List of feature requests (MOD Dwarf)

I need new glasses :nerd_face: , sorry. But a link there would be awesome.

In my opinion this plugin, when switched to the “Hi-Fi” mode is much better than an OC3/OC5.

In my specific case, I was trying to drop down only the low notes of the guitar. I could not (yet?)

Thanks for your feedback! I hope that we can make this experience nicer in the near future but I can’t say when

I thank you for leaving an open space for discussion. :smiley:

I agree. Something we could implement with the filters!

As far as I’m aware the OC3/OC5 also does not do this. It just drops all the notes and you have a dry/wet knob to adjust how much of the original signal comes through

In order to drop only the “low notes” the plugin would first need to decide at what point does a note become “low”

You could achieve this by putting a low pass filter before the drop where you could choose the highest frequency to be affected but you would cut out the upper harmonics of the low notes too.

In general, this is not how octaver pedals work. At least to my knowledge

1 Like

It has a mode called “poly” that does exactly this. It is not perfect, but it is amazing concept. In a different mode it does also the standard octaver thing, when it drops all the notes.

Indeed, this function is specific for OC3/OC5, no other octavers can do this.

That is the core idea of how to achieve this. I think it is needed to split the signal first, than going trough low pass to octave drop in one path and keep the original signal in parallel path - then you do not lose any of the higher harmonics of the low notes, just add the bass on notes in selected range. However you lose that harmonics in the wet dropped signal, which will more or less change the characteristic of the added bass note. That is the reason that it will probably need a bit more complicated solution. I am really looking forward to dig into this challenge.

3 Likes

Oh okay. My bad! @pavel and @SrMouraSilva

I was thinking they were not so different from the OC2

That’s quite cool! It does sound like a cool challenge to make this as a pedalboard!

Let me know if either of you are able to do it in a cool way! I’m sure @Andre would love to try it out

5 Likes

I don’t know if you guys will think this is superfluous, or if it’s just too late to change the “visual culture” of the established MOD web GUI, but I find it really silly that every single effect needs to both look like and follow the tactile experience of a guitar stomp box.

It took me a great deal of time to even start taking the reverb and delay plugins seriously, start using them, understanding they even SOUNDED good.

as an experienced recording engineer I come from the ProTools culture where these kind of plugins usually feature a GUI that put an emphasis on intuitive controls and an understandable interface in line with whatever kind of signal flow is inherent to the device. Think about how reverb and delay plugins look in your DAW.

And yes of course I know that you can click on the little gear icon and approach things that way, but that is a second level of “drill down” for the user, and possibly strips the user interface of visually helpful features.

Curious if this makes sense to you guys…just seems like to ensure the future of this platform we need to make its interface look less like a quaint and silly toy, given the level the competition is operating at.

Sorry for the long “essay” :grimacing:

13 Likes

I completely agree with you, and I thought to be alone in this.

I perfectly understand that the “visual culture” of VST effects, synths and pedals relies a lot on trying to replicate the look and feel of the real thing, and I think this was mostty to give us boomers here some sort of psychological support in transitioning to the new virtual wold, but could we move on now, please?

Knobs and footswitches work great on aluminium thingies on the floor. They do not work so well on screens. I already hate moving knobs around when using a mouse. Have you ever tried rotating one using your fingers on a small touchscreen device? Sliders are the good widgets to use on that.

And why do i have to fill all my screen with a photo reproduction of a cabinet for every IR emulator I load in my pedalboard, where the only controls are often a list widget, an on off switch and 1/2 knobs? this is a waste of space and makes my pedalboard so large that I must often scroll to get to all plugins without reason.

I admit that the Mod pedalboard building interface is pretty, but between pretty and usable, I always prefer usable. I’d gladly substitute every graphical pedal with simpler, mostly identical, square/rectangular “boxes”, where you would clearly see numerical values of the parameters (at least the most important if many) and all the other would pop up in a full screen window if touched/clicked, with sliders instead of knobs.

