User talk:PeterSampson/Proposal: Improvement of Monitoring UI

Playthrough and persistence of monitoring

Gale 03Aug11: Does this Proposal request that:

1. Monitoring should be on by default (which could be part of a GSoC project), and/or
2. Software Playthrough should also be on by default, and/or
3. a separate control for software playthrough should be provided in Meter Toolbar?

• Peter 21Sep11: No to all three of those (though number 3 is an interesting idea which I'll consider further). This proposal is concerned with making it more obvious to the user what is going on with monitoring.
  • Peter 11Oct11: Though the more I think about it monitoring always "on" could well be a good solution to the issue of not knowing whether it is on or not.
  • Steve 11Oct11:Strongly disagree about software playthrough being on by default. On Linux software playthrough can often prevent Audacity from recording and there is no obvious indication of what is wrong.
    • Gale 12Oct11: In addition to which all the users recording YouTube would get feedback echoes. I wasn't recommending playthrough should be on, just pointing out a) the proposal wasn't clear b) there's an issue especially for those wanting to play tapes and records in Audacity without recording (including people doing a "test recording") that they expect monitoring to turn the sound on as well. There is a big GUI divorce between clicking in the record meter and turning playthrough on. A possible alternative is for monitoring to turn playthrough on, but when pressing "Record" or "Play", playthrough is turned off again (unless the menu item is on).
      • Peter 12Oct11: Sorry Gale, Steve's comment came because I mistakenly originally put "Software Playthrough always on" in my previous comment rather than "Monitoring always on", subsequently corrected after reading Steve's comment.
        • Gale 13Oct11: I know, but I'm still aware that many people intuitively expect playthrough to simply be on with monitoring so it's actually audible. But (software) playthrough when recording is much less widely desirable. That leads me to wonder if a playthrough switch on the meter should perhaps only control whether monitoring is audible and be independent of the Transport menu control? If so, I envisage it could be called "Listen" or similar. Not sure, but I think it's worth a thought.
        • Peter 13Oct11: I'm not sure I follow this Gale. Surely if you created a "Listen" like this then you would still create a feedback loop if the user was recording streaming audio playing on the computer, from YouTube say. I'm not sure what you're driving at with the "independent of the Transport menu control". Part of the underlying problem is that folk do really have to think about the audio paths they are creating with Software Playthrough and Overdub - and I don't see an easy way around that, sadly.
        • Gale 14 OCt11: Of course if the recording source is stereo mix, monitoring with playthrough will give feedback, as recording with playthrough will (unless Audacity gets clever enough to kill playthrough when a playback input is selected). Possibly this is a reason why monitoring shouldn't automatically turn software playthrough on, but fact remains that most users expect to hear the monitoring when they enable it (common complaint on [email protected] and according to your use cases "User reports that they cannot hear any audio playing", on the Forum too).

          OTOH, anyone recording with microphone does not want software playthrough on when recording (as discussed recently on the Forum). So, if your software playthrough button on Meter Toolbar only controlled playthrough while monitoring, I suggest this is more useful for people recording mic and for anyone who wants playthrough when monitoring but not when recording. It saves pushing the control on every time they monitor and off every time they record. For most of the USB turntable brigade, it would mean an extra step of having to turn on playthrough in the Transport menu as well.

• Peter 12Oct11: I have now added Gale's third suggestion: a separate control for software playthrough should be provided in Meter Toolbar.
  • Peter 13Oct11: and today added further: a separate control for overdub to be provided in Meter Toolbar.

Transport Menu items

• Gale 14Oct11: Peter suggests if Meter Toolbar has Software Playthrough and Overdub buttons then these commands can be removed from the Transport menu. -1 from me, because this creates problems for VI users who cannot access Meter Toolbar, and even if the keyboard shortcut bindings are retained, it makes them less discoverable.

Documentation

The Meter Toolbar page in the manual attempts to document monitoring and how to use it, however users report that it can be hard to find in the manual (witnessed by the large number of postings on the forum). The relevant tutorials in the manual explain about monitoring too, but I am not sure how often they are read by users.

• Gale 03Aug11: Do we assume then they are not looking in Meter Toolbar for a way to turn on monitoring? Any idea where they are looking?
  • Peter 21Sep11: I'm pretty sure that most of them have no idea where to look at all (either on the Audacity window GUI itself or in the documentation).
    • Gale: 28Sep11: If we found and fixed the issue that stops monitoring being on by default this might make being able to find it in the Manual less of an issue.
    • Gale 14Oct11: Added a mention on http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Toolbars_Overview about monitoring function of Meter Toolbar.

Meter Image

One alternative possibility for an optimum (and overload) indicator that was mocked up by Bill Wharrie

• Gale: 28Sep11 Is this a playback meter or a record meter? If it is a record meter then "the red colouring of the bar would over-ride the yellow advisory colouring" in the text doesn't make sense. If the record meter is intended to be red then isn't it odd to have red over-ride red? Perhaps you shouldn't drift into meter appearance as there are lots of ideas that could be considered on Feature Requests. But if you do drift, initialised meter width and default meter range set in Preferences should probably be under consideration.
  • Peter 11Oct11: It's a record meter (see the Mic icon). This green/yellow/red could be used as the "on" indicator for the input meter, with the meter being the standard background gray when input metering is "off". Then rather than having a red bar to indicate the current level we could have broadish bold black line to indicate the current transient recording level, retaining a blue line to indicate the maximum achieved level since monitoring was turned on (as now).
    • Gale 12Oct11: I bet I won't be the only one to be confused by the green. What colour is the playback meter - does it have the same green/yellow/red? What are the recording meter bar colours when actually recording?
      • Peter 12Oct11: You would be confused by the fact that currently we have red for recording and green for playback, right? I would now envision that both meters would have the same green/red/yellow display and rather than my previous suggestion that the g/r/y should be an "on" indicator for the input meter. I now think that the colours should be an indication of the signal level, advancing along the meter as now but changing from green to yellow when the signal is getting hot and red when it is clipping or dangerously close to clipping. The output meter should only be active when output is actually active, i.e. when playback is in operation or the user is recording with software playthrough turned "on".
      • Gale 13Oct11: Problem is there is no clear proposal here so I'm just guessing what has never been explained. If we have multi-coloured meters I tend to agree with your revised idea that both should have the same colour gradations and that the colours indicate strength of signal.

        Another thing that irritates me about the meters is the thin bar of colour to left, which almost looks like the meter is running just above the bottom of the scale. I would propose removing those colour flashes. Possibly we could use an idea like that to indicate the meter is running below the scale, e.g. steady left-pointing green or red arrows at the left edge. This would I think be better than the red mic icon which I expect some will feel too garish. Also it would be a consistent visual representation for both meters (nothing in your proposal addresses playback in progress but off the meter).

      • Peter 13Oct11: Well well, I've never noticed the thin green and red colour bars to the left of the meters - but even though you've now pointed them out to me they don't acually annoy me like they do you. I've changed my colour recommendations for the Mic icon on the main page: green for monitoring on & changing to red if clipping has occurred.
      • Peter 13Oct11: I agree that there is not a clear proposal here. Don't forget that I'm making it up as I go along - all Bill did was provide me with a pretty graphic, he didn't explain any implementation ideas with it. This discussion here is helping me formulate my thoughts ( isn' that what the talk pages are for?). So in the coming days I will reformualte this along the lines of both meters having the same colour gradations with the colours indicating strenght of signal.