How (not) to provide useful user feedback, Lesson 123a

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#1

Finding a piece of software not to your liking or not capable of what you need is just fine (expected, almost).

And then there’s this sort of thing.

Can you make it user friendly? Fucking ridiculous. I use Sonar,plug in my dongle/breakout box,and it just works. One setting change for in and out for the duo or quad capture. No one in the business has anything good to say about Ardour,if they've even heard of it. I'm not trying to be rode. It's a suggestion. Make it user friendly.

To our friends at Cakewalk: you’re welcome.

#2

Well, in fact Ardour was the only one DAW I started working in right after installation, without need to read a lot of manuals, and it still has the best routing and mixer on the market. It’s so easy to use that 3 of 4 of my main band’s members have it, and that’s what we use to write our music. We exchange sessions one to another via cloud, and that’s awesome considering that I live in 12M+ populated and small country sized city, thus trips to a studio or even to each other apartments take quite a long time. It’s cool to have it both on guys’ Win machines and on my Linux laptop without need to convert sessions to complete arrangement.

Wish you all the best. Happy holidays!

#3

Must be a Mac user. Some people just need to be held by the hand when using software. Our media people said our media PC (linux) was bad (sound out not working) when they couldln’t figure out how to change sound output. It was 1 or 2 mouse clicks away but people still need hand holding when it’s unfamiliar.

#4

The complainer mentioned Sonar, so presumably a Windows user.

#5

Please don’t mock Mac users, there are advanced and not so advanced users on both sides of the fence. It’s not the os, its the user, some need hand holding and some not. I’ve given support to both sides.

In this case the user was furious because one piece of software does not work like the other he was used to. He probably never needed to migrate from one application to another, because he does not realize that there always is a learning curve. He confused the skill he achieved using the first application for ease of use and probably forgot how much effort it took to learn it in the first place.

He could have controlled his temper however, that’s not nice :slight_smile:

#6

“Can you post the BugTracker about a problem specifically at least? No? You must not do that? Next thing you’re asking to make magical button to make a wonderful music… If you’re so clever, what did you do for improvement?”
Good health and luck for Paul&developers!

#7

In general, if you have a lot of options in a piece of software, it gets more complicated to use. But think about it: Having options means you must know what you want in order to get things going. This is not a software thing. “One setting change” for some input/output routing, yepp, but I doubt that there is one button that could manage the 24ch I/O that I happily use with Ardour. Plus, the features of the mixer in 5.5 are really a blast. But of course, they are confusing if you don’t like options.

Guys at Ardour: I hope you’re not bothered too much by comments like the one quoted above.

Some (other) people should perhaps just get themselves an old game boy. Great fun, great chiptune sound, and no complaints online.

#8

Nevermind, haters gonna hate.

Ardour is very user friendly. I had the opportunity to test the competition (Bitwig, Tracktion) in deep and my conclusion is: Ardour has its pros and cons in comparision but none of the cons are on the usability side. On the contrary, I found Ardour to be more intuitive when it comes to do more advanced stuff(especially routing).
So keep your good work going and keep following the consistent and very understandable concepts you devoloped.

Thanks for your work and best of luck for 2017!

#9

There will always be entitled and lazy people with unreasonable expectations. (And they often say things like “no one in the business has anything good to say” when evidence to the contrary is easy to find if you aren’t too lazy to bother).

#10

Maybe some kind of lobbying in the words quoted by Paul in the beginning of this post?
Or maybe not, but who cares in LAU ecosystem?!!!

As mentionned up here by zettberlin and AFAIK, no other DAW provides routing as Ardour does. Of course this comes directly from Jackd, so thanks to the man who conceptualized this universal virtual patchbay (any source to any destination).

Eye candy is at its right place in Ardour (out of here!) because it’s not a painting stuff : it’s an audio production tool, and it JUST does this work as user decide, +1dB is nothing more or less than +1dB, e.g…

If you’re used with hardware audio boards, tapes & FX: as said alexthebassist you don’t need to read a lot of manuals to start working with Ardour, all you need is {something like AVLinux OR the ability to set an audio PC, and} the shortkeys’ sheet & the mouse options summary. Oh, that’s a real question here: where can one find the (last update of) those users’ facilitatings???

If you’re not used with hardware audio boards, tapes & FX: you’ve got to understand that it’s a real hard work to record, mix and publish audio. Many people on earth who try do that doesn’t eat in gold plates… At this moment, no one has never discovered the magic button in any DAW that makes it possible in one clic to produce a world hit… (and it might be a good thing, on the creative side)

One of the most existential question is included in the words quoted by Paul up here :
HOW can some code lines BE FRIENDLY?
Meant, there’s just a software. It will never felt or provide any feeling, just tools to do something the way the user decide.
User friendly, what does it means? Something able to be understood by a 4 years old child? If say yes to this, you’ve got to realize that none record was rec-mixed by a child & published.
Ardour is not a toy, but a professionnal DAW.
It’s free, as in mind.
And we are 2368 human beings today to be happy to sponsor Pauls’ couple trip in GB,
because we like & trust in what he’s doing, at least with Ardour,
because it’s nice to know (and be a small part of) that some of us can live freely,
because… (:P)

Happy new year to Ardour devs & users, and as suggested in the original post: everyone is welcomed!
Just my 2 humble cents…

#11

Doh! It’s so simple to implement the universal “Make Wonderful Music” button: just make it so it opens youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

#12

The hard part might be to understand user’s usecases and implement them in a way that’s not missing important bits from the usecase.

#13

As a consequence, developers must also be users. Otherwise they have to rely on (…) user wishes and feedback.

#14

Developers must also be users? Heh, look up Robert Moog :slight_smile:

#15

@ stratojaune well said, belated Happy new year too to everyone! :slight_smile:

#16

"Can you make it user friendly? Fucking ridiculous. I use Sonar,plug in my dongle/breakout box,and it just works. One setting change for in and out for the duo or quad capture. No one in the business has anything good to say about Ardour,if they’ve even heard of it. I’m not trying to be rode. It’s a suggestion. Make it user friendly. "

industry ?

waves tracks live
harrison mixbus
IZ corp session to pro

ancient sonar user here, ardour is MORE user friendly than sonar.

#17

I’m just grateful that there is a great, extensible, actively developed, easy-to-start, multi-platform, *nix-friendly, uber-hyphenated application like Ardour out there. 10,000 thanks to the development team, and wishes for enlightenment and happier times to users out there who don’t know a bug report from a complaint box.