Acoustica: some thoughts/annoyances/suggestions

[Logga]

Here's a list of annoyances/suggestions after using Acoustica for a little while.
I generally like Acoustica, it has the focus on the right things IMO, so take these as constructive criticism.


Audio drivers related
1. No visual compensation for audio latency of plugins and especially bad if using DirectSound (I like to use that, because it lets me use the default audio device in Windows). This means the cursor lags behind on the waveform during playback.
2. Some general performance issues when using ASIO. EDIT: this was probably the fault of the ASIO driver that I was using, I've noticed some similar problems in other DAWs.
3. Audacity has a WASAPI loopback option, which records what's being played back on the system. It might be nice to have that in Acoustica, although it's probably a rare/niche use case.

UI general
4. No overall volume out control.
5. Can't reset the peaks in the Level Meter quickly, for example by double clicking on them. Also the max hold time is 60s, IMO the peaks should just stay displayed forever until they're manually reset, at least as an option.
6. When zoomed into the main waveform it could be useful to be able to "grab" the grid, like in FL Studio with the middle click or Ableton Live with Ctrl+Alt click.
7. Media File Browser: Can't navigate in and out of folders with the keyboard. Left/Right arrow keys or Enter/Backspace would work nicely.

Processing Chain
8. Can't close a plug-in window without clicking the Close button. What if single L-click on the item in the list would also close its window? Or maybe double click to close, to avoid the situation where the user just wants to bring a plug-in window on top. Maybe even right click (two of those context menu entries already have buttons anyway and the third one could have a button as well--or if that's too "risky" you could leave that context menu, but show it only when not R-clicking on a plug-in).
9. Those plug in windows stay on top of the waveform display until you close each one. Perhaps clicking on the waveform should hide them, or maybe add a way to hide them all at once. Or see point 8 to make hiding them faster.
10. When you have a long list there's a scroll bar and up/down arrows. Those arrows need to be sped up, they move the list so slowly that they're pretty much useless currently.

[Logga]

I don't want to spam this board too much, so I'll add a couple of points here:

11. I found a bug with the Liquidsonics Reverberate VST: the effect works during playback, but it doesn't get applied to the file when clicking "Apply" in the chain. I don't know if it's the fault of Acoustica or the plug-in.

12. It would be useful to be able to re-order the opened files (by dragging their tabs around).

[stian]

Thank you very much for all the useful feedback! We'll look into this more closely after the summer vacations and I've added it all to our task tracker. We'll try to get some of this into the upcoming v7.2.

Best,
Stian

[Logga]

13. When clicking in the upper/lower quarter of a stereo waveform, the L/R channel gets soloed. I've accidentally triggered this a few times already. IMO it shouldn't do that, unless you drag the mouse to make a selection on that channel. The mute buttons on the left side are enough.

[lorenzo-s]

Hi. Seeing this, I'd like to contribute with some suggestion I sent to Acon this spring. Their feedback was very positive, and I hope to see something in the next version. I hope sharing them could be useful to other users of the forum which may have similar needs

First, some smaller stuff I think can greatly improve the editing and analysis workflow:

- Shift-click (or something else) to create a selection that goes from the playback head to the clicked location.
- Configurable scale/zoom in the loudness meter, the loudness is always squashed to the top when targeting around 10 or 15 LUFS, making the graph not much useful as it could be.
- Clickable position in the statistic analysis window, to identify and jump to highest peaks or clipping points; or a button to create labels/marks on the highest 5 peaks or so.
- When moving the cursor over the spectrogram analysis, display the corresponding equal-temperament note next to the already shown frequency in Hz (for example: 50Hz / G1 +35 cents).

Second, some suggestions for improving the multi-track editor:

- Fade-in and fade-out curves on clip bounds, for example with draggable handles on the top left/right corners of the clip.
- Track volume knob independent from track volume envelope/automation: this way I can have automation and still be able to tweak the overall track volume in the master mix.
- Right-click menu item for opening the source file of the clip in a new editing tab.
- Clip snapping to nearby clips that are on the same or on other tracks.
- Clip snapping to playback head.

Lastly, some general requests that maybe require more changes and effort:

- Effect solo button in processing chain, next to the bypass button.
- Render the processing chain in a new untitled separate audio file, for example with a dropdown option on the current "Apply" button.
- Favourites, hidden and custom categories in the plug-in manager, with an option to remove the VST/VST3 grouping.

[stian]

Hi Lorenzo,

Thanks for the additional suggestions! These are great and some already on the roadmap. I've commented below:

- Shift-click (or something else) to create a selection that goes from the playback head to the clicked location.

