Hello Sonic Foundry,
I am enjoying Vegas very much. Thank you for such a great and uncluttered product. Simple
pleasures and deep satisfaction are in store for me and all who use Vegas. I have used nearly
every PC based multitrack software both professionaly and for pleasure over a 5 year span. To
date, I have had the pleasure of running a fully loaded Pro-Tools rig synched via house clock to
video decks, the patience to use an 840av struggling to pump out 8 tracks with Deck (a
sentimental favorite) and a nagging feeling that I should know german after working with
Samplitude for so long. I actually bought a V8 card, the Waves DSP plugins and a copy of
MxTrax, ouch! Professionaly, I am a sound designer currently working at Blizzard
Entertainment North and previously was at Spectrum Holobyte/Microprose (hello Mike Winter,
how are you?). For pleasure, I compose, play, record, and edit music at my home studio. After
one night and two mixes with Vegas, I feel like I have found a multitrack home. Of course,
since I am beginning to have an emotional attatchment to this piece of software, I have a few
suggestions on how to make it even more lovable...I am sure you are in "feature-freeze" mode
now, but I have no doubt that at least some of these ideas could be of use to you in future
versions.
Volume, pan, FX envelopes should all have editable colors or at least different colors. It is VERY
confusing looking at three squiggly blue lines when I have 32 or even 8 tracks and tons of
automation. I like being able to just glance and know what is going on.
The envelope editing tool should be able to ctrl click to select non-contiguous points. In
example below , if I drag over just the '*' points, the '+' points are selected as well and I have
found no way to de-select. I have many times found it useful to be able to modify small sets of
volume/pan/FX break points without disturbing the whole geometry.
*-----*
| |
| |
------+ +------
When working in the FX popup windows, it would be nice to be able to switch to other FX chains
easier, i.e. after editing FX1 chain settings (direct-x), I could just left click on the title of the
window (the blue colored FX1 bar) and then be presented with a scroll down menu of all of the
other effect chains in the mix (track and assignable?). As it is now, I must click on the
assignable FX button at the top of the FX meters in the mixer window. Too much mouse
movement and I get lost sometimes when editing extensive chains.
Related to this is a graphical (UI) inconsitency which I find confusing. In the mixer window, the
assignable effect icon >| FX window the >| Same button, two different results. Yeah, I know, its knitpicky...I apologize, but this is an A+
title eh?
The vertical scroll bar should function the same as the horizontal--grabbing end of bar and
dragging resizes all of the TRACK HEIGHTS (not waveform height) vertically. I would like to see
more of my tracks, but not have to drag each track window individually.
CPU meter as well as disk meter? Good for heavy FX mixes. Another "neat" and mostly
unnecceary item.
How about a mixer view of all track meters, gain sliders, sends, FX, a-la traditional channel
strips? This is still a great way to see an enormous amount of information at once. This is truly
a style issue, but I feel that any good program should allow the user multiple solutions to the
same problem, and more information in smaller spaces is almost always good. Is this Sonic
Foundry style? something tells me no, but I can dream...
Again, I am truly impressed with Vegas. This is good stuff. It makes me happy. Keep up the
great work.
Scott Petersen
Sultan of Scream
Blizzard North
scottpt@pacbell.net
I am enjoying Vegas very much. Thank you for such a great and uncluttered product. Simple
pleasures and deep satisfaction are in store for me and all who use Vegas. I have used nearly
every PC based multitrack software both professionaly and for pleasure over a 5 year span. To
date, I have had the pleasure of running a fully loaded Pro-Tools rig synched via house clock to
video decks, the patience to use an 840av struggling to pump out 8 tracks with Deck (a
sentimental favorite) and a nagging feeling that I should know german after working with
Samplitude for so long. I actually bought a V8 card, the Waves DSP plugins and a copy of
MxTrax, ouch! Professionaly, I am a sound designer currently working at Blizzard
Entertainment North and previously was at Spectrum Holobyte/Microprose (hello Mike Winter,
how are you?). For pleasure, I compose, play, record, and edit music at my home studio. After
one night and two mixes with Vegas, I feel like I have found a multitrack home. Of course,
since I am beginning to have an emotional attatchment to this piece of software, I have a few
suggestions on how to make it even more lovable...I am sure you are in "feature-freeze" mode
now, but I have no doubt that at least some of these ideas could be of use to you in future
versions.
Volume, pan, FX envelopes should all have editable colors or at least different colors. It is VERY
confusing looking at three squiggly blue lines when I have 32 or even 8 tracks and tons of
automation. I like being able to just glance and know what is going on.
The envelope editing tool should be able to ctrl click to select non-contiguous points. In
example below , if I drag over just the '*' points, the '+' points are selected as well and I have
found no way to de-select. I have many times found it useful to be able to modify small sets of
volume/pan/FX break points without disturbing the whole geometry.
*-----*
| |
| |
------+ +------
When working in the FX popup windows, it would be nice to be able to switch to other FX chains
easier, i.e. after editing FX1 chain settings (direct-x), I could just left click on the title of the
window (the blue colored FX1 bar) and then be presented with a scroll down menu of all of the
other effect chains in the mix (track and assignable?). As it is now, I must click on the
assignable FX button at the top of the FX meters in the mixer window. Too much mouse
movement and I get lost sometimes when editing extensive chains.
Related to this is a graphical (UI) inconsitency which I find confusing. In the mixer window, the
assignable effect icon >| FX window the >| Same button, two different results. Yeah, I know, its knitpicky...I apologize, but this is an A+
title eh?
The vertical scroll bar should function the same as the horizontal--grabbing end of bar and
dragging resizes all of the TRACK HEIGHTS (not waveform height) vertically. I would like to see
more of my tracks, but not have to drag each track window individually.
CPU meter as well as disk meter? Good for heavy FX mixes. Another "neat" and mostly
unnecceary item.
How about a mixer view of all track meters, gain sliders, sends, FX, a-la traditional channel
strips? This is still a great way to see an enormous amount of information at once. This is truly
a style issue, but I feel that any good program should allow the user multiple solutions to the
same problem, and more information in smaller spaces is almost always good. Is this Sonic
Foundry style? something tells me no, but I can dream...
Again, I am truly impressed with Vegas. This is good stuff. It makes me happy. Keep up the
great work.
Scott Petersen
Sultan of Scream
Blizzard North
scottpt@pacbell.net
