Wish Proposal for fast effect editing

yek

yek

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Much discussion about the user interface in the past weeks.
Well, the goal of this proposal is to bring a bit of pedalboard-style tweaking to the UI on the hardware.

PROPOSAL

If a switch on the FM3, FM9 of FC is assigned to Effect > Bypass,
then pressing that switch will temporarily switch the main hardware display to that effect block's CONFIG page.

This allows the user to see the basic effect settings. It lasts 3 seconds. After that, the display returns to the previous screen. But if:
  • the user performs an action on the screen within the 3 second frame, the display will not switch back. The user can keep editing in the EDIT mode, and then return by pressing EXIT;
  • the user presses another switch within the 3 second frame, that new action takes effect immediately (screen is refreshed).
Note: the temporarily displayed screen is not a layer (like it was on the AX8 when adjusting amp controls). So this requires no further changes to the UI.

The feature applies to engaging the effect block as well as bypassing it. This allows the user to quickly view the settings of an inactive block, by pressing a switch twice quickly (on > off).

The proposed display feature is optional, enabled/disabled through a Setup parameter that can be added to the Performance page.
 
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Hmmm.... so I have to activate or deactivate an effect in order to get this quick edit screen to pop up?
 
yek said:
Yup.
Click to expand...
Seems a little bit awkward. I don't suppose Fractal have an as yet unused capacitive mode on the FC controllers? That would be dope! Coz like on the Helix, then you'd just tap the top of the switch.

I probably wouldn't use this feature myself, I think I would get confused by having to switch the effect on or off; and if it's already on.... and I turn it off to get the mode to pop up.... I then need to turn it back on to actually hear any of my changes.

Or maybe this kind of thing is just one of the long press options - hold the switch to pop up the edit page for the device, or maybe go further..... add a 'macros' panel to every block on the unit, where the user can build their own selection of parameters (similar to the performance control pages, and custom pages on a Sony mirrorless camera for example) and then that is the page that pops up.

Most of the 'oooo I just want to tweak that' parameters are spread across different pages for me, particularly the amp, delay, and reverb blocks, so I'm not sure how useful it would be to just pop up just the config page.
 
AndyTNBD said:
Seems a little bit awkward. I don't suppose Fractal have an as yet unused capacitive mode on the FC controllers? That would be dope! Coz like on the Helix, then you'd just tap the top of the switch.

I probably wouldn't use this feature myself, I think I would get confused by having to switch the effect on or off; and if it's already on.... and I turn it off to get the mode to pop up.... I then need to turn it back on to actually hear any of my changes.

Or maybe this kind of thing is just one of the long press options - hold the switch to pop up the edit page for the device, or maybe go further..... add a 'macros' panel to every block on the unit, where the user can build their own selection of parameters (similar to the performance control pages, and custom pages on a Sony mirrorless camera for example) and then that is the page that pops up.

Most of the 'oooo I just want to tweak that' parameters are spread across different pages for me, particularly the amp, delay, and reverb blocks, so I'm not sure how useful it would be to just pop up just the config page.
Click to expand...

Sure, if the user doesn't want it, just keep it disabled (see above).

Yes, long presses would be an option, but that function is often already in use to change channels etc.

But there's no faster way to reach, say, the Phaser block's Edit screen, than the proposal described above.
 
yek said:
Sure, if the user doesn't want it, just keep it disabled (see above).

Yes, long presses would be an option, but that function is often already in use to change channels etc.

But there's no faster way to reach, say, the Phaser block's Edit screen, than the proposal described above.
Click to expand...

Using the edit button on the main unit is pretty damn fast. I'd almost prefer to just assign that to a footswitch. Then you don't have to contend with the bypass state, and multiple presses of the 'edit switch' footswitch would just cycle through all of your blocks.

And what would be really cool in such a situation is being able to control which blocks are in the list and which ones aren't - coz then you could just go .. "okay.... I never want to quickly edit my input and output blocks.... so don't bother showing them... just cycle through amp, phaser, delay, reverb...." - job done.

Can you imagine in the heat of a gig having to double check whether your effect is enabled or not? Seems a pain. I think there's probably a better solution.
 
