some feature suggestions

[ivosight]

Add please filter for marker.
And if is posible options for view time selected

Hi,

Thank you very much for the elaboration of the features.

We will consider adding them in future versions.

Best regards.

[balanced]

Hi,

It's been a while since I opened Soundop, but today I tried to normalise some mastering files to -14 LUFS in order to compare them. It seems to me there is a bug in tools / normalize / LUFS / target level x. If I repeatedly use this command the file gets quieter every time I use it so it's not really normalizing to a certain target level, the loudness is rather just subtracted from the file?

Can you confirm this as a bug?

Cheers,

Antti

[ivosight]

Hi,

It's been a while since I opened Soundop, but today I tried to normalise some mastering files to -14 LUFS in order to compare them. It seems to me there is a bug in tools / normalize / LUFS / target level x. If I repeatedly use this command the file gets quieter every time I use it so it's not really normalizing to a certain target level, the loudness is rather just subtracted from the file?

Can you confirm this as a bug?

Cheers,

Antti

Hi,

Thank you very much for the report.

We have released a new version with the bug fix. Please check it out.

Best regards.

[balanced]

Thank You, it seems to work now  While there have been some surprising bugs along the way, I'm always amazed by your fast fixes..

While we are at it, I thought I'd share some ideas as I've been working on some track mastering recently.

For the frequency analysis panel:

1. Allow using (editable) overlay names on the display for shown snapshot / responses, matching the spectrum coulour. Typical use for this would be that you have several file versions of the same master plus some reference tracks and you want to compare them. Without overlay names it's quite impossible to separate them. See attached image as an example.

1.2 Once a snapshot is created, do not overwrite it by left clicking. Make the user use the right click menu for snapshot button to overwrite so spectrums won't be accidentally overwritten. Use left click to show / hide a spectrum once it's written.

2. Allow scanning whole files by drag & drop from windows file manager. Create new snapshot to an empty slot when the file is scanned and show the respective overlay name. Use file name for overlay name and allow editing it. This will make comparing frequency plots for several files much much faster.

3. Allow exporting spectrum (frequency plot) straight to files and also importing these files to slots. See if there already is a suitable standard for the file type so those files could be opened in other programs as well (REW for example). 

4. Add a favourites drop down menu for spectrums (with basic management like add current selected spectrum to favourites and delete one by one) so you can quickly show your favourite reference spectrums in any situation.

5. Add a button for leveling all shown spectrum around 1 kHz (perhaps a some kind of average value around 1kHz should be used rather than the exact dB value @ 1 kHz) so you can compare them regardless of the amplitude

6. Add a dialog to enter dB +- value for an individual selected spectrum in order to match it manually with others or make separation / adjustment. Add a way to first select individual spectrum, if needed

7. Add a button for rendering the selected file (creating a temp file which is not saved or showed, just internally used) with the current FX rack in order to just show how applying current FX rack will affect the frequency plot. This would be just like "Scan selection" but first the FX rack is rendered to the temp file and then that file is scanned. The button could be named something like "Predict FX rack" or so, for the lack of better suggestion.. You might want to also add a button for "add changes (or prediction) to file" which would replace the used file or file segment with the new temp file, after the plot is shown. This would streamline experimenting with final eq settings during the mastering process.

8. I'm a bit confused of the Octet value used in smoothing spectrums. What does this refer to? I think the standard value is Octave. If you smooth a spectrum by 1/3 octave, you will not see any sharp deviations in the plot. If I use the 1/3 Octet value in Soundop, there is a lot of deviations / details in the spectrum and it's nothing like 1/3 octave smoothing. Could smoothing be changed so that it would meet the industry standard? Octave / smoothing is a very standard thing considering audio software and gear in general. One good example for research would be the Voxengo span freeware analyzer, to see what kind of values should be supported. I will add an image of a 1/3 octave smoothing.

9. Hire me as a part time UI adviser

[ivosight]

Thank You, it seems to work now  While there have been some surprising bugs along the way, I'm always amazed by your fast fixes..

While we are at it, I thought I'd share some ideas as I've been working on some track mastering recently.

