some feature suggestions

[balanced]

Oh this is so useful.. Thank You!

If you want to further enhance the analysis options I believe one logical feature would be to support mid / side information in addition to left / right. So you could select from "show channels" menu only mid, only side or All (mid + side) in addition to stereo options. All (mid + side) could show the two graphs at the same time, in the same way All for left & right is shown now.

Perhaps a small improvement for current operation would be to indicate somehow which graph line represents left and which right (or in addition mid / side, if you were to support those). Now you can get this information by first selecting individual channels (left or right) and taking note of which channel is represented by which color, but by observing "select channels / All" this information is not available right away.

I really like the way you have included all the channel information to the snapshot, so by loading a snapshot of a reference song for example you can still select the way you represent individual channel information. So it's not just a simple graph. If mid / side information would be supported as well, this would be very informative considering mastering and other analyzing purposes.

If you want to develop further other metering options, I would like to suggest you to support monitoring of crest factor or "dynamic range", in this case PSR. It is a running value which tells the difference between true peak and short term loudness (three second window). I'm sure you can find a more accurate definition somewhere. This value and graph could be added for example alongside the other loudness values. Many recent monitoring plugins support it and PSR is actually often more useful than bare loudness values in order to understand if your track needs further limiting or dynamic processing, or if the loudest parts of it are too squashed already for example. For PSR you might want to add another LU scale to the left side of the panel. Or you could include metering of dynamic range (PSR) as a completely individual panel, in order to avoid confusion.

Three other things I would like to suggest you for improving the metering options are:

1) To support showing and hiding individual graphs by clicking their color indicators at the top of the panel in Loudness Meter.

2) To support timeline syncing for the Loudness Meter (and optionally Dynamic Range metering), so that it would update in relation to file playback timeline (including the effect of possible FX rack plugins) while the file is played. The graph could also be zoomed in and out when it's not just a running value / graph.

3) And finally to support scanning with the Loudness Meter (and Dynamic Range meter if supported) the same way Frequency Analysis supports scanning files. No snapshot options would be needed though. This would require implementing the timeline sync I mentioned above. By scanning the active file you could preview the Loudness Meter (and Dynamic Range meter..) graphs for the whole file without playing back it in real time, all of it. Perhaps scanning a file could also be integrated between Frequency Analysis, Loudness meter and Dynamic Range meter, so you would get all of this info displayed in all these meters by just scanning once? You might want to keep the timeline sync for Loudness and Dynamic range optional though so one could decide if a running graph or file synced timeline would be shown. I guess you could also integrate all of this to Mixspaces too? I was just thinking about operating on single files here.

These are all options I use by utilizing several analyzer plugins when mastering audio, but it would be really helpful to get them all integrated together. And a lot of these of course already exist in Soundop.

Anyway, lots of respect for improving these features already to this point!

[ivosight]

Oh this is so useful.. Thank You!

If you want to further enhance the analysis options I believe one logical feature would be to support mid / side information in addition to left / right. So you could select from "show channels" menu only mid, only side or All (mid + side) in addition to stereo options. All (mid + side) could show the two graphs at the same time, in the same way All for left & right is shown now.

Perhaps a small improvement for current operation would be to indicate somehow which graph line represents left and which right (or in addition mid / side, if you were to support those). Now you can get this information by first selecting individual channels (left or right) and taking note of which channel is represented by which color, but by observing "select channels / All" this information is not available right away.

I really like the way you have included all the channel information to the snapshot, so by loading a snapshot of a reference song for example you can still select the way you represent individual channel information. So it's not just a simple graph. If mid / side information would be supported as well, this would be very informative considering mastering and other analyzing purposes.

