A grid to snap to (or x/y/z co-ords) for mic placement

[alligatorlizard]

Hi,

I know mic placement is all about using your ears, but it would be great to have the option of a grid to snap to, or x/y/z co-ordinates displayed, for the mic placement section. It's just too small and fiddly right now, even tiny movements can make a big difference to the sound - once you find a position that works, it'd be nice to have some way to get back to that exact position e.g. if you want to try other positions before making a final decision. Yes, I know you can A/B, or save settings, but this gets fiddly too!

Also, would be nice to be able to move along one axis alone without fear of accidentally dragging it off one of the the other axes.

Here's my suggestion:

There are two places you can adjust position, the diagram with the speaker "flat on it's back" where you can see the cone (and where you can set what I'll refer to as the x and y axes), and the diagram below this where the speaker is on it's side (where you can set the distance from speaker, call this the z axis, but also the x axis can be affected...). So say I've set the position I want on the top diagram, (i.e. the x and y axes) then want to play around with the distance from the speaker (z axis) on the diagram below, I risk moving it off the x axis I've carefully selected above. I see no reason why the lower section couldn't restrict movement to only the z axis, e.g. distance from speaker. Or at least give an option to do this.

Plus an optional grid, and x/z/y axis positions displayed numerically. Doing this with real amps/mics, at least you can tape an "X" on the floor!

Hope this is clear, it's kind of difficult to explain, but anyone using this will probably know what I mean! It's a great feature, but needs refining.

[Peter_IK]

[Edit - yes, I know you are requesting a grid/snap and/or coordinates, but you mention that model presets seem fiddly in some way hence the following question]

Are you having issues with "Save Model Preset" and "Load Model Preset"? They work very well for me with the mic placement in the Cab Room of AmpliTube 4.

I just get the mics placed, right-click one of them, then choose Save (or Load) Model Preset and haven't run into trouble saving or recalling.

[alligatorlizard]

Thanks, I didn't realise you could right-click the mic and save a preset position (I was just referring to saving an entire preset). I'll definitely use this feature, but it's still fiddly going back and forth between potential positions this way compared to having a grid to reference/snap to, and/or x/y/z co-ordinates. Plus it's not that useful, as from setup to setup, song to song, the best mic position is going to vary. I can see myself ending up with a long list of "model presets" that are of no real use once I've got the position I'm happy with for a given purpose.

I'm just after a way of choosing the position in the first place without so much fiddliness and margin for error (e.g. it's very hard to drag the mic further/closer to the speaker without inadvertently moving it's position left/right of the cone. And it'd be nice to move back and forth reliably/accurately between specific potential positions without having to save/load patches. For example, with any other parameter, you are given a numerical indicator, e.g. if the gain sounds good at 7.8, it's easy to search around either side of this, then quickly go back to 7.8 if nothing else sounds better. If there was no numerical data here, you'd be going "was that the position I liked a moment ago?" and you're back to searching for that sweet spot again. Either way you use your ears, but the numerical data just helps speed up the process.

But don't get me wrong, I love being able to experiment with the effects of different mic positioning and combinations, and this really adds a lot to the software - just that currently I dread this part of the "sound design" process due to the reasons detailed above!

I also can't see why anyone would object to having a grid or co-ordinates - you could always ignore them if you wanted.

Anyway, just a suggestion, and that really is my only complaint with Amplitube - everything else about it is wonderfully intuitive and easy to tweak (plus sounds GREAT! still can't believe how responsive the amps feel e.g. to picking strength, especially if you get the input gain set just right)

[lea787]

I agree with the OP. It's annoying when you're testing the effect of mic distance, but then you accidentally change how much off-axis it is, which ruins the sound experiment a little. Something like holding down CTRL key to affect only mic distance without changing x,y placement would work.

Also, when moving the mic around, it's tough to remember where the exact spots you found that sounds good were on the fly (while still deciding and comparing), because the x,y,z doesn't get displayed. Peter_IK mentions you can save mic position presets, but that's comparatively unwieldy and therefore of more use once you're sure you're down to just a couple of locations and you want A-B compare them.
Though with respect to position presets, it occurs to me that the mic position locations could even be represented with a little dot shown on the screen that you could snap to or double click to load.

[carlaz]

I realize there are a lot of ideas going on here, but -- for one thing -- I think that it would at least help if users could "blow up" the app and/or plug-in interface to a larger size.

[alligatorlizard]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who finds this part of Amplitube in need of improvement - come on IK Multimedia, can't be that hard to add a few lines of code to improve things here!

[alligatorlizard]

Just wanted to bump this...

I'm still using Amplitube regularly, would still recommend it highly, but still find the mic placement screen is wasting so much time... just dread this part of the setup!

Would be SO much easier if it could display co-ordinates, or snap to a visible grid, or reliably tweak one axis without accidentally affecting another.

Could someone at IK possibly comment on whether there's any chance anything like this could be implemented?

Just in case there's anyone who doesn't see what the problem is, imagine having no markings on the knobs on the amps, and no numerical values displayed as you adjust, and that if you didn't keep the mouse dead on axis while adjusting one you might end up accidentally turning one of the other knobs a bit too... sure, you could still get the same sound - but imagine how much longer it'd take and how fiddly it'd be! I'd say mic placement is every bit as integral to the sound - it's a powerful section of this software - but it should be as easy to adjust and tweak as everything else in Amplitube.

[jjguitar]

Would be SO much easier if it could display co-ordinates, or snap to a visible grid, or reliably tweak one axis without accidentally affecting another.

I absolutly agree !!!