc.

Here's airon's mockup text compared to the regular text in Reaper:



The tab titles need to match the existing UI tabs. If you want to alter your theme so your existing tab titles are bigger and bolder then of course go nuts, but I don't think everything needs to be big black crayon sized text by default, it needs to be clean and match the rest of the UI. I think that is a lot of the reason that airon's mockup comes across to me as blown up and out of proportion compared to the rest of the program and why Bernstraw's fits better to my eyes. It's just a better use of space and makes more sense with what we already have.

Of course the functionality is what we are requesting here, and by that token I think airon's mockup is fantastic (as is Bernstraw's). But I just wanted to interject and make sure that my reasonings for wanting a consistent aesthetic across the whole UI are understood.
Very true. The tabs are nothing like the tabs elsewhere. The text could be smaller of course, if you choose it to be.

The "Send", "Receives" and "Hardware" tabs were suggested to function like buttons, not only like tabs. That's the only reason, so they could function as an indicator. Some folks want to have all of their sends and receives side by side, or in extra columns perhaps.

Instead of adding a small closing button and perhaps an entry in the context menu of the I/O window, as is the style of Reapers mixer view right now for some sections to show and hide, these larger buttons would give a clear indication which section the user is actually looking at with so much as a glance.

Sections could be chosen like tabs, and added to the view with a modifier and a click for example. The small tabs that Reaper currently employs would a very small target. It does not matter that they're a standard when that standard is not that great and probably not appropriate for the I/O window if you want to switch sections in and out of view.

The buttons are not idea though, and neither is the arrangement at the top. To keep all the buttons you'll get the equivalent of about four sends or receives in width, about the same for Bernstraw's actually if the sliders scale. Four sends/receives or more.

The issue of text size is of practical nature.

How many sends/receives does one want to keep an eye on at once ?
Is scrolling an option ?
How much of the screen can be obscured by an I/O window, even one that would be more compact and less space consuming than its predecessor ?
Does a minimalistic view contribute in a positive way sufficiently enough to warrant the compromise in usability ? The current I/O window is dark, obscure, wastes space and is thus poorly designed compared to both new approaches.

Some folks mention that we should stick to standard windows controls, but Reaper only does that in some areas anyway. The arrangement area, TCP, MCP, Midi Editor, Navigator, Routing Matrix, Toolbars, Virtual Midikeyboard and Transport use little or no Windows/OSX GUI elements. They're all custom jobs.

Almost all the elements in both mockups are made from theme elements of Reaper. The only new custom elements I actually used are some button backgrounds and those little dropdown-list indicators because those of Windows and OSX didn't work well at all in this context. I presumed some resemblance of a dropdown arrow would be better than none.

The large text size may not be efficient, but from my experience it pays to cut down on search time. Of course it may be that I'm biased towards extreme readability, since the I/O window of Reaper is such a terrible mess(it was even worse before). I also do not at all enjoy looking for tracks in the Protools mixer for that matter, or that of Reaper if no colour coding is used. I'd actually rather not look at the GUI in Reaper much outside the arrangement, because everything is so small and squeezed together. Theme authors have quite the difficult time putting something together that works in the current arrangement.

I'll put up another mockup with smaller text to see how it works. If I deleted the reticules, meters and most of the fader markings the whole thing could be more compact, but then all the benefits of those elements would disappear as well.

-edit- Here we go.
The only thing changed is the text size (Tahoma 8pt as opposed to Tahoma 10pt & 12pt Bold) and the height of some buttons.



The original one with the larger text.


Now the question must be, which one is easier to use. And is the extra space worth the extra usability ?

Please note that I didn't add the track numbers. Those would further break up the display, meaning it requires more work to scan, understand and find what you need. That is one of the reasons they're optional in Protools and almost nobody using them.
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Old 11-15-2010, 02:18 PM   #102
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much better with the smaller font size.
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Old 11-15-2010, 02:23 PM   #103
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I just think the size of things needs to be consistent across the UI and should follow the theme structure. All tabs in the program should be the same, all instance of track names should be the same, etc.
I definitely agree with this point - I think the style of airon's mockups is great (much better IMHO than REAPER's).

However, consistency is more important - when switching from the mixer to the IO dialog, all UI elements common to both should look identical and if possible be arranged in the same basic layout.

I guess this means the dialog needs to skin the mixer parts of the IO routing dialog in the current theme.
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Old 11-15-2010, 10:50 PM   #104
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much better with the smaller font size.
I'm working on using the smaller font for the section buttons and compact view, where I think they fit in a lot better as well, but for the full send view I'm much more in favour of the larger bold text (12pt bold Tahoma) for the send/receive names.

Those send/receives names and the colour are by far the most important ways to identify the sends.

