Introducing the Rear Window blog

@msteed

I went through the server backoffice code and fixed a problem that affected users that only have the free Enhancer Software Core on their account. Users that have purchased the Enhancer Software were unaffected by the problem.

Hopefully this will let you download the ES Core files from Updater now.

Thanks to quick database work by Matthew -- on a Sunday, even -- I've been able to download all the updated Enhancer Core components and give Rave a try.

Very nice! Even the file requester is impressive. And this is just the first pass- I'm sure it's going to get even better as it gains features.

I didn't have any audio samples readily at hand, so I used the sounds that came with Codebench for testing. I quickly discovered that the second half of two of those sounds is basically blank, making them twice as large as they need to be. I trimmed off the blank part and saved the rest; they sound exactly the same, but are half the size. So Rave has proven useful already!

I'd have to agree with the others that I miss an undo feature. The lack of one inhibits experimentation, as if you do something you don't like you're stuck with it. But I also see the point about the memory requirement of undo when editing large samples.

Perhaps a "revert" feature, which reloads the sample from disk, could fill some of the functionality of a full undo, though frequent saving of the sample could also be an issue if using a lossy compression format, since every save and reload loses some fidelity.

@trixie

Another thing that disturbed me was that the alteredfile overwrite the original when clicking on save...at least a requester that warns about overwriting would be nice.

@trixie

Finally I had a chance to look into the Rave and it is something I could use on a daily basis. The supported formats are impressive and existance of 8svx format opens a door to sample preparation for Protracker. I wish 8bitbubsy's Protracker 2.3d could be ported over as the one from the OS4depot is not usable, so all the music creation is doable on our system. There are some features I could not find (I've read the manual, I hope I did not missed this), which could make using Rave just a bit easier. I wish I can move position cursor with the arrow keys, left and right and hitting "home" or "end" key to move position cursor at the beginning or end of the sample at the Waveform Display. Holding shift and arrow key to the left or right should make a selection too, the same as it can be done with the mouse pointer. There is also one more item which is desired. When converting WAV sample to 8svx, there should be an option to downsample from 44000Khz to lower frequencies so it is usable in PT or classic Amiga trakers. Currently, configure button, when trying to save as, is not selectable and will save the 8svx at the same frequency (44000Khz). For this, I am using "sox" on Linux and shell script (I can share it with you if needed to see the parameters) which is doing this for me, but it would be great if could be done right here. Everything else works great and I tested the Fade In/Out and Mix Channels from stereo to mono, successfully. Thank you so much for making Rave trixie!

@levellord

You do know that sox is also ported to OS4, right?

http://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=audio/convert/sox.lha

@trixie

Nice job, as others have also said, the program is really nce to use and the GUI very neat and intuitive.

I'd still love it if one day you could make it possible to edit the waveform directly with the mouse, but we discussed this already, and I understand if that's not top of your list .

Best regards,

Niels

@nbache

Thanks for this, I did not know. Now what is left for some serious tracking is Protracker 2.3d and circle will be complete (hint, hint)!

@msteed

Quote:
Undo really seems to be in popular demand, so I had better start with that As for the implementation, I'm pretty sure I need a combination of a disk-based and a memory-based approach.

@Raziel

Quote:
Hm, that's strange, because there certainly is a confirmation requester when overwriting a file. But of course I might have missed something, so could you please send me an e-mail describing step by step how you end up with an overwritten file without a requester? Thanks!

@levellord

Quote:
I'm more likely to implement a Resample plugin through which you could convert the sample rate of the waveform, also allowing you to configure the quality of the conversion.

Quote:
Nah, forget Protracker - and I say that as someone who used it A LOT! in the 90s. Use MilkyTracker instead, it's much more pleasant to work with.

@trixie

That sounds good (resample plugin), when you have time!
Regarding the PT, I started recently to learn and make short mods, and switching to Milky Tracker would be easy as I don't know much yet. Thanks for suggestion, will give it a shot.

@msteed

Quote:
I wonder what you'll say when you see the updated file requester that I'm getting ready for the upcoming version 1.2

@trixie

Quote:
I'm aquiver with anticipation!

@trixie

I'm too lazy to find your email address, so here i go

Rave 1.1 (21.6.2022)

1) Start Rave
2) Load any .mp3 file
3) Mark anything and then "Delete" from the PD menu
4) "Save" becomes available, do that
There will be no requester asking for confirmation to really overwrite the file, it just does (maybe i have missed something though)

@Raziel

But that's the expected behaviour of the Save function! Try with any other program that works with projects or documents: you won't get a confirmation requester in such a situation.

@trixie

I'm, pretty sure LibreOffice (i.e.) ALWAYS asks if i really want to overwrite a physical available file...

But anyway, then i'd like to ask for an option to turn on save requesters every time i try to save something to a file...please

@Raziel

Quote:I'm pretty sure you need to try it yourself, and you'll be convinced you are wrong . (And I just tested it with LibreOffice in Windows, just to make completely sure.)

As Trixie also writes, the standard behaviour when using Save (just Save, not Save As) with a document which has already been saved with a name, whether you are continuing working on it, or you have loaded it after previously saving it, is to silently save the changed version of the document into the existing file.

Now, if you create a new document (or project as we call it in the Amiga paradigm) and then hit Save and specify the existing file, you should get an overwrite prompt before saving.

Best regards,

Niels

@nbache

I stand corrected then, thank you for checking.
Didn't have time to fire up a second machine and check myself.

@trixie

My feature request still stands though...an option to always ask on saving

@Raziel

Quote:
Possibly at a later time: the feature list for version 1.2 is closed now.

@Raziel

Quote:Well, as long as it's an option, I'd support your wish.

I can't see myself using it much in the above scenario, though. If I'm editing a sound, I'd want to save it at short intervals to make sure I can revert if I do something stupid, and I'm pretty sure I'd feel that such a requester for every save would interrupt my workflow and concentration.

But there could of course be other scenarios where it might be useful.

Best regards,

Niels

@nbache

Yeah in such a scenario this requester would annoy heavily.

If i'm only loading in a sound, changing something to see if it would fit and saving i`d still like to keep the original for later.

Maybe not using a requester but a temporary file to not overwrite the original and a new menu option?

Something like
- Save (overwrites the original)
- Save session (writes to a temp file)
and getting a warning on closing Rave if the session hasn't been saved permanently?

or something like that...