MultiSampler

[Spogg]

When you two have got an interface style sorted out and a working beta (not necessarily finished graphics) I have a Balafon (African wooden Xylophone) I'd love to multi-sample. I could do this and give some feedback on my experiences. Plus we'd get a new sampled instrument.
OR, if you want, I could create the sample set soon and you could both play with it to see for yourself. OR both

I'm really enthusiastic about where this project could go...

Cheers

Spogg

[tulamide]

KG, you are right about the feature thing. We should indeed emphasize those features that make the sampler stand out. I tried to work on the compromise, and here's where I'm at currently.
http://image.prntscr.com/image/6fa97998491a444093bfc0d535d44b66.png

I made a needed change. Light orange will only be used to signalize a selection. In this example you see that only 12 of the maximum 16 channels are available, that channel 1 is in use and channel 3 selected. The list below shows the wave files as they were loaded to channel 3.

Now I could have gone further in the design, but
a) we need to see first, if it works fine for both of us
b) an issue came to my mind, that seemingly wasn't addressed yet

Scenario: User loads some wave files to channel one. Now he's working on them and realizes that he made a mistake with the second loaded wave file. This one should be outputted to channel four. How to deal with it? Removing from channel one and reloading to channel four? Seems a bit too much work. Moving from channel one to channel four? But how, if drag & drop is not an option? I'm eager to hearing your thoughts about this!

Also, I highly recommend adding a rename option to the browser. I think a user would prefer "kick" as zone name and "kick low end" as sample name, etc.

[KG_is_back]

I made a needed change. Light orange will only be used to signalize a selection. In this example you see that only 12 of the maximum 16 channels are available, that channel 1 is in use and channel 3 selected. The list below shows the wave files as they were loaded to channel 3.

It seems you still miss how the internal routing is done. Each sample has 12 channels (in the example above). And each channel can only have 1 specific wav file (or be empty). You can imagine it as if the instrument was captured by 12 microphones, and each "sample" is a specific sound (for example a single note or single drum hit) captured by the microphones.

Scenario: User loads some wave files to channel one. Now he's working on them and realizes that he made a mistake with the second loaded wave file. This one should be outputted to channel four. How to deal with it? Removing from channel one and reloading to channel four? Seems a bit too much work. Moving from channel one to channel four? But how, if drag & drop is not an option? I'm eager to hearing your thoughts about this!

The idea posted in my previous post might be an option. The sample list in the bottom would list all the wavs in this sample (ie. in this case, maximum of 12). Each wav would have an icon on its left. The icon would have the channel number and can be dragged left/right to set specific channel. While dragging, the current channel in which the wav is located could be emphased in orange in the top panel.
For example, this is how it might look while dragging second wav between channels (note channels 0, 4, 5 are occupied and channel 2 is highlighted while dragging, because that's where the second wav currently is). The cursor would change to the "<->" when hovering over the icon, so that user will notice this feature. http://www.mediafire.com/view/f68qjisg0e6ib93/sample2.png
Few possible controls:
The dragging would cycle between the empty channels only - if all channels are full, dragging is disabled.
To swap two channels, you grab the wav name in the list and drop it in the channel in top, you want it to be in (if target channel is occupied, the wavs simply swap places, if target channel is empty, wav is placed there and original channel is emptied).
To replace a wav with different one, double click the wav name (it will bring up load dialog and load new wav in place of the old one)
To load new wav into empty channel there are two possibilites:
a) there would be "load wav" button somewhere, which would bring up load dialog and load the wav to first empty channel (would be disabled when all channels are full).
b) left-click on specific channel on top - load dialog opens and loads the wav to that specific channel.
To delete wav, there should also be multiple options. Maybe "x" button next to every wav name. Right-clicking the channel in top or wav name... I'm not sure yet...

Another option is to have right-click in top channels for loading and left-drag-and-drop for swapping, but that might not be clear, since it is not obvious which wav are you actually dragging.

Also, I highly recommend adding a rename option to the browser. I think a user would prefer "kick" as zone name and "kick low end" as sample name, etc.

Perhaps... My original plan was to have "name: " parameter with edit box next to it in the parameters, kind of like in the original version, where groups had edit box for name. But rename button will work too... Again, maybe having both is not a bad idea.

