[LAD] [ANN] Radium V1.9.1

[Florian Paul Schmidt]

Hi Kjetil, thanks for your response :D

On 11/12/2012 09:52 AM, Kjetil Matheussen wrote:
>> processing. But an often needed use case is just a linear chain of
>> effects which in radium involves lots of clicking and shifting nodes
>> around to keep the graph in an orderly state. In renoise you have a
>> linear DSP chain per track.
>>
>> http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Track_DSPs
>>
>> This is really useful and allows for quick exploring of sounds. In an
>> ideal world we could have the cake and eat it, too. I.e. have a full
>> graph for complex situations and a per Instrument linear effects chain
>> which facilitates easy adding/removing/reordering of effects..
>>
> -  I really dig the ability to have a graph of nodes for audio
>
> I've tried to have one's cake and eat it too. :-)
>
> * If you right click on a connection between two object, the new object
>   is inserted in between those two objects.
> * If you drop an object on a connection, the object will insert itself
>   in between those two objects.
> * If you delete an object in between two other objects, the connections
>   on both sides will connect.
>
> These tricks should make the number of operations needed to edit a linear
> chain of effects similar to Renoise.
>

Yes, it makes editing the graph a bit easier, but it doesn't rival the 
ease of operation that a linear view provides for the often needed 
usecase of linear effect chains, since I find myself reordering the 
nodes of the graph quite often to keep the graph tidy. I urge you to try 
this out in Renoise and compare the workflow with radium for that usecase.

BTW: Having these operations as you outlined above is similar to how 
Blender does its node graph, which is very useful and a feature which I 
would like to see in Ingen, too :D


>
>> - Renoise also has the notion of Meta Devices of which some
>> functionality can be replaced by having a full graph of nodes, but
>> again it's just very usable to just throw an LFO device into the
>> effects chain which modulates some effect parameter..
>>
>> http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Meta_Devices
>>
>
> Thanks, that's interesting.

Once I discovered that in Renoise it made adding some variation to a 
track very simple :D Also triggering/modifying effects parameters on 
track events like note on/off, etc. is very useful, too..

>
>
>> - Renoise also has this nice edit step feature which I haven't found
>> in radium yet. Press, for example, Ctrl-4, and after you enter a note
>> the cursor jumps to the 4th line below it. This allows for super easy
>> filling e.g. a Bassdrum/Hihat pattern. Go to the first line of the
>> pattern on the Bass drum track and just hold Y (C note) and it fills
>> the pattern. Then go to line 3 on the Hihat track and hold down Y to
>> fill hihats on the off beats..
>>
>
> Great tip. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Cool :D


>> - On my laptop screen estate is precious. While I like the ability to
>> use F7, F8, F9, F10 to toggle the different sections of the GUI I'd
>> really prefer to have these shortcuts to show the section exclusively.
>> E.g.
>>
>> F7, F8, F9. F10 - switch to the respective Part of the GUI and show
>> it only. Pressing it again will toggle back to showing the selection
>> of views as by the point below...
>>
>> Shift + F7, F8, ... - Toggle the respective part of the GUI
>>
>
> That sounds simple. I'll try that.
> You can also define your own keyboard configuration by editing 
> bin/keybindings.conf.
> There are no functions available to show a section exclusively yet 
> though, but I'll
> add it.
>

Cool, thanks for that :D Also it's good to hear that the key bindings 
are configurable. So I will twiddle those a bit..

>
>> - It would be nice to have tooltips over each element of the GUI.
>> What are these sliders at the top of each track, etc? How do the lanes
>> right of the note lanes work? It would make the GUI more discoverable
>>
>
> Sometimes, you get help in the text at the bottom left of the screen.
> It will tell you that those two sliders are for volume and panning.
> It also tells you what lines right to the note track are.

Ah OK, I must have just missed that..

>
>
>> - Sometimes focus is in e.g. the sample selection dialog of a sample
>> player and it's not really obvious how to get focus back to the note
>> track. Or at least I was sitting here confused for a bit. Maybe
>> allowing explicit clicking to control focus would meet some people's
>> expectations more?
>>
>
> Agreed.
>
>
>> - It would be super nice if one could double click a slider in an
>> Effect/Instrument control to enter a value per Text. This way one
>> could e.g. enter 750 precisely for a delay time.
>>
>
> Ok.
>
>> And finally I also have another question:
>>
>> Whenever I enter a note in a block playback stops. Is that intended?
>> Is there a way to keep playback going while editing a block?
>>
>
> Yes, unfortunately. The player thread doesn't support having a note
> list and so fort changing while playing. Doing so requires quite a bit 
> of work,
> which is probably better done by rewriting the player, which should be 
> done anyway
> for other reasons. Earlier, there were a hack implemented which stopped
> the player right before editing, and then continued playing right 
> after editing.
> Maybe I can reintroduce that hack again.
>


Maybe take a look at the RCU pattern, which also was recently discussed 
here on LAD which makes this relatively painless given some assumptions 
about the playback thread..

Have fun,
Flo