If you want to develop further other metering options, I would like to suggest you to support monitoring of crest factor or "dynamic range", in this case PSR. It is a running value which tells the difference between true peak and short term loudness (three second window). I'm sure you can find a more accurate definition somewhere. This value and graph could be added for example alongside the other loudness values. Many recent monitoring plugins support it and PSR is actually often more useful than bare loudness values in order to understand if your track needs further limiting or dynamic processing, or if the loudest parts of it are too squashed already for example. For PSR you might want to add another LU scale to the left side of the panel. Or you could include metering of dynamic range (PSR) as a completely individual panel, in order to avoid confusion.

Three other things I would like to suggest you for improving the metering options are:

1) To support showing and hiding individual graphs by clicking their color indicators at the top of the panel in Loudness Meter.

2) To support timeline syncing for the Loudness Meter (and optionally Dynamic Range metering), so that it would update in relation to file playback timeline (including the effect of possible FX rack plugins) while the file is played. The graph could also be zoomed in and out when it's not just a running value / graph.

3) And finally to support scanning with the Loudness Meter (and Dynamic Range meter if supported) the same way Frequency Analysis supports scanning files. No snapshot options would be needed though. This would require implementing the timeline sync I mentioned above. By scanning the active file you could preview the Loudness Meter (and Dynamic Range meter..) graphs for the whole file without playing back it in real time, all of it. Perhaps scanning a file could also be integrated between Frequency Analysis, Loudness meter and Dynamic Range meter, so you would get all of this info displayed in all these meters by just scanning once? You might want to keep the timeline sync for Loudness and Dynamic range optional though so one could decide if a running graph or file synced timeline would be shown. I guess you could also integrate all of this to Mixspaces too? I was just thinking about operating on single files here.

These are all options I use by utilizing several analyzer plugins when mastering audio, but it would be really helpful to get them all integrated together. And a lot of these of course already exist in Soundop.

Anyway, lots of respect for improving these features already to this point!

Hi，

Thank you for elaborating on the suggestions. We will try to add them in future versions.

Best regards.

[balanced]

Here are yet again further suggestions, after taking a look at the features of some alternative audio editors and DAWs:

1. M/S waveform view option: Soudop has the integrated mid / side splitter plugin, which is very useful. What I would consider a great addition to this, would be the ability to view your waveform and spectral information of stereo audio file in mid / side mode too, in addition to L / R. Perhaps this could have a toggle button in View Toolbar and the "L / R channel enabled" buttons in Editor panel would convert to M / S buttons? If this could be replicated to Mixspace too, perhaps with a spectogram toggle button/options, It would be even more useful? For Mixspace, a track or clip based override/setting for general view options of spectogram / waveform and stereo / ms information might be useful though? Bacause you might want to see the m/s or spectral information for one track or file, while seeing the rest of the files/tracks in waveform mode.

2. A separate monitoring FX chain / panel would be helpful. As using software based headphones and room correction is quite common these days, a separate monitoring FX chain that retains it's settings independently from the current selected Audio file or Mixspace would help alot. So this would be a global setting for the Soundop. In signal chain this would be positioned after the rendering point, so none of the monitoring FX would ever be rendered in files by accident. A single on/off toggle button for monitoring FX for Toolbar menu would be great. Of course saving your chains as presets for different headphones or monitoring environments would be great too. In windows (and Mac based systems too I guess) you can use systemwide correction using several software, but these don't cover using the ASIO drivers in Windows at least, as the DAW software connects then directly to audio hardware. So a separate monitoring fx chain is needed for the editor/DAW software for using ASIO. It would also create more flexibility for those of us who don't want to use systemwide correction, and rely on other drivers than ASIO. I haven't looked at the channel routing options in Soundop now as iIm currently working with stereo files only, but perhaps it would be wise to think a bit about monitoring chain and output options in general together, if you want to implement this. I mean you can setup your studio so that your routing for headphones and main monitors is separate, which would suggest implementing separate corrections for separate hardware outputs, or specifying the outs which the correction is applied to. But perhaps this is already a bit detailed, a simple option to enable / disable a preset based correction for your main L/R bus would be already very helpful.

