TOPIC:

Hi Pos,
Yes, I tried moving the slider, I love the yellow highlight! - that really helps avoid getting confused. Great idea.

POSSIBLE BUG ?
I think I found a possible slight bug in rePhase 1.4.0_TEST VERSION, sorry to say, but it keeps giving me an error pop-up message like this, whenever I try to import a measurement file...



I noticed after clicking that OK button, at first it looks like rePhase did not import anything, but I found if I then re-size or maximize the rePhase window, forcing it to re-draw the screen, the measurement trace does then appear on the graph and looks okay.
Another side effect of this, even after this graph trace does eventually appear on the screen, it's subsequently still missing its green text description information (ie. name: / points: / ranges: / phase data: ) that appears within the white rectangular text box underneath of "Measurement" tab area (which also now seems to be a smaller rectangle than it was in version 1.3.0.)
However, the bug is obviously the fact it gave any error pop-up message in the first place - I've never seen this before with rePhase 1.3.0 or earlier versions.

Likewise, rePhase 1.4.0_TEST VERSION gives me this similar error pop-up message whenever I try loading my .rephase settings file (which itself includes the same imported measurement file content.)



To illustrate this behaviour, I have uploaded these attached files as example to test - my tweeter response measurement text file (it's just tab separated text of "freq", "amplitude", "phase" data exported from HOLM transfer function) and my accompanying .rephase settings EQ correction file that I made.

Beyma TPL150H tweeter measurement response.txt

Beyma TPL150H tweeter_EQ settings.rephase

I can confirm both these files work and open perfectly okay in rePhase 1.3.0 or earlier versions, but now with rePhase 1.4.0_TEST VERSION it's giving these error pop-up messages.

I do have some ideas / theory about what might be causing this... it's not giving error messages for ALL measurement files, just some.

Hi Richard,

Thank you for the bug report
It is now fixed for the forthcoming 1.4.0 release.

I gave a look at your correction, that is impressively flat!
Are you sure you can trust a single measurement that much? I mean, even if it is close range and time windowed to remove reflections, you still have to deal with plenty of potentially position-dependent artifacts like diffraction or very short reflections coming from any discontinuity around the tweeter and mic, including the tweeter itself.

Hi Pos,
Pleased to hear you fixed that bug already now. That's fast work!

Actually, that tweeter measurement was an average of 16 measurements at different physical locations in the room, to help average out standing waves / room reflections, etc. (For midranges I did average of 24, and woofers were average of 32, because room has proportionally more influence on the woofer's measurement.)

My tweeter's high SPL sine sweep only ran from 1kHz to 24kHz (no bass below 1kHz to protect the tweeter of course) however the microphone still captures fullrange audio including random background noise in the bass range - with messy, random, chaotic phase rotations when viewing the full-range transfer function. So in HOLM, using the highpass option, I chose to bandwidth-limit the tweeter's transfer function to cut off bass just below 1kHz, thus reducing any unwanted messy bass noise down to silence, giving me a nice, clean, easy-to-read graph showing just the wanted tweeter output range only - which is why there is nothing visible below 1kHz in the measurement file, which is maybe slightly artificial, but helpful for clarity sake.
So it's a "bandwidth-limited" measurement file.

My theory was that importing "bandwidth-limited" measurement files is maybe what caused those error pop-up messages, because they only occurred with bandwidth-limited measurement files where there was almost no level or nearly "-infinity dB" in the data, which was maybe an illegal value? With full-range measurements files covering the entire audio spectrum with valid data, such as my woofer measurements, rePhase 1.4.0_TEST VERSION worked perfectly and did not give any error pop-up messages.

pos wrote:

Please tell me if you have suggestions....

Here's yet another idea...



"Zoom In" / "Zoom Out" buttons to quickly enlarge and shrink the viewing scale of the graph axis, in a single click, without needing to type exact numerical values manually into two separate range value boxes, every time.
What I'm suggesting here is just a basic ratio of 2 - halving (zoom in) or doubling (zoom out) - the scale range of the vertical axis (in case of amplitude dB, or phase degree) or in the case of the horizontal frequency axis, a shift of one octave in both directions (one octave shift is doubling or halving the frequency).

Obviously, exact numerical values may still be typed into the existing range boxes, working as before, giving complete freedom for normal use. Each "Zoom Button" merely adds extra more convenient, quick method of basic zoom in or out, keeping the centre of the graph staying in the same position all the time.
One click on any "Zoom Button" would re-calculate two new replacement values for "high range" and "low range" fields in the appropriate two range boxes for that graph axis in question, thus re-scaling the graph.
These new replacement values would just be mathematically based on whatever current "high range" and "low range" parameter values exist at the time, according to the simple formulae shown above on right side...

