GlennO
Axe-Master
As fond as I am of AxeEdit, it's starting to look a little clunky compared to editors from NDSP, Line6, Fender, and even Kemper. One area in particular where it frustrates me is insertion of blocks. I suspect this is one of the factors that leads people to believe the Axe-FX is difficult to use.
I often want to insert a new block between two existing blocks. This conceptually simple operation can be quite cumbersome in AxeEdit. Moving all of the blocks to one side to make room for the new block can be tedious. Worse, it breaks the connections. If you have parallel signal paths, it can be difficult to reconstruct the connections. I often have to take a screen shot of the "before" case so I can reassemble things afterwards.
And of course, if you're out of room on the row, you'll have to put in send and return blocks.
I would humbly suggest making it easier to insert blocks. It should be possible to drop a new block between two existing blocks and have AxeEdit move blocks to insert it while preserving connections. And, if there isn't room on the row, automatically insert send/return as necessary. This would be a big help when editing presets.
Here's a brief mockup of the idea. I want to insert a multi band compressor between the cab block and the parametric eq. This simple operation is surprisingly cumbersome in axedit. If you have multiple rows, it can be downright daunting. The proposed idea demonstrated in this video is: you drag a new block between two existing blocks and it is inserted in the chain at that point by shifting columns.
Strictly speaking, from a routing point of view, I would argue there are no complicated cases in the Axe-FX. This is because flow is unidirectional, left-to-right, and the topology is fully specified prior to inserting the new block.
There are potential capacity problems of course if there are insufficient columns. It would be a nice bonus feature in that case if a send/return was inserted to solve that, or wrapping if a send/return is already present.
If the insert can't be done for any reason, it would be ok for the insert to "snap back" to indicate it isn't possible to insert a block and the user must proceed manually, as they do today.
I often want to insert a new block between two existing blocks. This conceptually simple operation can be quite cumbersome in AxeEdit. Moving all of the blocks to one side to make room for the new block can be tedious. Worse, it breaks the connections. If you have parallel signal paths, it can be difficult to reconstruct the connections. I often have to take a screen shot of the "before" case so I can reassemble things afterwards.
And of course, if you're out of room on the row, you'll have to put in send and return blocks.
I would humbly suggest making it easier to insert blocks. It should be possible to drop a new block between two existing blocks and have AxeEdit move blocks to insert it while preserving connections. And, if there isn't room on the row, automatically insert send/return as necessary. This would be a big help when editing presets.
Here's a brief mockup of the idea. I want to insert a multi band compressor between the cab block and the parametric eq. This simple operation is surprisingly cumbersome in axedit. If you have multiple rows, it can be downright daunting. The proposed idea demonstrated in this video is: you drag a new block between two existing blocks and it is inserted in the chain at that point by shifting columns.
Strictly speaking, from a routing point of view, I would argue there are no complicated cases in the Axe-FX. This is because flow is unidirectional, left-to-right, and the topology is fully specified prior to inserting the new block.
There are potential capacity problems of course if there are insufficient columns. It would be a nice bonus feature in that case if a send/return was inserted to solve that, or wrapping if a send/return is already present.
If the insert can't be done for any reason, it would be ok for the insert to "snap back" to indicate it isn't possible to insert a block and the user must proceed manually, as they do today.
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