[tulamide]

It seems you still miss how the internal routing is done. Each sample has 12 channels (in the example above). And each channel can only have 1 specific wav file (or be empty). You can imagine it as if the instrument was captured by 12 microphones, and each "sample" is a specific sound (for example a single note or single drum hit) captured by the microphones.

Damn, you're right. You see, this channel concept confuses me like hell

I was irritated by this sentence: "You can have as many wave files as you like. All wave files that are in first slot of their respective samples will give output to first output channel etc." What you meant was is now clear, but yeah, it confused me.

That's also why I didn't understand this "all wave files in the list". Now it is clear. In this example, the list would show all wave files that ere used by the sample, and I would need to add a light orange selection to the wave file that corresponds to the selected channel.

Bare with me, I will get it right someday

[KG_is_back]

Meanwhile I'm working on parts of the GUI that we already settled on. Namely the tree-folder list including the add/delete/rename buttons and scroll bar. I'm posting this, so that you can check if the behaviour is acceptable.

[KG_is_back]

A small update. I think I have the wav-adding thing figured out. This is a dummy GUI (meaning there is no sound engine in the thing, just some skeleton structures to test GUI behaviour). Ignore the sketchy layout, and weird colour theme for the moment.

Tree folder graph:
I feel, a graphical distinction between groups, zones and samples might be a good thing. The offset is not very telling. Maybe dotted tree-lines (like in windows tree browser) to connect things up? Also, I'm not very sure about the functionality. At the moment, clicking a section unfolds/folds it. It feels kind of annoying when stuff is opening/closing each click. Suggestions are welcome... The add/remove/rename buttons work fairly well. Scroll bar also works as intended.

Wave loading view
The way it currently works is similar to one of my previous posts. On top, there's 16 channel cells (some of them disabled, based on number of channels in settings). Below that is a list of loaded wavs in this sample.
New samples are loaded either by clicking in empty place in the list (aka. below all loaded wavs) which loads wav to lowest empty channel. Or by clicking on empty channel cell in the top (which obviously loads the wav specifically to that channel).
A channel of already loaded wav can be changed in two ways. Either by clicking and dragging the left-most icon next to wavs name (the one with the number) left/right. It toggles between empty channels. Second way is to grab the sample (by clicking and holding on the name) and dragging and dropping it on one of the channel cells above. This swaps the wavs in the original and target channel if both are occupied.
Order of wavs in the list may be changed by dragging the wav up/down the list (it's just a visual change). And to delete a wav, click the X icon next to wav's name. I'm not so sure about that one - it's fairly close to the channel icon and also no warning message pops up (which may or may not be a good thing).
The GUI usually highlights the channel you are currently dragging in both above-mentioned scenarios.
Scroll bar is build in a way, that you can always scroll one line lower than the length of the list. This is so that you always have place to click to load new wav.
One thing that bothers me a bit is, that this is just one tab of the sample-editing window. The second tab should contain editing of the loop points. I'm not sure of the tabs should be on the top or bottom.

Let me know what you think guys...

[KG_is_back]

Hi guys,
I've been thinking lately about the group-zone-sample layout and which parameters should apply to what. In original version only zones and samples were present. Now that groups were added, I think it makes sense to push some paremeters form zones to groups. Specifically the key-tracking, volume-tracking and randomization. It is overwhelmingly likely that when you make a group, all zones in that group will have these parameters the same. For example when sampling a piano, all zones would have keytrack=1, randomization=[some small value to avoid repetition] and volume-tracking=[some value depending on whether the wavs are normalized or not]. It is just unnecessary extra work to need setting the same values for every zone. In case you actually need that, you can simply add separate groups...
I think it makes a lot of sense and spreads the parameters more reasonably. What do you think?

[Spogg]

I like the idea. Basically anything that speeds up the workflow for instrument creation will help considerably!

[KG_is_back]

OK here's an update. Not all features are currently working, but it gives the impression of the GUI and workflow.

[Wassaka]

OK here's an update. Not all features are currently working, but it gives the impression of the GUI and workflow.

Wooow! Really nice!! Awesome work!!!