Hi Richard,

Richard wrote:

Actually, that tweeter measurement was an average of 16 measurements at different physical locations in the room, to help average out standing waves / room reflections, etc. (For midranges I did average of 24, and woofers were average of 32, because room has proportionally more influence on the woofer's measurement.)

Nice approach! You also have to make sure you change the mic position relative to the source to avoid diffraction effects.

My tweeter's high SPL sine sweep only ran from 1kHz to 24kHz (no bass below 1kHz to protect the tweeter of course) however the microphone still captures fullrange audio including random background noise in the bass range - with messy, random, chaotic phase rotations when viewing the full-range transfer function. So in HOLM, using the highpass option, I chose to bandwidth-limit the tweeter's transfer function to cut off bass just below 1kHz, thus reducing any unwanted messy bass noise down to silence, giving me a nice, clean, easy-to-read graph showing just the wanted tweeter output range only - which is why there is nothing visible below 1kHz in the measurement file, which is maybe slightly artificial, but helpful for clarity sake.
So it's a "bandwidth-limited" measurement file.

Have you tried the MMM approach for LF measurements?

My theory was that importing "bandwidth-limited" measurement files is maybe what caused those error pop-up messages, because they only occurred with bandwidth-limited measurement files where there was almost no level or nearly "-infinity dB" in the data, which was maybe an illegal value? With full-range measurements files covering the entire audio spectrum with valid data, such as my woofer measurements, rePhase 1.4.0_TEST VERSION worked perfectly and did not give any error pop-up messages.

That is spot on: -200000dB values do turn into a 0 gain factor, which when turned back to dBs for the measurement message generation (min/max, etc) did issue a log(0) error.
Fixing this was easy, thanks again for the report.

Richard wrote:

pos wrote:

Please tell me if you have suggestions....

Here's yet another idea...

"Zoom In" / "Zoom Out" buttons to quickly enlarge and shrink the viewing scale of the graph axis, in a single click, without needing to type exact numerical values manually into two separate range value boxes, every time.
What I'm suggesting here is just a basic ratio of 2 - halving (zoom in) or doubling (zoom out) - the scale range of the vertical axis (in case of amplitude dB, or phase degree) or in the case of the horizontal frequency axis, a shift of one octave in both directions (one octave shift is doubling or halving the frequency).

Obviously, exact numerical values may still be typed into the existing range boxes, working as before, giving complete freedom for normal use. Each "Zoom Button" merely adds extra more convenient, quick method of basic zoom in or out, keeping the centre of the graph staying in the same position all the time.
One click on any "Zoom Button" would re-calculate two new replacement values for "high range" and "low range" fields in the appropriate two range boxes for that graph axis in question, thus re-scaling the graph.
These new replacement values would just be mathematically based on whatever current "high range" and "low range" parameter values exist at the time, according to the simple formulae shown above on right side...

Thanks for the suggestion.
I've already got something in the work for zooms, for the 1.5.0 version
EDIT: I might as well include it directly in the 1.4.0 release...

Richard wrote:

Hi Pos,
Yes, I tried moving the slider, I love the yellow highlight! - that really helps avoid getting confused. Great idea.

I mean moving the EQ point directly in the graph window: you click on a slider and then middle click in the graph to move the EQ point.
Final release will also make use of the mouse wheel to adjust Q.

Hi Pos,
Thanks for your replies.
Yes, I tried that dragging the blue EQ curve around on the screen with the mouse and CTRL+Click - that's obviously a fantastic and significant new feature for rePhase 1.4.0. I can appreciate that! In practise I found it works really well for making quick coarse EQ adjustments, but for very small, precise, fine tweaking, it's a bit too jumpy method unless I really zoom graph in a huge amount. Probably still easier for me to tweak the numbers individually when making tiny adjustments to my curve - I'm scared to mess it up.

Maybe having an UNDO facility on the most recent user changes made to graph would be a good feature for rePhase - if you've done quite a lot of tiny edits but haven't yet saved your settings file, then you make one accidental wrong move (type wrong value in wrong area or something!) and mess up the nice curve but haven't saved your work in a while, it's tough to go back and rebuild what you had a moment ago before you messed it up. Just click UNDO would be very handy then.

Being able to import more than one measurement (eg. at least three?) and overlay them all on the same graph in different colours would be nice - and maybe being able to switch which measurement your EQ settings are currently applied to, for A/B comparisons (left vs right) etc. or even calculating a sum or difference response from two measurements, into a third colour, and save & export that result as a new measurement file (or other manipulations like in HOLM) or even being able to import many measurements and automatically generate a mathematical average of all these.