13 Likes

i agree with a lot of what you guys are saying… indeed there’s wasted space and awkwardness in adjusting some things. however, it might be a mistake to go for a uniform plugin appearance; being able to recognize plugins at a glance in a pedalboard layout is something i find quite valuable in more complex boards. i think there’s more value than we might immediately acknowledge in having gotten to recognize a bunch of plugins instantly by appearance… it helps us to quickly parse a board’s layout and function.

…along that line of thought: organization would be helped a lot by the ability to colour plugins, to make labels, and to make functional subgroups of plugins which can be buried within some kind of container and which can be saved and reused. …sort of like functions in programming…

cheers!
.pltk.

12 Likes

…also: i’m gonna suggest that both knobs and sliders are awkward :face_with_hand_over_mouth:… i’d like to see a number entry box pop up when you hold on a control without moving. then you just input your new value, hit enter, and the box goes away. …and if the initial delay time was adjustable in settings, we could just set it to 0 so all controls would pop up a value dialog immediately upon clicking! :partying_face:

3 Likes

Nice to have: ability to copy plugin settings across all snapshots with1 click. Currently if you have a pedalboard with 10 snapshots and you want to change a plugin parameter you have to do it manually for each snapshot.

9 Likes

You’re not alone :slight_smile: MOD UI improvements for creating connections - #3 by unbracketed

A knowledgeable web developer could prototype an alternative interface that could be usable for technical users. “All you need to do” is have an HTML page that contains some script to open the same web socket and make the same API calls as the current interface does. You get back lists of plugins, their parameter values, and their connections and you can render into whatever layout or representation you’d like. *

I’d be a user and a technical supporter if someone started one.

I know there has been some development recently to better support MIDI I/O and for plugins to communicate back to the user interface when MIDI changes happen. This should make things like TouchOSC or open stage control more practical for use? (that’s an image search because I couldn’t find a single image of an example interface on their current site :stuck_out_tongue: )

* There might be some technical limitation that I’m not aware of like a device authentication or transport validation to verify the client. I’d guess if you ask you nicely, Filipe will find the workaround for you.

7 Likes

To be clear Plutek I am in no way whatsoever suggesting that all plugins go to a uniform appearance…not at all! Again, I’d just draw the comparison to how, for example, plugin developers like Slate of Waves build their interfaces: they are FAR from uniform and still have lots of visual “pizzazz”. But nonetheless, the overriding directive is making an interface that directly serves what that wffects parameters are, and what is the simplest, most direct, and most intuitive way to manipulate them.

Compare that to any number of MOD reverb plugins where literally 3/4 of your on-screen gui is a f$&ing faux “foot pedal” that serves absolutely no purpose, and then all the genuinely relevant controls are jammed into this tiny top space and laud out on dumb “knobs” that you have to struggle with on your mouse. Kinda sad really.

2 Likes

Well put! So there: it’s out in the open now!

1 Like

@Greatmagnet and @Tarrasque73, I’m thinking that are two situations (similar, but a little different):

  1. The first is when you’re using a touch device (like a tablet). In this case, it’s hard to use knobs because they’re a quite imprecise and a fader would be better to controls (@Tarrasque73 case);
  1. The second is when you’re on a PC or other device where you have a physical keyboard, when you can easily insert the value (@plutek case). On touch devices it’s also hard because when an user click in an input, the operational system shows the (virtual) keyboard and resize the window, generally changing (for the worse) the original view.

I think that both are valid. The user being able to select the way that will use would be amazing.


The file that contains the REST and the web-socket APIs is present in: https://github.com/moddevices/mod-ui/blob/master/mod/webserver.py

I didn’t found any documentation about how to use they, but apparently it’s no so hard to understand what is meaning the source code. Also, I didn’t check if the communication protocols need authentication.

