Some observations on user experience and UI

[SpotlightKid]

I took some notes while trying out NeuralRack (the version before the latest release, I think). I noticed some inconsistencies and things that are unclear in the UX.

I tried to look at NeuralRack with the eyes of someone, who just installed & opened it because the only thing they know is "you can get some awesome guitar tones with it".

Here are these notes on my HedgeDoc instance:

https://collab.0x20.eu/s/hukCIUW8W#

If you have any questions, please ask. These notes are terse and were written for myself as the primary reader, so some things might hard to understand for anyone else.

[brummer10]

Hi @SpotlightKid
Thanks for the review, I really appreciate that. So let me give some unordered answers first.

There is no difference between pedal or amp profiler (just two instances of the same class).
All knobs, regardless if in EQ IR or Profiler section, have a working range from -20 <-> +20 dB, so the center position is 0 dB.
The icons I've just take from Ratatouille, in fact, NeuralRack is Ratatoille, when you go back the git history you'll find Ratatouille. I've just reworked it to process the neural models serial to get the pedal -> amp emulation. I was surprised how well that works (sounds). True, I rewrite the UI to cover that.
The 16 kHz control is a shelve filter, so is the 30 Hz. The others been peek. The EQ is based on a faust filter bank.
I fond the 16 kHz and the 30 Hz controls extrem useful. Even if I barely hear frequencies that high, I hear a huge different when I feed a Amp from a pedal simulation and cut the frequencies above 16 kHz before, in special for high gain sounds.

The IR section, the top one is for the left side, the bottom one is for the right side. It have no label because I reuse the size of all rack mounts and in the IR section is no space left. The IR's been processed parallel.
The case sensitive is a bug, I'll fix it.

The little icon with the up/down arrows toggle normalisation. That works for all IR files, but for Neural Models it only work when the model provide a output calibration factor. Otherwise they do nothing.

I've not implemented tooltips because I found them boring, but I understand the need when you first use the app. I may implement a switch to en/dis-able tooltips so that it may help beginners.

Midi will become a bit tricky here as the standalone use portaudio as sound server, as far I know portaudio haven't midi support, so something like rtmidi must be implemented. Or, midi will only be available when using jack.

Please leave your NeuralRack Notes online, so I could walk over it. It's a lot, and requires a lot of tinkering to handle it.

regards
hermann

[SpotlightKid]

Thanks, @brummer10, for the explanations.

I'll keep the notes online.

[SpotlightKid]

so something like rtmidi must be implemented

If you do that, I suggest having a look at libremidi instead. It is much more modern and also supports MIDI 2.0 and will probably also support the new Windows MIDI stack when it arrives next month or so.

[brummer10]

Why are there two identical selection fields?
Maybe for left and right channel? But which is which?

Would that makes it a bit more clear?

[SpotlightKid]

That's better, yes. Maybe use the light colour for the label and scale markings of the right dial too?

[brummer10]

Maybe I'll changing the base colour from the right part, as the knob is image based, changing the scale colour will require a separate image (I hate to use images here, but, cairo is just 2d)

[brummer10]

So like this:

[SpotlightKid]

Maybe make the label font color the opposite of the background color on both sides?
That would also make the right side match the middle.

[brummer10]

So I've pushed a fix for the case sensitive issue, and implement a indicator which IR file belongs to which channel. I decide for a less visible change in the UI. While the solution above locks good on it's own, it clutter somehow the rack view.

[brummer10]

Add a noise gate with one threshold dial.

done now.

[brummer10]

With the last commit I've covered most of the observations from your Notes.
There is now a menu for the stand alone version, comes with a preset menu to save/load/delete presets, a option menu to show/hide values of the controllers and to dis/enable auto connection on start. Also a profile menu point to pedals/amp heads or IR-files on tone3000.
It's as well possible now to switch presets with MIDI program change messages, but only when use jack as audio server.

Still no compressor included, I'm not sure if I'll do that at all.

[SpotlightKid]

Feel free to close this issue then.

[mekanix]

Would you please consider adding EQ after NAM and before IR? PRE EQ does wonders, but I really miss having POST EQ as well. Also, thank you for the great software (not just this one)!

[brummer10]

I may add a tonestack to the Amp profile module which could act as post EQ, I'll think about it.