Fancy displays on products - Yay or Nay?

[Admin M@]

I find 95% of touchscreen interfaces intolerable.

But then, I prefer a well written manual to a video tutorial any day.

 

[AndyOrr]

There are physical prototype units and they've provided as much as information (or more than) Fractal has about the FM3 at this point. That's like saying the FM3 doesn't exist.

I’m pretty sure the FM3 doesn’t actually exist either. At least according to my email inbox. But on a more serious note, unless a product intended for wide distribution has undergone an actual production run of some significant quantity, it really doesn’t exist. A few handmade prototypes may not be an accurate depiction of the final mass produced product. Want proof? Go to an auto show.

 

[ruso]

But then, I prefer a well written manual to a video tutorial any day.

Being an avid reader, I would usually agree, that is unless you have people like @ccroyalsenders or @2112 doing the tutorials.

 

[Piing]

I guess I should have clarified. There may be some prototypes floating around but, unless someone actually has one to test and review, it’s probably in Fractal Forum’s best interest to monitor and limit discussions to what is actually known and can be verified independently. This isn’t a freedom of speech issue, it’s an integrity issue. Another well known forum receives significant ridicule for its constant bashing, unreliable information and inaccurate reviews.

As for why this is different, the other modelers that get discussed the most are widely in use. The Quad Cortex mostly exists in a rabbit hole on the Internet.

It has already emerged from the rabbit hole. But right now it sounds like a Behringer V-Amp reissue

 

[AndyOrr]

It has already emerged from the rabbit hole. But right now it sounds like a Behringer V-Amp reissue

Based on the webpage, it’s still on pre-order status. It appears that several prototypes are in rotation being shipped around for review. That particular page has 17.7K subscribers, all guitarists. That’s how you punch up pre-order revenues.

This “pre-order” economy is weird to me. BITD, you took the plunge, made your units, peddled your wares and hoped for good sales based on the quality of the product. These days, sales are based almost entirely on the effectiveness of your ad campaign and the size of your social media budget.

 

[Piing]

This looks like another touch screen. A teaser of a new product at the Zoom Instagram

 

[spagthorpe]

I hate touchscreen anything. I'm trying to think of an exception, and maybe my phone is the only tolerable one. I don't like the fingerprints, generally, few companies get the interface right. I used to do interface programming 20 years ago, and it's a bitch in general. Touch screens have made few things better, but most of them make products worse.

 

[javier]

Is deep learning what makes Quad Corex high expectations.... years to come and perhaps it's a true breakthrough. First we need big data about guitar sound samples with different tapers and configurations; heuristics imprecisions and entropy must be resolved through millions of feedbacks and choosing the best convolution layer and algorithmics for amp modeling. Still a long road. I don't know at what point of this road is neural DSP; worse, I don't know how long is the road. I haven't seen a public tensor model for capturing guitar amp modelling big data. Other communities share; modelling amp communities compete, and very hard.

 

[Bigtim]

The touch screen thing looks great, but who the hell wants to spend any time bending over programming stuff? desktop for deep edit / phone or handheld for quick edit? Touchscreen is so 2019

 

[Bodde]

The touch screen thing looks great, but who the hell wants to spend any time bending over programming stuff? desktop for deep edit / phone or handheld for quick edit? Touchscreen is so 2019

I think the Quad Cortex has both a desktop editor and touchscreen.

 

[plexi59]

TBH I'm torn. I like large, high density screens, the larger and denser - the better. I find that large, HD screens reduce eye strain. I like touchscreens as well for some things, yet prefer physical controls for others, if I can get them. Ideally I'd like someone to come out with a shaped OLED screen with physical knobs protruding through it, such that I wouldn't have to choose - things that are better in touch would be done via touch, and things which call for knobs would use physical knobs, yet the names and values of the settings would be overlaid right next to the knob as opposed to on the adjacent screen. I'm sure it's doable, I just don't know if economies of scale are there for it to happen.

 

[plexi59]

Is deep learning what makes Quad Corex high expectations

I'm a practitioner in the field. Let me 100% assure you, there is no "deep learning" in Quad Cortex.

 

[FractalAudio]

I'm a practitioner in the field. Let me 100% assure you, there is no "deep learning" in Quad Cortex.

That is what I have suspected. I'm not an expert but I've been studying AI, neural nets, etc. the last few months and the claims don't hold water.

Furthermore the computational power of the DSPs used is simply not great enough to run a WaveNet or RNN with any decent level of accuracy. Their own paper claims only 75% success rate in blind A/B tests using a WaveNet1 model which only runs at 1.9x real-time on a 2.5 GHz computer. There's no way that's going to run in real time on a 500 MHz processor. To get better results requires a WaveNet3 model which barely runs in real-time (1.1x) at 2.5 GHz. I suspect the test results would be worse using guitar players that are familiar with overdriven guitar tone. A clarinet player isn't exactly the target user.