The compact view with send/receive entries of identical colour require dramatically more scanning by the user already. Compared to that text size, even the strips on a Mackie Control Universal or most other control surfaces are larger and easier to read in comparison.

More experimentation is necessary. I'm all for giving the user the choice of course.
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Old 11-17-2010, 07:33 AM   #105
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This could work as a floating window or an inspector-like of the I/O window that may appear in one of the panels, should Cockos do a more freely configurable GUI as we've been asking.

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Old 11-17-2010, 09:38 AM   #106
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A slightly different approach where the framing section descriptors use light text and dark backgrounds in contrast to all the track-related panels.




An approach at framing the sections at the left side in addition to the top. The collapsible input and output sections would minimize in to vertical sections with bottom to top text, the chars top facing left.

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Old 11-17-2010, 01:43 PM   #107
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Something I would really like to see is the ability to actually control which channels Reaper uses for the Master/Parent send, maybe that is relevant to this topic...

Right now, when creating sends, you can choose any single channel or any stereo pair, but the master send is always 1/2 no matter what. I think there should be a dropdown to select the audio channel for the master as well!

A lot of the time I will record guitar DI and amped guitar as a stereo file for instance to have them permanently grouped, but I just use the plugin pin window to disable whichever side I don't want to use at the time. It would make a lot more sense to have control over this in the I/O window.

Fingers crossed we see control for that though in v4 if we get any multichannel/surround mixing improvements since that sort of channel mixing flexibility is mandatory in those cases.
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Old 11-17-2010, 01:53 PM   #108
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Quote:
Originally Posted by airon View Post
A slightly different approach where the framing section descriptors use light text and dark backgrounds in contrast to all the track-related panels.




An approach at framing the sections at the left side in addition to the top. The collapsible input and output sections would minimize in to vertical sections with bottom to top text, the chars top facing left.

Best so far ^^
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Old 11-17-2010, 02:35 PM   #109
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamWathan View Post
Something I would really like to see is the ability to actually control which channels Reaper uses for the Master/Parent send, maybe that is relevant to this topic...

Right now, when creating sends, you can choose any single channel or any stereo pair, but the master send is always 1/2 no matter what. I think there should be a dropdown to select the audio channel for the master as well!

A lot of the time I will record guitar DI and amped guitar as a stereo file for instance to have them permanently grouped, but I just use the plugin pin window to disable whichever side I don't want to use at the time. It would make a lot more sense to have control over this in the I/O window.

Fingers crossed we see control for that though in v4 if we get any multichannel/surround mixing improvements since that sort of channel mixing flexibility is mandatory in those cases.
Is this true? I have no means to test it here (only 1 stereo hardware output available), but the master can have 64 channels like any track and hardware outputs can be set to any channel, so I always assumed that Master/Parent send carries all track channels to the master (it sure does to a parent).
What is desperately missing is of course metering of any other track channels but 1/2. Which I am happy to see is possible with these mockups at least in the I/O window (and hopefully the condensed send parameter dialogs when you click a send slot as well then). I'd want to have it on the mixer's meters in some form anyway, but that's another discussion

Nevertheless maybe it would make sense to be able to restrict Master send to a channel pair or several as opposed to send them all?
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Old 11-17-2010, 03:49 PM   #110
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Perhaps this would work.



The default would be that the number of channels to the master/parent would match the number of channels on the master or parent track, just like the maximum number of channels of a send post-pan can be that of the target track.

I've also kept the track dropdown boxes in light-green grey, so they don't get lost. The Input/Audio section now shows "Receives" and instead of stereo, "1/2" which is perhaps better for consistency in the long run.
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Old 11-17-2010, 03:54 PM   #111
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gofer View Post
Is this true? I have no means to test it here (only 1 stereo hardware output available), but the master can have 64 channels like any track and hardware outputs can be set to any channel, so I always assumed that Master/Parent send carries all track channels to the master (it sure does to a parent).
What is desperately missing is of course metering of any other track channels but 1/2. Which I am happy to see is possible with these mockups at least in the I/O window (and hopefully the condensed send parameter dialogs when you click a send slot as well then). I'd want to have it on the mixer's meters in some form anyway, but that's another discussion

Nevertheless maybe it would make sense to be able to restrict Master send to a channel pair or several as opposed to send them all?
You're correct in that all channels do get carried to the master/parent. I guess that makes my request a little trickier...

I suppose what I really want is just a channel mixer per track to control what is going where before it hits the master/parent. Not so much level and pan control of the channels but simply just selecting which channels to use and output on the 1/2 stream so that it plays through the master. I can probably just whip something up in JS to do this though and make a track template I guess, but it would be cool to have it properly built into the per track IO somehow.

EDIT: Just saw airon's post, yeah that would work perfectly for me and is exactly what I had in mind originally, thanks!
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