Right now, it is quite a mess when working with captures, you don’t know if it is an Amp, an amp with a cab, a drive pedal, or any sort of combo of the previoulsy mentionned.
BASICALLY, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
It would be a GREAT addition, if the Neural Capture block which is currently Black and White would be color coded to know what we are dealing with
Amp: Black and Red
Amp and Cab: Black and Purple
Drive pedal: Black and Orange
Drive pedal with Amp: Black and White (current icon)
When capturing, at the moment user must enter a name and tag, there could be a checkbox menu asking ‘‘What has been captured?’’ this would be mandatory, choice would put the capture under the right category.
I think this could be taken a step further by allowing us to select an icon for each capture type. Could be the stock icons, but probably would make more sense to create dedicated icons for all of the possible capture types.
Perhaps adding device “pips” to the capture icon could also work and would be better than what we currently have? At a glance you could see what was included. This does require the capture to be properly “tagged” but that shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to do at capture time if there were a list of checkboxes for the devices included.
some great suggestions here. I think it’s a great idea to differentiate between the different types of captures and is certainly necessary to more quickly figure out what’s needed for the patch being built.
I think that taking into account the specifics of the capture, the icon can be greatly simplified, since the position of the pips can encode which block is present in the capture.
For example:
as much as I like the clean design, I like this less.
Unless you know what is what its not easy to see.
Unless its color coded, or there are pips as shown before.
Imagine if you have more than one in the chain… it would be complicated.
Color will pop out and ‘‘limit’’ the differences between the capture of an amp, vs an amp block
This is definitely cleaner, and I think my design - which was a quick hack job could be simplified by just removing the borders and keeping the icons, which would possibly allow 4 pips across. My reasoning behind using the icons rather than a positional abstraction is that it’s been mentioned that time-based FX could be added as part of a capture at some point, so using the icons allows you to express the entire range of what might end up “in” a capture. And if there are enough items you could move to two rows and it would still be clear what was contained. I kept the borders mostly for the color coding aspect as I suspect over time that will just become ingrained in most users minds - orange is X, red is Y - you could just color -code the icons themselves and remove the borders and this would likely still be intuitive while allowing every possible device that can be captured to be supported.
All that being said - all of the design work you do for your suggestions is top-notch! haha and your design aesthetic dwarfs anything I’d do, but in this case there was reasoning behind the icons vs true “pips” in that sense, and I wanted to explain the thought behind it.
Well, or so:
the difference between the amplifier and the preamplifier is denoted by different icons, as in Helix. In general, you can also add colors, the main thing is not to draw full icons with frames, it’s too cumbersome
Yep, pretty much that, with color-coding as an option as there are a few things that have similar waveform icons that could be confusing when squished down that far but that’s the idea
While this coding method is less intuitive than additional icons or dots (you still need to remember the color coding), it certainly better retains the concept of pure QC design. To tell the truth, I can’t even decide which of the options I would prefer
P.S. No, though, after adding the half dot that denotes the preamp, the dotted option is my favorite. Of course, it does not allow deferentiating various effects other than distortion, which may appear in the future, but for now this is all just a fantasy and we can ignore them.
I still think a better method is to have check boxes (drive, preamp, poweramp, cab) inside the capture settings or name details page. This gets stored as metadata and is searchable and viewable on the app. These check boxes show up when you click on the capture block.
One concern I have with using colors is its impact on Gig View. Color is an important cue about the function of the switch in Stomp Mode and, given the limited palette, having the color vary by type of capture either
Results in color collisions with other block types
Results in inconsistency between the color of a block on the grid vs. the color of the block in Gig View
As a result, I much prefer the idea of icon variations rather than simply different colored versions of the same icon.
I’m strongly against this approach, this looks to me like a broken slideshow navigation. There has to be the needed information at a glance without the need to transfer from another very cryptic set of iconographic language.
And what is cryptic about it, the Dots simply symbolize typical capture blocks in their typical locations in the chain. The left dot is the effect, the middle dot - amp, and the right dot - cabinet. Any other variation of the arrangement is unlikely to be in great demand there. Or will it be?
The information that is least important is that it being a capture, the most important thing is what type of gear has been captured. the “scribbled globe” icon is taking most of the place but has the least information. This is also enforced by your and other approaches. i want to see distinct icons for type of device (e.g. gain/dist/overdrive/fuzz/preamp/clean channel/crunch/high gain channel/cab/combo, also modulation and timebased for the future). Typically there is one or two device captured, so even showing two icons could be feasible for a block, or you use a combined icon for the most important combinations (e.g. amp and cab). Furthermore chains are not more important than what single devices are used in my opinion.
I would believe the colored capture would replace a block of the same color (in most cases) maybe except for drive.
but, if you have an amp or amp with cab capture, I would believe you do not have an amp block in your chain. So in the end, the ‘‘red block’’ would be replaced by another ‘‘red block’’ I tend to see this as less confusing (IMO).
Also, I tend to not assign amp, or cabs to stomps in stomp mode, so the gig view and its colors would not really apply. Maybe I’m the only one for this. If I have more than one amp, I’ll use scenes which are not colored.
again, you have your use case, and I have mine, and others have their. But it is really good I think that NDSP gets them, it will help them consider this FR and how to solve it.
I still think Captures need to be sorted out (I think we all agree) the question is HOW