Additionally the aliasing performance is terrible. Not just below average but downright terrible. In their tests the model had aliasing components that were GREATER in amplitude than the harmonics.

 

[alethomantis]

I wouldn't expect them to use a big neural network to model the entire input/output chain. It seems more likely that they approximate parts of a predefined topology using smaller local models which may very well be multilayer ("deep") NNs. Similarly for the transient response, which NDSP claims to be a "game changer". This would also allow for quicker inference (claimed 2ms latency?) and should allow them to run it on the hardware.

 

[FractalAudio]

I wouldn't expect them to use a big neural network to model the entire input/output chain. It seems more likely that they approximate parts of a predefined topology using smaller local models which may very well be multilayer ("deep") NNs. Similarly for the transient response, which NDSP claims to be a "game changer". This would also allow for quicker inference (claimed 2ms latency?) and should allow them to run it on the hardware.

Inference is associated with deep learning and prediction. This is a neural network, it's not trying to predict something, it's processing a signal. I suppose you could say it's predicting an output but that's not really how this works.

Also, having smaller "local models" doesn't lower the CPU cost. Sure the NN could be simpler but that's offset by the computation of the "local model".

There's nothing inherently superior about the transient accuracy of a NN vs. other modeling techniques. In fact, giving the horrific aliasing performance I'd wager the transient accuracy is worse since transients have more high-frequency information.

 

[steadystate]

My main problem with touch screens is that the interface elements needs to be made bigger so a finger can touch just one thing. Too small and it’s hard to “aim” to grab things. Then each screen/menu has less objects, which means more pages, meaning things are harder to find.

To combat that, people “simplify” the gear so there are overall fewer options and things to adjust making it seem easier and touch-based. But you just artificially have less things to adjust and can’t get the sound you want.

A bit of a generalization but that’s what I see.

Exactly this. The display must be of sufficient size and the UI of sufficient simplicity for touch to be practical. I only use a touch screen for my CNC software. And even then, I only use increment/decrement buttons and direct data entry; not continuous sliders and knobs. Fine/reliable control is impossible.

 

[alethomantis]

Inference is associated with deep learning and prediction. This is a neural network, it's not trying to predict something, it's processing a signal. I suppose you could say it's predicting an output but that's not really how this works.

Also, having smaller "local models" doesn't lower the CPU cost. Sure the NN could be simpler but that's offset by the computation of the "local model".

There's nothing inherently superior about the transient accuracy of a NN vs. other modeling techniques. In fact, giving the horrific aliasing performance I'd wager the transient accuracy is worse since transients have more high-frequency information.

I agree with you that there is nothing inherently superior about using NNs, except them theoretically being universal function approximators.
By inference I just meant the prediction of the output after training the model, which, in the case of signal processing, amounts to outputting the processed signal. There are techniques of further simplifying the local models by using integer weights etc. but I don't know if it is necessary given the relatively powerful hardware. This would considerably lower the CPU cost though.

I can't really comment the transient response claim given that I'm not very familiar with the classical modeling techniques in that space. My experience with machine learning models would suggest that the main benefit would stem from better fitting some aspects of a predefined transient system identification pipeline using data. If they are just fitting a NN as a transient response model, it would mean that in a certain sense, "all bets are off" as NN models do not allow for a particularly rigorous introspection. Hence, it doesn't surprise me that the aliasing performance would be poor.

 

[Mohi]

I don't care about fancy screens on the device, I always play along a computer, with the Axe I use Axe Edit, and with my plugins, their interface, which I appreciate if it is cool but I favor usability. Only times I played with a modeller it was a Pod HD500, I had all may patches ready from home so barely needed editing on stage.

I guess it is easier do build a device with a cool design that includes a nice screen, than an excellent modeller on an embedded system, has also more potential for marketing.

The Cortex demo posted sounds just underwhelming, If they planned to generate hype with it, they missed the target.

 

[mr_fender]

It depends on the device and what information you are trying to display or edit. In the case of something like a smart phone, you are running a wide range of apps that call for different methods of data entry and manipulation. A touchscreen gives you a sort of blank canvas for that. If you are only needing to view and edit a fixed number of parameters, dedicated displays and controls are simpler and more straight forward.

In a break room at work, we have one of those newer Keurig machines that has a small touchscreen on it. It only displays about 3 or 4 options and shows little pictures of coffee beans and crap while its running. It's a uselessly complex addition to an otherwise very simple machine. It's eye candy and nothing else. 4 buttons would have served the same purpose and been cheaper and probably last longer too.

 

[deathbyguitar]

If the unit sounds good enough, I don't really care what the interface is like since I'm one to use computer editors whenever I can. I enjoy looking at pretty colors and such but I don't give a shit about having a touch screen.