For the frequency analysis panel:

1. Allow using (editable) overlay names on the display for shown snapshot / responses, matching the spectrum coulour. Typical use for this would be that you have several file versions of the same master plus some reference tracks and you want to compare them. Without overlay names it's quite impossible to separate them. See attached image as an example.

1.2 Once a snapshot is created, do not overwrite it by left clicking. Make the user use the right click menu for snapshot button to overwrite so spectrums won't be accidentally overwritten. Use left click to show / hide a spectrum once it's written.

2. Allow scanning whole files by drag & drop from windows file manager. Create new snapshot to an empty slot when the file is scanned and show the respective overlay name. Use file name for overlay name and allow editing it. This will make comparing frequency plots for several files much much faster.

3. Allow exporting spectrum (frequency plot) straight to files and also importing these files to slots. See if there already is a suitable standard for the file type so those files could be opened in other programs as well (REW for example). 

4. Add a favourites drop down menu for spectrums (with basic management like add current selected spectrum to favourites and delete one by one) so you can quickly show your favourite reference spectrums in any situation.

5. Add a button for leveling all shown spectrum around 1 kHz (perhaps a some kind of average value around 1kHz should be used rather than the exact dB value @ 1 kHz) so you can compare them regardless of the amplitude

6. Add a dialog to enter dB +- value for an individual selected spectrum in order to match it manually with others or make separation / adjustment. Add a way to first select individual spectrum, if needed

7. Add a button for rendering the selected file (creating a temp file which is not saved or showed, just internally used) with the current FX rack in order to just show how applying current FX rack will affect the frequency plot. This would be just like "Scan selection" but first the FX rack is rendered to the temp file and then that file is scanned. The button could be named something like "Predict FX rack" or so, for the lack of better suggestion.. You might want to also add a button for "add changes (or prediction) to file" which would replace the used file or file segment with the new temp file, after the plot is shown. This would streamline experimenting with final eq settings during the mastering process.

8. I'm a bit confused of the Octet value used in smoothing spectrums. What does this refer to? I think the standard value is Octave. If you smooth a spectrum by 1/3 octave, you will not see any sharp deviations in the plot. If I use the 1/3 Octet value in Soundop, there is a lot of deviations / details in the spectrum and it's nothing like 1/3 octave smoothing. Could smoothing be changed so that it would meet the industry standard? Octave / smoothing is a very standard thing considering audio software and gear in general. One good example for research would be the Voxengo span freeware analyzer, to see what kind of values should be supported. I will add an image of a 1/3 octave smoothing.

9. Hire me as a part time UI adviser

Hi,

Thank you very much for the detailed suggestions. We will try to implement them in future versions.

The "Octet" must be a typo error. We will consider changing the smooth spectrum implementation.

Your expertise has helped us a lot. Looking forward to having some cooperation with you in the future.

Best regards.

[balanced]

Thank You for Your kind words Those inspired me to post another UI suggestion.

Soundop shows files and mixspaces as a dropdown menu. While this conserves space, it does not allow one to have a continuous overview of currently open files or mixspaces. I wonder if it would be possible to implement a tab-like shallow panel which would include all currently open files and/or mixspaces? It would not have to take a lot of space vertically, but you wouldn't have to click so much and you would see all open files all the time. I will attach an image of Reaper, which has this kind of tab menu implemented for projects. Those tabs Soundop already has for panels are pretty sleek too, perhaps those could be utilized? This tab menu could be implemented right under the top menu bar or as a horizontal all window wide panel which you could reposition freely? It would be nice to have the option to enable or disable it of course. It would also be great to be able to drag and drop files from windows explorer straight to this tab. Now the drag & drop only seems to work if you have the file editor panel open.

[balanced]

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

[balanced]

Found a bug:

If both of the clip fades are dragged simultaneously by using Alt-drag then undo function won't work correctly for the secondary fade.

A

[balanced]

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.

[ivosight]

Found a bug:

If both of the clip fades are dragged simultaneously by using Alt-drag then undo function won't work correctly for the secondary fade.

A

Hi,

Thank you very much for the report.

We have released a new version with the bug fix. Please check it out.

Best regards.