I will try to prototype some different view latter… (just some images, not coding)


I think that it’s for when an user need specific views to controls specific parameters (just like the mod Dwarf/Duo X knobs, but virtually). Maybe the previous comments are more related to generic pedalboard configuration. But I also think this is valid.

3 Likes

yes indeed. Just think about a “real life” example: Boss pedals.
They all kind of have the same box. Now imagine if they had the same colour and interfaces layout, etc.

I also personally agree with most of the things that you pointed. I even think that this is somehow holding humanity on certain developments - because we always need to find a physical partner to relate to digital things.
Yet, this is more psychological and cultural than anything else. And changing it radically may be a huge mistake.
I can remember while kid to have a sort of book or read somewhere how human inventions come from observation and replicas of nature and the animal world. How scissors and pliers come from the “legs” of crabs, planes are inspired on the way that birds fly, etc. It’s really a human psychologic handicap (and strength in other situations) thing, I believe. We always search for familiar things.

Totally agree! If we look properly, in the digital world that is really what makes more sense! Yet it brings all the “lack of familiarity” and “looks complicated” issues.

2 Likes

well…here depends a lot on the plugins that we are talking about. Just look to the SSL or CLA plugins from Waves, those are pixel by pixel replicas of physical hardware. Than you have the Kramer Tape, a great plugin, but this goes way too far on the replica as you can see:


Those bobines actually spin around…why? no one knows…I remember trying to use it on a machine that ended up not running it because of the graphics…but I was trying to use it for sound purposes.
But, again…I understand why they do that. It’s the sense of familiarity.

The same applies to Slate…


This is kind of familiar, no? :thinking:

3 Likes

Also related about the UI interfaces: I think that it’s hard to the MOD team rework about it, mainly because they created a pattern and third developers develop the UI in their projects.

But, it’s common in the technology the UX improvement, as instance, Google sometimes updates its Material Design, the guideline with the best UX practices for Android apps.

Maybe, a solution for this case is to do an UX study and develop a Guideline with the best practices. But a UI study will causes more cost.

Also, a complement it’s offers ways to expand the controls: Mod offers a generic way to controls with mod-ui and the knobs and footswitchs (that attempts a most of cases but not all) and offers alternatives for specific cases with control chain and MIDI.

But I miss the documentation of the REST+websocket communication. With it, developers can develop UI/UX alternatives. And also, maybe, the good ideas be officially incorporated.

3 Likes

Someone sends a pull request https://github.com/moddevices/mod-ui/pull/123


Feature request: Assign a specific snapshot for a footswitch (instead of only assign all).

4 Likes

Yep it’s me, tried to add the feature and it works. Don’t know if it will ever be merged.

3 Likes

The problem that I would have with losing the individual look of the plugins that I build boards regularly and use the look of the plugins to find them - I recognise all that I use regularly. It would be awkward, especially if working on a small screen, to have to actually read what a plugin is . . .

2 Likes

I see some User Interface of some apps. Maybe the Amplify Remote is most similar of @Tarrasque73 requested.

  1. On Pedalboard Editor, enable “quick edit” to edit the parameters, just like other headers buttons
    image
  2. In this mode, when a pedalboard is touchable, the “quick edit area” appears on right side: On large devices (like a tablet), the screen is divided in two:

    The quick edit area (on right) will presents the parameters as combobox, on-off buttons, and slides (instead of knobs).
    • In smartphones and other devices with small screen, an alternative is, when selects an plugin, shows the quick edit area in all the screen. To go to back (pedalboard view), press a back button on the screen.
  3. Beside of the parameter, will apper the current value as an input number image. A user can clicks it and changes using a keyboard or virtual keyboard on mobile devices (@plutek ideia);
  4. In the header of the “quick edit area” will contains:
    • the plugin name;
    • a small plugin image;
    • a edit button to shows the original parameters area;
    • The on/off plugin button.

This prototype probably facilitates the management of the parameters. But it didn’t attack the “connection problem” and “plugins replacement”.

9 Likes