3. Delta solo button and mix knob for all plugins: If it's reasonably easy to realize, adding a delta solo button and mix knob for all individual effects (VST etc.) would be useful. You can surely find a better description, but as I understand it, the delta solo (perhaps?) uses a phase cancellation of the original signal to subtract the original from the passed signal. So with the button pressed, if your FX is doing nothing, it nulls perfectly and you don't hear anything. But any modifications to the signal are passed through and you will be able to hear them. This combined with the frequency analysis panel would be a great and immediate way to hear and see what a plugin does to your signal. In addition a separate mix pot for all individual effects, integrated as well to the existing "wrapper" window for VST's etc, would be handy. So you could use all effects in parallel mode (with the original signal), if you wanted. This of course needs sample accurate latency compensation.

There you have it, have a good sunday

[ivosight]

And another one concerning peak files:

It would be great to have an option to optionally save all peak files created by Soundop to one separate folder which is defined in preferences. This would allow you to not fill your sample libraries with .pek files, which is not always desirable when working with sound libraries.

Cheers,

A

Hi,

The peak file folder is supported in the latest version. Please check it out.

   

Best regards.

[ivosight]

Another suggestion concerning plugin management and using the "sort by location" option:

Allow all separate plugins and subfolders from all separate plugin sources/folders (including VST3 plugins) to be shown as one virtual folder, where all of them would be gathered together. Folder structures from the real sources/folders would be retained. If you would have two or more identically named folders in separate real plugin locations/folders, say two folders named "eq" in the root folders of two separate plugin locations, you would see just one folder named "eq" containing all plugins from all of these real "eq" folders. If you would get similarily named plugins gathered in the same virtual folder from separate real locations (say, a VST3 and VST2 version of a plugin with the same name) you could show just the VST3 version or separate them with a VST2 / VST3 tag.

This would make it much easier to use plugins, if you have for example a separate folder for VST2 freeware plugins, one for the VST2 you have purchased and installed and then also the VST3 folder. If you organize your plugins in subfolders by using unified naming in these separate locations, the above option would allow you to see everything in one clean virtual folder with the subfolder structure you have created.

This is something that Reaper allows one to do and if you work with lots of plugins and several plugin locations it will help your work rather remarkably. I feel that every DAW should have this option.. Of course this could be a function that you could enable or disable.

Hi,

The option to sort effects with VST folder is supported in the latest version. Please check it out.

   

Best regards.

[ivosight]

You're welcome, have a happy holiday!

I got another small feature request: Add an option to preferences / effects or "manage VST plugins" window to automatically scan for new plugins when opening Soundop. This is either standard behavior or an option for many DAWs as far as I understand. You would got to have a failsafe mechanism though for the odd situation when a plugin makes Soundop crash while scanning, so you would not end up always crashing the software before it even opens.

Cheers,

A

Hi,

The option to scan VST plugins when starting Soundop is supported in the latest version. Please check it out.

   

Best regards.

[ivosight]

And another one: I wonder if the "play effect tail when stop playback" could be extended to audio file editing too? Or make another checkbox option for that too, if you prefer. One could asses time based fx processing easier this way for single files too.

Btw, as the amount of selectable options grow in preferences, it would be great to have an search box for text items in options menu. Reaper does have a simple implementation of this. It obviously does have a lot more options to cover, but I have found this to be an easy method for quickly checking if a program has an option for a specific thing, before I start to browse through the preferences pages and read options one by one.

Cheers

Cheers

Hi,

The latest version has added support to play effect tail after stopping playback in the audio file editor. Please check it out.

   

Best regards.

[ivosight]

Oh this is so useful.. Thank You!

If you want to further enhance the analysis options I believe one logical feature would be to support mid / side information in addition to left / right. So you could select from "show channels" menu only mid, only side or All (mid + side) in addition to stereo options. All (mid + side) could show the two graphs at the same time, in the same way All for left & right is shown now.

