admin: First posted on 2009 12 02
It has been a month since my last post, but that is for a good reason. We spent significant time on a couple of important tasks. RecordingBlogs.com finally has a good sitemap submitted to various major search engines such as Google, LiveSearch, Yahoo, and Ask.com. Also, I have now done enough work on version 3 of Orinj to know where the application is heading. This post is about the improvements to Orinj that will show up in version 3.
Several months back I put together a post with suggestions for possible improvements to Orinj. Some of those suggestions made its way here and some did not. The following are all major changes that will be present in version 3.
Wave / MIDI / loop sessions
The multitrack session of Orinj version 2 contains only wave files. Version 3 is designed to allow wave files, MIDI files, and loop files to be placed in the same session and even on the same track. Loop files are just a collection of wave files and I now have a way of synchronizing wave and MIDI playback. Thus, the user will no longer have to convert MIDI and loop files to wave files to use those in a session. Orinj 3 will allow the simultaneous playback of all three types of files and will also let the user edit loop and MIDI files while those files are being used in the session. I consider this the most important improvement to Orinj as it makes the application much more usable.
Multitap delay
I have now chosen a design for the Orinj multitap delay and its implementation is almost complete. I wrote about designing the Orinj multitap delay before. I explained why a multitap delay is an interesting effect and why the current Orinj effects are not quite sufficient to create a multi- tap delay with little effort. I will use one of my next posts to describe the new effect’s final design in detail.
Orinj effect plugins
The current Orinj effects are an integral part of the application. You cannot use the effects without installing Orinj and you cannot run Orinj without installing the effects. The plan is to implement all effects as plugins. In principle, this does not change the functionality of Orinj significantly. All effects would still be there and will be used in the exact same way. Using plugins at a minimum would allow the user to include / exclude effects from the application making the application easier to deal with. More importantly, using plugins would allow the development of effects by other developers for Orinj without the need to modify Orinj’s internal implementation. It would also allow developers of other similar applications to use the effects that Orinj provides without having to purchase Orinj. This means that we need good documentation for developers, which is a daunting task, but it is something that I have already started.
Skins
Skins are obviously not that important as they do not affect the functionality of Orinj. Skins, however, may improve the user experience. Version 2 allowed for a couple of different skins (look and feels). Version 3 already contains about ten different skins.
Other tentative improvements
This is still a tentative change, but I have always wanted to see MIDI files presented in traditional notations (in actual notes). If time permits, this should be easy to implement. Last but not least, a current Orinj functionality that may need some revision is the display of the frequency content of waves. While I understand why such functionality is important, its current implementation is confusing and not very useful. It should be changed.
authors: mic
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