Tracker: Set exact value

[bsh-hub]

Those new "knob" sliders are nice but sometimes I would like to set an exact value to something. So it would be nice to have a way for that directly. Maybe double click a knob and input a value or something?

Also when I accidentally turn the delay reverb on, there is no way back (with only the knob). It would be nice to be able to set the reverb back to 0 somehow.

[reaby]

Maybe i can give few tips:
So first click on the knob then hover over the knob and:

• use mouse scroll wheel to set steps of 1 / scroll click
• ctrl + mouse scroll to set coarse values, it automatically scales with different types of operators
• right click resets to default value, which depends on knob, usually its 64 or 0

Also the knobs thresholds automatically scale, so if there's a knob that has 3 values
you need to move mouse more to the knob to "click" for next value.

I now days tend to use mouse scroll wheel for fine tuning the values.

[bsh-hub]

Ok. Thanks. Those work. Probably now the only problem for me is that when enabling accidentally the reverb there is no way back :)

Hmm. It seems that the Edit -> Undo feature helps also with the reverb.

[reaby]

I think there is a bug with the knob indeed when the delay is stereo, if you set it mono it gives options to go back to 0.

[vsariola]

Tbh, there probably should still be a way to type the value, but no promises I can implement this soon.

The bug in reverb should be fixed.

[vsariola]

I investigated the reverb. There is no bug, but it's not the most intuitive behavior. So, here's how it works:

Sointu/4klang has no special unit for reverb, but the delay unit with very specific parameters gives a reverb like effect: 8 parallel delay lines per channel, with relatively short echo times, makes the reverb.

Now, there are three "preset" settings to make it easier to find these parameters. And, for 4k intro work, if there's no reason to use other parameters in different instruments, for compressibility it's better to always use exact same parameters; each delay time takes 2 bytes and with 8 delay times defines, it takes 16 bytes per channel, or 32 bytes for stereo reverb.

So, internally, we don't store "reverb" parameter, but rather, what happens:

1. if you turn the knob to a new value, we load one of the presets: there is no way to unturn the knob; all the parameters are overwritten and the only way to get to the original state is either undo or manually set all the parameters to as they were
2. for its display value, we check if the current parameters match* one of the presets, then we display the index of that preset (1-3). But if not, we show the value 0.

The nuance, and slightly confusing aspect of it, is that when checking if it matches one of the presets, we only check that the stereo, notetracking and number of delay lines and their values match the preset. The pregain, dry, feedback and damp parameters are not matched to the preset, which kinda makes sense as these parameters DO get adjusted per instrument or unit, and they are not that costly, only a few more bytes per reverb unit (the delaytimes are stored in a different place and as long as they match exactly, they appear in the final executable only once). You can check that the reverb goes to 0 if you change the number of delaylines.

So, the "not able to turn to 0" is not exactly a bug, but an artefact that the reverb knob is more like "load one of the reverb presets" button, not a knob mapped to an underlying value. This is not a new thing, the old reverb slider worked exactly similarly. In both cases, it's mainly laziness that I "reuse" the knob to uses it's not really designed to. Because writing a custom widget takes some (but not too much really) effort.

I'm open for suggestions what the best GUI here would be. Remember that whatever it is, it should be as easy to use with the keyboard as the knobs.

[vsariola]

So, just to summarize: the reverb knob does not allow turning to 0 because 0 means "anything else than a preset" and if you already have loaded a preset, what values should be loaded in their place? Ignoring the reverb knob and setting all the other values manually will make the reverb become 0 aka "custom" aka "not one of the presets" again.

[bsh-hub]

Sorry for not responding sooner. I think that UI-wise the reverb functionality could be a separate on/off toggle. And after the toggle is enabled then the UI would show the reverb options.

I agree that this is not a high importance change but for a basic user it is quite confusing that after chaning a knob value there is no simple way back.