The whole purpose of this proposal is to NOT have to bend over / down and operate the controls.
It's about having a screen pop up and show the settings that are otherwise hidden. It's liking looking at the MXR Phase 90 or Tube Screamer on your pedalboard when you turn it on or off.
No interaction needed. And no need to assign anything to a switch on forehand, it''s already there if you have effect switches in your layout.
 
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yek said:
I'm not describing it correctly or you're not getting it. :)

The whole purpose of this proposal is to NOT have to bend over / down and operate the controls.
It's about having a screen pop up and show the settings that are otherwise hidden.
No interaction needed. And no need to assign anything to a switch on forehand, it''s already there if you have effect switches in your layout.
Click to expand...

I think I am getting it but I don't think you're understanding my points.

You brought it up because you want an "analog-style tweaking" experience, right? You want to quickly access the edit screens of blocks assigned to the footswitches on your FC controller. Which is totally understandable. Because then you could press your effect, turn around and make changes on the AxeIII unit without having to menu dive.

But this workflow necessitates the effect in question being active in order for you to hear the changes you're making. Otherwise how would you know if your tweak is a valid one or not?

So in the middle of a gig, if I want to increase the rate of my phaser... I have to press the phaser switch. But it was originally enabled. Now that I've pressed the switch and I've gotten the pop up screen, I've also disabled my effect. So now I need to press it again.

Or, the effect was originally disabled. I press the switch to get the pop-up, and now it is enabled. But what I actually wanted to do was tweak a parameter in advance - say, for the next section or song - and I've activated my effect when I didn't really want to.

That isn't really an attractive workflow to me because it would mean that the display state is inherently tied to the switch state.

I never said anything about bending over or down. :oops:
 
Yes, sorry, I interpreted your previous post incorrectly and had already edited my post.

I get what you're saying. Let's delve into that.

During a gig I'm not experimenting but I sometimes want to change a setting slightly. That can be the rate of a Phaser, a bit more or less gain in a Drive, Delay time etc.

To pop up the screen but not change the state / sound, requires tapping the effect switch twice. That's 0.5 seconds not playing. Doesn't do any harm and still faster than any other approach.
 
I guess this is sort of like a version of how the capacitive switches on Line6 Helix work. On Helix if you touch a switch (not press it but just touch) it will select that block for editing, which makes thing a lot faster to tweak. It's a fantastic feature on that platform.

Since Fractal does not have capacitive switches, this would need to be achieved some other way. I am not sure if OP's suggestion would work well in practice as it's a lot of toggling fx on/off and if you toggle effects it causes the display to switch between different states constantly. It's probably not a good user experience in practice.

The Performance views are really meant for this type of stuff but the issue is that they are quite limited, quite artificially IMO. Expanding the number of parameters assignable globally and per preset would mean that for most common tweaks you wouldn't have to see layout grid or the fx block specific views. 10 + 10 is nowhere even near enough and a lot of things could be done here like color coding/grouping and more pages you can access by scrolling up/down.

I would love to see a version of what OP suggests but in how Axe-Edit/FMx-Edit works. If it could also open up the selected block on the front panel UI as you click things in Axe-Edit, then you could use the front panel controls to tweak things rather than relying on mouse/kb.
 
As I said earlier, I very much like the idea of using the footswitches to bring up the editor for the block each switch bypasses (if there is one).
That's working towards the sort of instant-access that Helix has with its capacitive footswitches.

However, folks do have a point about selecting a block having the probably undesirable side effect of toggling its bypass state.
Would it be better to have another action trigger this, maybe even-longer-press, or double-press?

In an idea world, one or both of those actions could be used for other things too, effectively increasing the number of footswitches, which I'd love. However, that would require big changes to the footswitch editing UI, both on-unit and in Axe-Edit.
It would also increase the memory need to store each layout.
I'd say keep that in mind as a future possibility, but do the edit-access thing soon.
 
I think having the addition of navigation actions added to the button hold functions would be an interesting way to do this as well. For example, I would set the hold function for my Drive 1 block to navigate to the block edit page, and maybe the second tab. I am not a fan of having my display flash all the time when pressing the footswitch, I think it would be distracting.
 
I think in general the second tab (the first one after the effect/preset list) wound probably be a good bet. Or maybe an option when configuring the hold function to select a tab by number… something along those lines?
 
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