Fader Scaling

[Foo (mr_mark_dollin)]

Mucho applause for implementing the new feature of fader scaling options. This will make fine-tune volume editing much more natural. Thumbs up.

Might be good to start a thread here for fine tuning the feature before the betas close.

Currently the scaling is set off the meter scaling mode, which can be accessed at either the top bar meter, or the vertical meters in the mixer view. Once a scale is selected for one of these meters, it is applied to ALL meters and faders. In the context menu you can also select ‘disable’ which turns all the meters off in EITHER the top bar or all the mixer faders - but - the fader scaling is retained from whatever the last setting was. So for example if you had -48dB scaling, and then you selected to disable the meters in the mixer, then the fader is still set to -48dB scaling.

The above paragraph hopefully reveals two points where things could be different, resulting in these two questions:

1. What is the case for having separate fader scaling for each fader?
2. Is it unclear for users who may use the ‘disable’ function for the meters to know what fader scaling they are on, save for turning the meters back on and then selecting the right fader scaling and then disabling the meters again? Or another way of putting it, should the meter and the fader be tied in this way?

Thanks for putting this feature in. It’s going to be great to use.

[sharevari]

Thanks for the feedback.

@mr_mark_dollin

Currently the scaling is set off the meter scaling mode, which can be accessed at either the top bar meter, or the vertical meters in the mixer view. Once a scale is selected for one of these meters, it is applied to ALL meters and faders.

This shouldn’t be the case and as far as I can tell it works correctly? The mode for the meter at the top is separate from the mode set for the mixer view, and changing the mode for the top meter does not affect the mixer faders. The mixer faders all share the same setting though.

In the context menu you can also select ‘disable’ which turns all the meters off in EITHER the top bar or all the mixer faders - but - the fader scaling is retained from whatever the last setting was. So for example if you had -48dB scaling, and then you selected to disable the meters in the mixer, then the fader is still set to -48dB scaling.

I agree that the Disable setting is a little incongruous here next to all the mixer modes, but seeing as the faders retain their markings also when meters are disabled, there shouldn’t really be any confusion as to what scale it’s at?

1. What is the case for having separate fader scaling for each fader?

You tell us.

2. Is it unclear for users who may use the ‘disable’ function for the meters to know what fader scaling they are on, save for turning the meters back on and then selecting the right fader scaling and then disabling the meters again? Or another way of putting it, should the meter and the fader be tied in this way?

In retrospect, they probably shouldn’t. And also, maybe we shouldn’t have started playing around with these changes at all so close to the end of the beta. But it felt more like completing a half-finished feature, i.e. the meter mode menu was always supposed to affect the fader too but this had never been implemented for some reason. Now we might not have all that much time to make any more wide-ranging changes here unfortunately.

[Foo (mr_mark_dollin)]

Oh I’ll have to double check that the top-bar meter is separate to the mixer meters… hmm… Yes, indeed they can be separate. Confirmed.

In summary reply to your points: I think the feature is good to go now - all it takes is for uses to spend a few minutes teaching themselves the current functioning and just work with it for now. It is bug free.

Having thought about it I think as long as I can have the top-bar meter on a separate scale to the mixer meters then I wouldn’t need separate scales for different mix faders. It’s easy enough to quickly change the scaling depending on what task you are doing. I’d personally keep the top-bar meter at -96dB, and the mixer scaling at -48dB.