Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

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wolftune
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

zettberlin wrote:
wolftune wrote:Thanks for the clarity there! So, zettberlin, perhaps you could submit simple patches that would fix the levels? I'm honestly super busy and won't get to it soon. Incidentally, I think a couple others have similar issues besides your bank… and indeed *some* amount of gain difference is to be expected / desired within reason.
I could send you a corrected patch and some more, new ones as a tar.gz would that be OK?
Well, not me per se. I'm not on the Guitarix team. I'm just a user being asked to help with this since I'm the one complaing. If you bother getting a corrected patch, it should probably go right to the Guitarix folks…
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

Ah see above, they already replied.

Anyway, I vote for less "genre" and more "sound description" such as "heavy distortion" vs "clean" vs "special fx". But certainly any sort of description, including genre, is probably better than per user.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

well, we have 2 entry points, bank name and preset name, were I guess the preset name should give a hint what the preset is about, the bank name, could indicate the creator (like it is now), or like apathity suggest, the genre, or what ever.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

tramp wrote:well, we have 2 entry points, bank name and preset name, were I guess the preset name should give a hint what the preset is about, the bank name, could indicate the creator (like it is now), or like apathity suggest, the genre, or what ever.
I care less about this than about getting good presets, but I mean more like it makes sense to group all sorts of clean presets together and all sorts of "light crunch" presets together and all sorts of "crazy echo effect". Etc. So "heavy distortion" isn't a preset, it's a collection of lots of heavily distorted presets. Because when someone is exploring, they'd rather compare a bunch of presets that make sense for a particular quality of sound.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by glowrak guy »

Grocery stores put the potatoes in one section, red, white and yellow next to each other.
In various sized bags, or individually by the pound. Accurately named presets,
grouped sensibly for convenience, make it easier to test an app for suitability,
and makes it easier to create music.

Zettberlin makes a good point, about the differences between real and virtual setups.
The vast array of options under the mouse pointer, makes it easy to stray away from
real world scenarios, and enables cobbling together reasonable imitations of classic sounds we like.
It's a two edged sword, great for exploring new territory,
but when someone wants to recreate a vintage or hit sound, knowledge of
fundamentals is vital. There are signal path errors, that no list of plugins
can compensate for. Few fully understand (me included) how to manage virtual amp gain,
distortion plugins, speaker emulation, and the real speakers at the end of the chain,
be they earbuds, costly monitors, or some vintage tweed covered box in the corner.

An interesting look at sound:

http://www.guitarplayer.com/amplifiers/ ... ture/31076
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by zettberlin »

glowrak guy wrote:Grocery stores put the potatoes in one section, red, white and yellow next to each other.
In various sized bags, or individually by the pound. Accurately named presets,
grouped sensibly for convenience, make it easier to test an app for suitability,
and makes it easier to create music.
AFAICS presets are starting-points for own creations and demos of the application as such.

So I think, it would be good, if they would be put in the users $HOME instead of /usr, maybe there should be a reset to factory button as well....

Anyway: here is my current user-preset file with a many a infamous bunch of sound-cruelty I made for my new Gibson VFactor and with kristallik adjusted to saner levels and using Vitalize as a cabinet instead of 4x12 to make it even more kristallline ;-)
The gain is adjusted to be still lower than the average for fat rock/metalsounds but by about 12-13db louder than it was before...

EDIT: I see now, that the code for the presets includes a diversity of LV2/LADSPA plugins, that I use in other setups. Hope, this will not cause any trouble, when someone uses this, who has not installed the same plugins (C*, Zita and CALF mainly...)
Attachments
meines.gx.tar.gz
Presetfile for Guitarix, unpack and put into .config/guitarix/banks, you may have to adjust the java script file banklist too...
(46.63 KiB) Downloaded 74 times
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

zettberlin wrote: EDIT: I see now, that the code for the presets includes a diversity of LV2/LADSPA plugins, that I use in other setups. Hope, this will not cause any trouble, when someone uses this, who has not installed the same plugins (C*, Zita and CALF mainly...)
Thanks but
tramp wrote: One thing, we can only accept presets for factory settings without LV2/Ladspa plugins involved.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

wolftune wrote:
zettberlin wrote: EDIT: I see now, that the code for the presets includes a diversity of LV2/LADSPA plugins, that I use in other setups. Hope, this will not cause any trouble, when someone uses this, who has not installed the same plugins (C*, Zita and CALF mainly...)
Thanks but
tramp wrote: One thing, we can only accept presets for factory settings without LV2/Ladspa plugins involved.
Indeed.
If LADSPA/LV2 plugs involved, in factory settings, that wouldn't cause "real" trouble, but, they simply wouldn't work as expected, and guitarix will give warnings about missing plugs. Even if the missing plugs installed in the system. The reason therefor is, that guitarix do some pre-load work for external plugs, to allow the ultra fast preset switching, which we need in a live environment.
Guitarix wouldn't "load" a plug when a preset is load, it just push it in the processing chain. Clearly some load work is done even then, (init, activate, malloc), but the internal structs (pointer to controls, etc. ) are ready for run allready.