It goes without saying, I think rePhase is amazing, and very happy to see any new updates and features, whatever they are. Brilliant work!

Hi Richard,

I think I will change the reference for the graphical EQ adjustment from the 0dB line to the actual value of the curve at that particular EQ point. It should be more usable in most situations.

Regarding undo functionality, that is something I would like to add indeed, not just for EQ but for all settings, some kind of regular journaling. The problem is that reloading a former setting state will take as long as reloading a new settings file...
I will try to find something faster/easier to use just for the specific case of graphical EQ adjustment, stay tuned.

As for loading several measurements, and associated manipulations, yes that would be very interesting.
I am a big fan of spinorama-like measurement, so being able to see several curves in this context would be nice.
I am afraid this feature will have to wait though

A new test version is online: www.dropbox.com/s/iv0c96pxwpy4lhe/rePhase_1.4.0_TEST2.zip?dl=1

Compared to the previous test version the graphical EQ manipulation has been revamped (dB relative to magnitude curve instead of 0dB line, cancel functionality) and now only applies to gain EQ.
A new zoom functionality is also added, with a behavior similar to HOLMImpulse's one.

Richard, if you don't find bugs or needed adjustments, I plan on releasing the new version by tonight.
So it is all on you now

Ha ha - am I in charge of quality control now???!

Hi Pos,
If you want to publish your new software today, please go ahead. Don't let me hold you up or anything. You already have my highest recommendation. I think all the work you've done here is amazing. I wish I knew how to do software programming like this myself. I'm in total awe!!!!!
I could keep writing for days, months or years about all my never-ending ideas and suggestions in this whole fascinating topic area, and I'd never run out of things to discuss, but I'm not the only person in the world who uses rePhase, and I probably don't use every feature that it has to offer - only the specific things I'm doing with it.

But since you asked me today, no, I haven't found any bugs...
...just a few things seem to behave in a weird way to me, which is probably just me not being used to all these new controls yet.
There's so many new features in this update, it'll take a quite while to get used to everything!!!

Mouse-draw box to "Zoom in" area in main screen / right-click to cancel back to previous.
This obviously works well, the same as HOLM, so very pleased to see this feature included. Very useful.

Zoom: confusion number one
I find that if you magnify zoom in, again and again and again a few times, it's easy to forget how many times you've zoomed in already, and when you want to zoom back out to original again, you keep right-clicking too many times and overshoot way past your original scale to the maximum limit and the scale gets stuck on 1Hz - 100kHz / -200dB to +100dB and then can't "automatically" with a mouse-click toggle back one step or undo that revert, to find the original scale (which may have been your View #1 when first loaded, eg. 20Hz - 20,000Hz) but which is now lost, and you then have to manually type the numbers (if you can remember them,)

Zoom: confusion number two
Likewise, if the very first thing you do, on the graph, is right-click, it zooms all the way out to maximum 1Hz - 100kHz / -200dB to +100dB but then you're stuck and you cannot revert back zoomed in again, because Right-clicking again in this case doesn't "cancel" or revert to previous (original) scale, it just keeps zooming out to maximum limit and leaves you stuck there, and it's now also overwritten your View #1.

I still like the idea of generic ZOOM IN and ZOOM OUT buttons in the grey area below the range settings. My calculations were for a factor of 2x but you could make that factor a user variable too, so people could have a 5% zoom ratio for very gentle zooms if they wish or a big 200% factor like I suggested.

I am used to the way HOLM does zoom with the mouse draw box - like many other people who use HOLM - so I appreciate the way you've copied that style for rePhase zoom, but in fact HOLM also has two arrows, up and down, for zooming the amplitude dB scale, near the bottom left corner of the graph, and I probably use these more than anything else. That's the kind of thing I'd love to see in rePhase.


Graphical EQ Modification "Validate" or "Cancel"
Is this yellow text window going to keep popping up every time I do anything to my EQ?
It starts to annoy me after dozen times I keeping clicking it to go away but it always comes back. I just want my graph area to be clean and uncluttered. I know it is to "Validate" my last mouse movement on the graph, or even my numerical edit, where "Cancel" will revert back to undo previous my parameter values and undo my last edit to previous graph shape, so it is a very useful ability - very powerful new feature, thank you, this would have saved me a lot of trouble many times - but I'd prefer to just have a dedicated UNDO button (if and when I need it) for this job somewhere in the lower grey screen area, which I think would be more intuitive for many people. I keep thinking I need to click "Validate" to confirm everything I do, although that isn't always true with numerical value edits. Any extra steps like extra mouse clicks or yes / no / are you sure? type confirmations just slow down the workflow, and make you move your eyes and concentration away to somewhere else on the screen.