Perhaps a small improvement for current operation would be to indicate somehow which graph line represents left and which right (or in addition mid / side, if you were to support those). Now you can get this information by first selecting individual channels (left or right) and taking note of which channel is represented by which color, but by observing "select channels / All" this information is not available right away.

I really like the way you have included all the channel information to the snapshot, so by loading a snapshot of a reference song for example you can still select the way you represent individual channel information. So it's not just a simple graph. If mid / side information would be supported as well, this would be very informative considering mastering and other analyzing purposes.

If you want to develop further other metering options, I would like to suggest you to support monitoring of crest factor or "dynamic range", in this case PSR. It is a running value which tells the difference between true peak and short term loudness (three second window). I'm sure you can find a more accurate definition somewhere. This value and graph could be added for example alongside the other loudness values. Many recent monitoring plugins support it and PSR is actually often more useful than bare loudness values in order to understand if your track needs further limiting or dynamic processing, or if the loudest parts of it are too squashed already for example. For PSR you might want to add another LU scale to the left side of the panel. Or you could include metering of dynamic range (PSR) as a completely individual panel, in order to avoid confusion.

Three other things I would like to suggest you for improving the metering options are:

1) To support showing and hiding individual graphs by clicking their color indicators at the top of the panel in Loudness Meter.

2) To support timeline syncing for the Loudness Meter (and optionally Dynamic Range metering), so that it would update in relation to file playback timeline (including the effect of possible FX rack plugins) while the file is played. The graph could also be zoomed in and out when it's not just a running value / graph.

3) And finally to support scanning with the Loudness Meter (and Dynamic Range meter if supported) the same way Frequency Analysis supports scanning files. No snapshot options would be needed though. This would require implementing the timeline sync I mentioned above. By scanning the active file you could preview the Loudness Meter (and Dynamic Range meter..) graphs for the whole file without playing back it in real time, all of it. Perhaps scanning a file could also be integrated between Frequency Analysis, Loudness meter and Dynamic Range meter, so you would get all of this info displayed in all these meters by just scanning once? You might want to keep the timeline sync for Loudness and Dynamic range optional though so one could decide if a running graph or file synced timeline would be shown. I guess you could also integrate all of this to Mixspaces too? I was just thinking about operating on single files here.

These are all options I use by utilizing several analyzer plugins when mastering audio, but it would be really helpful to get them all integrated together. And a lot of these of course already exist in Soundop.

Anyway, lots of respect for improving these features already to this point!

Hi,

The latest version has added support for the mid-side channel mode in the Frequency Analysis panel. Please check it out.

   

Best regards.

[balanced]

Thank you so much yet again for all of these It's great to have these analysis tools integrated in the editor and not needing to rely on plugins..

One little possible bug finding though: While playing with the Audio File editor and effect tails I felt that the playback start and stop fade settings in preferences are perhaps not respected? Those seem to work for Mixspace playback but when starting and stopping playback in Audio File editor, I seem to get pops and clicks here and there. These are also effecting the FX rack plugins, so starting or stopping the playback from a non-zero crossing sample will be heard as a pop in reverb tails also, for example.

[ivosight]

Thank you so much yet again for all of these It's great to have these analysis tools integrated in the editor and not needing to rely on plugins..

One little possible bug finding though: While playing with the Audio File editor and effect tails I felt that the playback start and stop fade settings in preferences are perhaps not respected? Those seem to work for Mixspace playback but when starting and stopping playback in Audio File editor, I seem to get pops and clicks here and there. These are also effecting the FX rack plugins, so starting or stopping the playback from a non-zero crossing sample will be heard as a pop in reverb tails also, for example.

Hi,

Thanks for the bug report.

The stop fade setting is intentionally disabled when the play effect tail option is enabled. This is because the fade is applied after the effects due to effect latency, and enabling stop fade can lead to audible artifacts if the effect tail naturally continues from the original audio.

Best regards.