So for user preset sharing, it's totally okay, to share presets with external plugs. If you load it, you will get messages which plugs are missing, and can load them then, but for factory presets it isn't sufficient.
zettberlin wrote:So I think, it would be good, if they would be put in the users $HOME instead of /usr, maybe there should be a reset to factory button as well....

Debian polity didn't allow to install anything in ~/home. But it is easy enough to save a factory setting into a new bank, or move the complete bank into a new one. (d'n'd)

@wolftune: I've uploaded 2 new rc styles (flat, grass) which respect the qtcurve bug, so they are suited to KDE with qtcurve.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

tramp wrote: @wolftune: I've uploaded 2 new rc styles (flat, grass) which respect the qtcurve bug, so they are suited to KDE with qtcurve.
woohoo! Thanks!! :D
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

zettberlin wrote:Presetfile for Guitarix, unpack and put into .config/guitarix/banks, you may have to adjust the java script file banklist too..
Simplest and save way to handle preset-files in guitarix is drag n' drop.
When you've unpacked the zip file, just drag it from your file-browser and drop it into the guitarix preset window. Guitarix will check then for compatibility issues and update the bank list.
The same technique you can use for export, just drag a bank from the preset window and drop it into your file browser, or desktop, . . .

By the way, the guitarix forum allow the upload of uncompressed guitarix preset-files, which makes it easy to share them, just drop them from the preset window into the upload formula .
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by zettberlin »

tramp wrote:
zettberlin wrote:Presetfile for Guitarix, unpack and put into .config/guitarix/banks, you may have to adjust the java script file banklist too..
Simplest and save way to handle preset-files in guitarix is drag n' drop.
When you've unpacked the zip file, just drag it from your file-browser and drop it into the guitarix preset window. Guitarix will check then for compatibility issues and update the bank list.
The same technique you can use for export, just drag a bank from the preset window and drop it into your file browser, or desktop, . . .

By the way, the guitarix forum allow the upload of uncompressed guitarix preset-files, which makes it easy to share them, just drop them from the preset window into the upload formula .
Thanks for the clarifications.
I'll see to get rid of the references to any plugins in the kristallik-block.
Will it be sufficient to just delete the lines referring to the plugins?
Attachments
meines.gx.tar.gz
Here we go... presetfile without plugin-referrences
(5.61 KiB) Downloaded 69 times
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by zettberlin »

tramp wrote:
zettberlin wrote:So I think, it would be good, if they would be put in the users $HOME instead of /usr, maybe there should be a reset to factory button as well....

Debian polity didn't allow to install anything in ~/home. But it is easy enough to save a factory setting into a new bank, or move the complete bank into a new one. (d'n'd)
granted, but would it not be OK, to have the factory-presets in some skel-folder in /usr/share and copy them to $HOME at first start?
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

zettberlin wrote:Thanks for the clarifications.
I'll see to get rid of the references to any plugins in the kristallik-block.
Will it be sufficient to just delete the lines referring to the plugins?
That is doable, but error pron. Best way would be to deselect all in LADSPA/LV2 browser, then load the preset and save it again (maybe under a other name). This way the guitarix jsaon writer takes care about a clean format.
If you have made changes to the LADSPA/LV2 plugin interfaces /controls, that changes wouldn't be lost, they get used again when you select the plugs again.
zettberlin wrote:
tramp wrote:
zettberlin wrote:So I think, it would be good, if they would be put in the users $HOME instead of /usr, maybe there should be a reset to factory button as well....

Debian polity didn't allow to install anything in ~/home. But it is easy enough to save a factory setting into a new bank, or move the complete bank into a new one. (d'n'd)
granted, but would it not be OK, to have the factory-presets in some skel-folder in /usr/share and copy them to $HOME at first start?
Also, that will be doable, just, the factory settings should be references, so they should be write protected anyway. If a user edit a factory setting, it should be saved in a "own" bank. as well, as I said, it's easy enough to move the hole bank into a new one, per d'n'd, and make it editable. True, there is a little learning step in the preset handling in guitarix, but I guess most people will find it comfortable, if they have understood the basic about d'n'd and write flags. It's even possible to protect your own banks for unwonted overwrites.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

tramp wrote:
zettberlin wrote:Thanks for the clarifications.
I'll see to get rid of the references to any plugins in the kristallik-block.
Will it be sufficient to just delete the lines referring to the plugins?
That is doable, but error pron. Best way would be to deselect all in LADSPA/LV2 browser, then load the preset and save it again (maybe under a other name). This way the guitarix jsaon writer takes care about a clean format.
If you have made changes to the LADSPA/LV2 plugin interfaces /controls, that changes wouldn't be lost, they get used again when you select the plugs again.
It's like I suspected, the preset bank is corrupted (unload-able), and still contain references to LADSPA plugs.
It isn't a good idea to edit configuration files by hand. :wink:
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

wolftune wrote:
tramp wrote: @wolftune: I've uploaded 2 new rc styles (flat, grass) which respect the qtcurve bug, so they are suited to KDE with qtcurve.
woohoo! Thanks!! :D
And finally I find a way to fix this issue for all style files in guitarix.
So within the next release you will be able to select your preferred style also under KDE Qtcurve engine.

regards
hermann
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