I like the yellow vertical line focusing on the frequency which matches the highlighted filter bank. That's very helpful now.
But I still find the gain adjustment is not easy to control with this mouse-drag method. Sometimes it seems limited to +/-24dB and other times (if I'm zoomed in) it disappears off the edge of the screen before I get what I needed. Maybe I'm doing it wrong

Mouse-wheel to adjust Q:
It's good to now have this facility (rather than old method of "up" and "down" arrow keyboard buttons only) but I think, in that case, if mouse wheel now works to adjust Q, which is very comfortable method, why can't I use the convenient mouse-wheel for ALL my adjustments of these EQ parameters, dB, Q and Hz,, instead of just Q parameter only?
eg.
Click in EQ filter's "dB" value box and use mouse-wheel for the "dB" value up and down.
Click in EQ filter's "Q" value box and use mouse-wheel for the "Q" value up and down.
Click in EQ filter's "Hz" value box and use mouse-wheel for the "Hz" value up and down.

Other problem I find with these adjustments (whether by mouse wheel or keyboard arrow buttons) is that the increment / decrement step quantity can be too big, whereas I need to make tiny adjustments. eg. Frequency = 1400 Hz and one click bigger goes to 1500Hz and so on in coarse steps of +/-100Hz which is too big a step for me, so I still have to type 1401, 1402, 1403 or whatever.

Solution might be to hold down SHIFT and get single Hz integer value steps, or hold down CTRL+SHIFT and get 1/10th of Hz unit steps, etc. so you can make smaller or bigger size adjustments, whereas the rePhase default seems to 1Hz or 10Hz or 100Hz steps depending on the given frequency, but close to a 10% size change when I might need 0.1% tweak.

If you really want another million suggestions for more things, I could keep typing, but maybe I should end there for now.
I am amazed at how great rePhase already is today.
I was equally amazed with rePhase six years ago!
The fact it keeps getting better is even more amazing.

Best regards,
Richard

Richard, thanks for the kind words, and rest assured your suggestions are very appreciated

Zoom confusion

The zoom out functionality indeed has an "extra step" beyond what was set before the first zoom in action.
It is there to provide a descent "zoomed out" view from view you can zoom in with ease. It needs to be there because zoom "history" is only active while you are in the same view preset: if you change preset and go back you loose all your undo zoom settings, so having something like that 300dB/100kHz scale is useful in that regard.
It is not perfect indeed, but at least you can zoom in quickly approximately to where you were at...

Having zoom buttons in the lower part of that tab is only an option in "large" view mode.
I might remove the "compact" and "normal" view modes in some next release, and then reconsider what that extra space can be used for...

Thanks for the suggestion regarding HOLM zooming arrows in the graph, something I will definitely try to integrate in a next release.

Graphical EQ Modification "Validate" or "Cancel"

Yes that box will stay as I want to avoid user errors there. I might consider something less intrusive in the future...
The validate button is really optional here: if you change EQ or simply loose the focus on a given EQ point then its parameters are validated.
This button is merely a way to loose that focus, I think I can remove it if it is confusing and seen as a mandatory extra step.
I will also try to reduce the size of that box, but it will have to stay for now, sorry.

Regarding the 24dB max value, this is indeed an arbitrary limit.
I could remove it, or cap it to something bigger like 96dB, but is it really practical?
If you see strange behavior please report them. With EQ you should normally get the curve exactly were you click, as long as you are within the +/- 24dB limit for that particular EQ point (not the curve, the EQ point itself).

Mouse-wheel to adjust Q:

Regarding the use of mouse wheel to alter all parameters, this is not really straightforward: when doing EQ points manipulation on the graph you want to have that wheel act on the Q value only, even if you clicked on the fader or on the frequency entry to get focus.
So having different action for the same mouse action can be counter intuitive here.
I made a modification so that the mouse wheel in only active on Q when the mouse is actually over the graph, so that lets the door open...

Regarding smaller steps when shift is pressed, I will look into that in the future, good suggestion.

Right now I really want to publish that version with the minor modification suggested here, and catch some sleep

I am amazed at how great rePhase already is today.

thank you

I was equally amazed with rePhase six years ago!

now that is a bit depressing

Thank you again!

Any plans to include magnitude/phase targets imported from files?