Tone control plug-in

[Gale_Andrews]

@steve

GA: is the output amplification only applied when needed i.e. you are talking about the “overload prevention”?
S: Yes, it is only applied if necessary.
GA: Then I wondered if the technical details should clarify that.
…
GA: Why not turn that into nouns as we do in most plug-ins and maybe a bit less verbose “Output Level Reduction (for clipping prevention)”?

Yes I can clarify that in the Technical Details, but with the wording “Reduce Output Level if necessary to prevent distortion” I think it is already clear that it is only applied if necessary to prevent distortion.

It’s of course clear from the plug-in interface. Hence I thought it was confusing for the Technical details (above the controls in the .ny file) to suggest by omission that “Output amplification” might always be applied. I think the details are fine now you have changed “Output amplification” to something mentioning “reduction”.

@steve

If the wording is changed to “Output Level Reduction (for clipping prevention)” then I think that it is no longer (as) clear that it is only applied if necessary to prevent distortion.

As a compromise it could be: “Output Level Reduction - if necessary to prevent distortion”, though this looks and reads badly IMO.
I see that turning it into nouns is the convention, but as the original premise is to make it easy to use for new users, I prefer clarity over convention. Ideally the user should be able to understand what the effect does and how to use it without reading the Technical Details, or even without reading the Help.

I’m open to any ideas for alternative wording that is as clear as the current wording.

I think “Output Level Reduction (for clipping prevention)” is pretty clear given novices have already got to get used to Amplify and Normalize (which I doubt they will avoid using) with minimal help on the interface. If there is nothing to prevent, nothing will be reduced.

I’m OK with verbs if they give their primary purpose or show exactly what is being done. To me, “Reduce Output Level” does not convey either without reading the next line.

Attached has seven variants and you could mix’n match their two lines as well if you wished. I think any of them are better than what we have now. My first choice is (4) and second choice is (7).

@steve

the Nyquist interface always adds a colon at the end of the “text-left”, which does not look good if the last character in the “text-left” is a punctuation mark (a close bracket looks similar a sad “smilie” ): and a question mark looks wrong?:

That matches with the built-in effects so I don’t think we need to change that.

@steve

S: What about the Vocal Remover effect? Doesn’t the wording overflow in that also?
GA: Yes, bigtime … And so do some others but it does make them look crappy IMO.
I agree. If possible, I think this needs fixing in the Audacity code so that the box can be expanded.
Depending on the characters used there may only be enough space for as few as 8 characters.

I’ve added to Nyquist wish list.

@steve

@Gale Andrews

OK. Though having taken 1 minute to bass/treble a 35 minute track with prevention set to “no”, but 7 minutes to process with it set to “yes” (plus 5 minutes to redraw the track after the effect finishes) I can see why you were worried. How about “Yes (slower)”?

I would expect that if you test on a 10 minute selection, the time taken will be identical whether it is set to Yes or No.
I would also expect that if you try processing a 60 minute selection, processing with Level Reduction enabled will be extremely slow, or even crash.
It all depends on the available RAM. As soon as data swapping from RAM to disk is grinds down to dead slow.
On XP with 512 MB RAM, a 5 minute selection will process at virtually the same speed regardless of whether Level Reduction is enabled or not, but a 15 minute track will seize up for a long time.
On Linux with 3 GB of RAM, a 35 minute selection will process at virtually the same speed, but a 70 minute selection will seize up.

Given the space restrictions I think the best we can do is either “Yes (See Help)” or a brief warning in ;info line. Reluctantly, I think I prefer the info line warning (example in the attached). Clipfix has an ;info line warning too, so it’s not indefensible.




Gale
bass-treble-normalize-wording.ny (3.8 KB)