Another reason MPT should have a manual...

Squirrel Havoc · March 08, 2006, 14:00:51

Ok, on the VST mix settings in the General tab, what does the "Expand" option do? I notice a difference when I click it, but I can't quite figure out what it's doing.

Can someone help me?

DavidN · March 08, 2006, 20:45:58

A bit unrelated, but perhaps a Wiki could be set up for Modplug. I only mention it because I've just got into UT2004 mapping and having the Beyondunreal site helped immensely (particular as like Modplug, UnrealEd lacks the luxury of a manual).

I have no idea of the answer to your question, but I would also quite like to know.

Squirrel Havoc · March 08, 2006, 22:17:42

Yeah i really appreciate people working on a manual offline, but if it's not online, we all can't help. And believe me, if that Wiki was back up, I would flood it with all my 7 years experience with MPT. Not tracking techniques, I'm not the one to teach that, but just general specifics on what is what, and how to do what using what you got.

anboi · March 08, 2006, 23:23:06

d'oh! i've written that entire section pretty much but for the expand tab i merely have:

Expand

**[I have no idea what the hell this does ]*****

soo uhh, if someone wants to tell me too so i can put it in the manual! sounds like some weird phase cancelling type of thing.

Squirrel Havoc · March 08, 2006, 23:34:26

Yeah where's Rewbs when you need him? Im gonna check the source code and see if I can figure out what it does

rewbs · March 09, 2006, 00:15:53

Ericus wrote that feature and I admit I'm not sure exactly what it does. :oops:
Will look at the code and let you know....

... on the brand spaking new OpenMPT manual wiki!!

I opened a free hosted XWiki to get us started. I don't wish to undermine anboi's project but this way can get some shared content on the road. We can merge one into the other when/as we need to.

XWiki is a very cool, flexible, multi-language, second generation wiki platform with some awesome features (in fact the scripting engine makes it so flexible we could probably build a whole community site on it). It has an export-to-pdf feature so can be used to dump an offline manual too. The layout is the XWiki default for now... we can worry about beautifying it when we have decent content.

Looking forwards to contributions.

Squirrel Havoc · March 09, 2006, 00:31:10

Quote from: "rewbs"... on the brand spaking new OpenMPT manual wiki!!

Yay!!!!! I will contribute all I can think of over the coming days.

EDIT: By the way, what kind of attitude are you going for on that Wiki? I'm going for helpful but in a humorus way. But my humor is....different, so it might look kinda goofy to people outside of the USA, especially who don't have English as their main language. But if it's all technical and strict, it might frighten away people who are just learning about this stuff, they may not think it's going to be any fun. So what should I do?

EDIT 2: I did a little bit of work on the "Getting Started" section, covering downloading, including which one to download (although I didnt get into Official vs Beta builds), unzipping, and running. Basically stuff people already know how to do, but the section was there, so why not? Can you guys look it over and tell me what you think?

rewbs · March 09, 2006, 01:12:19

Thanks, that looks great. I edited it to add some formatting and remove the reference to "I". You can use the history feature to see the exact changes I made. If people don't like your goofyness they can edit it away!

Squirrel Havoc · March 09, 2006, 01:24:24

Quote from: "rewbs"Thanks, that looks great. I edited it to add some formatting and remove the reference to "I". You can use the history feature to see the exact changes I made. If people don't like your goofyness they can edit it away!

Hey the formatting looks awesome. I don't know how to do that, I'm new to Wiki, and I'm not that good at HTML layouts, so I will just provide the info, and other people will provide the formatting.

Oh yeah, I'll try to lay off the run-on sentences

rewbs · March 09, 2006, 11:58:46

XWiki syntax is really simple - just view the contents of a few existing documents to learn it. But yes no probs, I don't mind reformatting stuff you submit.

Squirrel Havoc · March 09, 2006, 15:10:53

I was just thinking about tracking tecniques (i can't spell it though

), why not get a bunch of people from different genres to make example songs and write short tutorials on that style, or even just that song? Then let the user click a link to the genre they are interested in.

Like:

Classical (Get PPH to do this one)
Hardcore (Boot-sector-viruz)
Ambient/New Age (Me)

and so on. Just a thought, I am kinda brainstorming with myself to come up with ideas for a totally completed manual on tracking.

And maybe a short advanced section on mastering written by Atlantis?

I am a little bit busy today, which is new to me, but I will try to write up some of the Wiki on the Config dialog, although I can't say I know what all the options do, but I know most of them.

Atlantis · March 10, 2006, 19:41:57

Quote from: "Squirrel Havoc"And maybe a short advanced section on mastering written by Atlantis?

Sorry, no can do. Besides, I left MPT like three and a half years ago!

That and MPT isn't a mastering app.

Squirrel Havoc · March 10, 2006, 19:55:01

Quote from: "Atlantis"
Quote from: "Squirrel Havoc"And maybe a short advanced section on mastering written by Atlantis?
Sorry, no can do. Besides, I left MPT like three and a half years ago! That and MPT isn't a mastering app.

No I mean with audio tools, like Audacity, or anything free. Or just general ideas that can be applied to any audio suite

rewbs · March 10, 2006, 21:28:14

The wiki is down so here's the answer to your original question:
Normally, with the default mix mode, as you move the dry/wet slider to the right, the amount of each signal that contributes to the output evolves as follows:

Code Select

Dry 0%   -> 100%
Wet 100% -> 0%

So you start with full wet, and progressively move to full dry.

With expand, under the covers the amounts vary like this:

Code Select

Dry -100% -> 100%
Wet  100% -> -100%

So you start with a mix of full inverted dry and full wet, and end with a mix of full dry and full inverted wet. In the middle both are at 0 so you get silence.

To illustrate, here are the percentages of signal taken into account in default mix mode:

I have no idea why anyone would find this useful.

Squirrel Havoc · March 10, 2006, 21:38:12

Quote from: "rewbs"The wiki is down so here's the answer to your original question:
Normally, with the default mix mode, as you move the dry/wet slider to the right, the amount of each signal that contributes to the output evolves as follows:
Code Select Expand
Dry 0% -> 100% Wet 100% -> 0%So you start with full wet, and progressively move to full dry.

With expand, under the covers the amounts vary like this:
Code Select Expand
Dry -100% -> 100% Wet 100% -> -100%So you start with a mix of full inverted dry and full wet, and end with a mix of full dry and full inverted wet. In the middle both are at 0 so you get silence.

To illustrate, here are the percentages of signal taken into account in default mix mode:

I have no idea why anyone would find this useful.

Took me a second to even get what you were talking about, then I got it. I think the only reason to do that is if you want 75% wet, but 0% dry, and 25% volume. Of couse, you can do normal 100% wet and then modify the master volume, so I don't see it as being usefull. But it's already there, no need to take it out.