No Longer Possible to Drag Individual Sends in Mixer Channel?

[Craig Anderton]

If you float the cursor over the Send bar in a mixer channel, the Hand grabber shows up but doesn't do anything. I tried different key modifiers but currently, it seems you can only drag all the sends up or down in the mixer column. This probably doesn't matter to most people. But for book images, if the Sends in a channel weren't used, I dragged the Send bar out of the way to avoid visual clutter that might confuse people. Am I missing something?

 

[OutrageProductions]

Is this what you mean (in V7.2.3) no longer works in V8? The <Shift> modifer along with the very top line of the [Sends] bar would stagger them to choice. (Imma gonna hang for the first maintenance release to upgrade... too many projects in process currently).

Or am I misunderstanding your post?

 

[Craig Anderton]

You understand exactly what I mean. Have you found a way to do it in 8?

 

[OutrageProductions]

I don't have V8 yet, but even in V7, I found that when hovering sort of over the bottom of the <Sends> bar and the middle of the first inserted send control, that the cursor changes to a 'hand'.
EDIT: there is a semi-transparent popup with the 'hand' for [Replace Send] (if directly over an existing send) or [Append Sends] (if hover below the active send control. I have never known they were there, and have no Idea how they function. Time to do some research.

 

[sintil8]

You understand exactly what I mean. Have you found a way to do it in 8?

I'm seeing the same, and cannot find a way round it either?
That hand symbol seems to be redundant, if when crossing between inserts and sends an up down arrow appears. If you move those arrows everything jumps and alignes. No more stepping up and down, as per the image above. The only independant channel is the Main out.


Regards

 

[OutrageProductions]

Sounds like you guys found a bona fide "undocumented feature"!

 

[sintil8]

Sounds like you guys found a bona fide "undocumented feature"!

My OCD loves it, , others may dislike it.
It makes it easier to scan the consul horizontally, will need a few days to become familiar with it.

Reaching for the popcorn,

Best regards

 

[OutrageProductions]

I'm seeing the same, and cannot find a way round it either?
That hand symbol seems to be redundant, if when crossing between inserts and sends an up down arrow appears. If you move those arrows everything jumps and alignes. No more stepping up and down, as per the image above. The only independant channel is the Main out.


Regards

Do you suppose that it was a majority upvoted request to have all the sends move vertically in unison? Things that make you say 'hmm'. Wouldn't seem fair to remove functionality.

 

[sintil8]

Info...
If you have a number of sends and that hand symbol appears, click and drag copies and pastes all the sends in that channel as a group.

About the reason, think about a hardware mixer you rarely see a jumble of hights across the the surface, so it almost makes sense.
I can see some issues of screen real estate being eaten up when in situ, but if expanded on a second monitor, possibly a nicer approach.

All OK in my mind.

Regards

 

[Craig Anderton]

You always could manipulate the sends the way it works now and move them vertically in unison. So limiting the interface to the current protocol does not represent an improvement.

However, previously you could also shift+drag to move individual sends. If all the sends became distractingly non-aligned horizontally, a ctrl+click on the bar above any send snapped them all back to the same default horizontal position. (Thanks for the correction about the hand grabber, I was basing that off memory of v7. It was just a shift+click, no grabber needed.)

The current process of using sends is less flexible and contributes to screen clutter if you don't use a lot of sends. It also makes using the mixer more difficult if you want to prioritize insert visibility over send visibility. And from a personal standpoint, this kind of feature removal makes revising books excruciating, because I now have to track down and modify every text and screen shot that reflects the original behavior in 950+ pages.

 

[OutrageProductions]

Thanks @Craig Anderton, I played with the hand in V7 and figured out that it can drag/copy an entire chain of sends to another channel. I just don't operate that way in my world, so NBD.
But removing the ability to hide individual channel sends or stagger them doesn't seem cool.

 

[sintil8]

But removing the ability to hide individual channel sends or stagger them doesn't seem cool.

Yeah I get that, I imagine, this is one of those judgement calls folk will be making for themselves.

Like yourself, NBD

Best regards

 

[Craig Anderton]

Yeah I get that, I imagine, this is one of those judgement calls folk will be making for themselves.

I tend to think it wasn't the programmers making a judgement call, but an oversight. If it was a judgement call, I don't understand the logic of why an update would create an unnecessary limitation that didn't exist in previous versions. This is especially true because if the goal was to simplify using mixer sends, it was already simple because what it does now was the default in previous versions. Being able to move Sends around was something you could do if you wanted, but you had to do it explicitly. A novice user wouldn't run into it and get confused.