You can extend the selection using Ctrl+click. However, when there's no selection it seems to select from the very beginning, which doesn't really make sense. We'll fix it so that it selects from the playline instead and I believe that would fix the issue?

- Configurable scale/zoom in the loudness meter, the loudness is always squashed to the top when targeting around 10 or 15 LUFS, making the graph not much useful as it could be.

Sure, that would be easy. We'll add that.

- Clickable position in the statistic analysis window, to identify and jump to highest peaks or clipping points; or a button to create labels/marks on the highest 5 peaks or so.

Yes, this has been requested many times and will come in v7.2.

- When moving the cursor over the spectrogram analysis, display the corresponding equal-temperament note next to the already shown frequency in Hz (for example: 50Hz / G1 +35 cents).

Good idea -- also an easy fix.

Second, some suggestions for improving the multi-track editor:

- Fade-in and fade-out curves on clip bounds, for example with draggable handles on the top left/right corners of the clip.
- Track volume knob independent from track volume envelope/automation: this way I can have automation and still be able to tweak the overall track volume in the master mix.
- Right-click menu item for opening the source file of the clip in a new editing tab.
- Clip snapping to nearby clips that are on the same or on other tracks.
- Clip snapping to playback head.

Good points. We'll probably plan this into v7.5 since an update of the multitrack editor is planned in that release.

Lastly, some general requests that maybe require more changes and effort:

- Effect solo button in processing chain, next to the bypass button.
- Render the processing chain in a new untitled separate audio file, for example with a dropdown option on the current "Apply" button.

These two aren't that hard to implement, actually, and I can see that they could be very useful. We'll try to get this into v7.2 as well.

- Favourites, hidden and custom categories in the plug-in manager, with an option to remove the VST/VST3 grouping.

This one requires a bit more work, but would be very useful indeed. I've added all these issues to the task tracker and we'll do our best to get it implemented.

Best,
Stian

[lorenzo-s]

That's great news, thanks Stian. Nothing much to say, just:

However, when there's no selection it seems to select from the very beginning, which doesn't really make sense. We'll fix it so that it selects from the playline instead and I believe that would fix the issue?

Sure, that'll do.

[lorenzo-s]

Thanks for the 7.2 release, lots of suggestions here have been implemented! Shift-click improvements, loudness meter scale, output level, effect solo, render to new file, just to name some.

The multi-track editor still need improvements IMHO, but the ability the edit clips on the fly was the most important thing, and now we have it. I'll wait for the 7.5 release.

Finally, I found a bug in one of the new features. Clicking min/max time values in the Analysis → Show Statistics window jumps to the wrong positions if the analysis has been done for a partial selection. The jumps are always relative to the beginning of the track, not the beginning of selection as it should be.

[stian]

Thanks for the 7.2 release, lots of suggestions here have been implemented! Shift-click improvements, loudness meter scale, output level, effect solo, render to new file, just to name some.

Thanks, glad to hear that you like the update!

The multi-track editor still need improvements IMHO, but the ability the edit clips on the fly was the most important thing, and now we have it. I'll wait for the 7.5 release.

Yes, we didn't focus on the multitrack editor so much in this release, except for the multitrack - clip editor interaction. The roadmap isn't quite clear yet, but it is very likely that we will address several issues in the multitrack sessions in the next update.

Finally, I found a bug in one of the new features. Clicking min/max time values in the Analysis → Show Statistics window jumps to the wrong positions if the analysis has been done for a partial selection. The jumps are always relative to the beginning of the track, not the beginning of selection as it should be.

Thanks, we'll get that fixed in the next maintenance build.

Best,
Stian

[lorenzo-s]

- When moving the cursor over the spectrogram analysis, display the corresponding equal-temperament note next to the already shown frequency in Hz (for example: 50Hz / G1 +35 cents).

Good idea -- also an easy fix.

Sorry for necroposting, is there any update on this?
I see the exact behaviour is already implemented in Equalize and Equalize Light (when dragging points), but I didn't notice if it was there before this request.

[stian]

Sorry for necroposting, is there any update on this?
I see the exact behaviour is already implemented in Equalize and Equalize Light (when dragging points), but I didn't notice if it was there before this request.

Sorry, this is still not implemented in the analyzer. It's in the task tracking system, though, and we'll try to get it implemented as soon as possible.

Best,
Stian

[Makrophag]

Hi there,
This is still not implemented as I see it?
Would it be possible to use notes as a scale in spectrum views, too?