 

[sintil8]

Craig,
I wouldn't know, if it was an oversight or if this is by omission or intentional.
I have yet to use FPSV 8 in real terms or create a full project and will form a veiw of things as time moves on.

Whether folk will judge this as a good thing or not is open for discusson, I suppose folk will make their own decisions.

The divide between inserts and sends...
From my experience across a small selection of alternative Daws, SO1 is the exception.
At the moment I'm still adjusting to ver 7 SO1, having come from Ver 5, so I do not feel the best person to make judgements over these changes.

Kindest of regards

 

[js1]

Fendonus did a pass for this release to "clean up" interface and terminology issues. This change was intentional (I saw it featured in a video). More surprises await!

I certainly have had cases where I've opened up a project/song/session and the sends panels were different heights. Not sure what would have caused it, but it did happen with regularity. For me - no biggie - command drag and I was sorted. However, a case could be made for newer users that it looked like an GUI problem. They've also made it impossible to fully drag the sends to the bottom so they look like they've disappeared. That one I kinda like.

Anyways, I hope that it's a single round of changes. My muscle memory is pretty ingrained at this point.

 

[sintil8]

Fendonus did a pass for this release to "clean up" interface and terminology issues. This change was intentional (I saw it featured in a video). More surprises await!

If that video is on the web I would be interested in seeing it, any chance you have a link you could post please?

kindest regards

 

[BobF]

I would guess intentional. The fact that the Sends didn't stay lined up across channels took a lot of heat a while back. I hated them being staggered and also complained until I realized a double-click would put them lined up properly again.

OTOH, I have always been pro options for this kind of thing rather than a hard change.

 

[sintil8]

I would guess intentional. The fact that the Sends didn't stay lined up across channels took a lot of heat a while back.

Yes, I remember this issue boiling up on the old Presonus forum. Never really bothered me and I never felt the need to bang my hand on anybodies
desk tho'.
Maybe the option might have been better had it been a choice between free runing or fixed, but I do agree it was an easy fix.

Scanning across a mixer with varying Ins/Sends division line heights mentally is like driving over rough terrain.
At school we are taught to write using lined paper, so to some extent it's ingrained into most folk to see the horizontal axis that way.
Least thats what my therapist tells me...

Best of regards.

 

[Craig Anderton]

Scanning across a mixer with varying Ins/Sends division line heights mentally is like driving over rough terrain.

That's why the sends I used were lined up, and the ones I didn't use went away. I never had to parse if a send was in use, where it was, or where it went, if I didn't see it.

If the change was intentional, I'll just have to accept it. Maybe someday I'll understand why virtual mixers have to look like hardware mixers ...

I once proposed (to a different company) that expanding the width of a mixer channel gave the perfect oppotunity to create a curved fader, with the space to the left of the upper part of the fader and to the right of the lower part of the fader for a cluster of controls/indicators. The space inside the fader's curve had other uses. I also thought having "virtual LEDs" to show status was ridiculous. Why do indicators have to model hardware introduced commercially over 60 years ago?

So, I drew up diagrams of the way I thought an expanded channel could look. Everyone thought the design made a tremendous amount of sense, particularly because the curved fader was an easy way to have more resolution in a smaller space. They also liked the way other design elements showed the channel's status in a more obvious and modern way. With that kind of reaction, I thought they'd prototype it and test it out. Nope. "If we did that, users would think we were crazy because it wouldn't look like a traditional hardware mixer." They probably had a point.

 

[sintil8]

Craig,
I agree, familiarity to real world objects hooks into what folk understand and are familiar with, in the modern studio there are opportunities to question the fitness of purpose of those designs. However, the visual language (form shape etc.) is far easier to translate for folk in the virtual world when it emulates the real world, for now it is what it is.
Out of curiosity, did the other company give you any feedback on your proposal or just side step it ?
From my experiences of life, folk can be pretty intransigent and any notion of change or new concepts are quickly put in the round filing cabinet.

The rebel in me says...
Yeah it's the vintage look, it's this designer image fashionable mixed up turn on tune in Tik Tok dance mode we live in now. Maybe when we get to the Minority Report level of computer music a new paradigm for music will exist way beyond our imagination.

M8. Hope your editing of the book gets easier as time moves on.

All the best of regards.