Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

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tramp
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

wolftune wrote:
tramp wrote: @wolftune: I've uploaded 2 new rc styles (flat, grass) which respect the qtcurve bug, so they are suited to KDE with qtcurve.
woohoo! Thanks!! :D
And finally I find a way to fix this issue for all style files in guitarix.
So within the next release you will be able to select your preferred style also under KDE Qtcurve engine.

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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by richieHH »

wolftune wrote:So, the factory presets in Guitarix are full of ones that (A) are totally different output levels from preset to preset and (B) often are many orders of magnitude louder than the input signal. That's totally insane. So, the input to Guitarix is going to be generally a reasonable level, so amplifying it by such extreme degree means the presets are dangerous to ears and equipment and basically unusable, and the factory presets aren't changeable in the UI.

I don't understand how this came to be, and bad presets give new users a bad first impression…

We need a totally revamped and improved set of Guitarix presets, if you ask me.
2019 and trying with Guitarix now. It's still the same with the presets - my speakers almost blew up when I selected one. Awful.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by khz »

:welcome:

Remember: Each converter in the audio/MIDI interfaces is different, each speaker is different and each room sounds different. Ideally Audiophil is almost neutral, but who has that?
Make your own presets and share them.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

khz wrote::welcome:

Remember: Each converter in the audio/MIDI interfaces is different, each speaker is different and each room sounds different. Ideally Audiophil is almost neutral, but who has that?
Make your own presets and share them.
Surely you wouldn't think the poster you're replying to believes that all speakers and rooms are about the same. Please try to address the substance of a post or provide constructive feedback about how the post could be more nuanced or helpful.

In order not to invalidate or discourage feedback, I suggest making it explicit when you are explaining the challenges of something or offering workarounds.

Your reply doesn't at all address the primary concern that (A) the built-in presets can be dangerous in the amount of total amplification they produce and (B) they aren't changeable readily.

I'm sure it's feasible to verify that any given preset will only amplify its input signal by a reasonable amount.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

tramp wrote:
wolftune wrote:So, the input to Guitarix is going to be generally a reasonable level, so amplifying it by such extreme degree means the presets are dangerous to ears and equipment and basically unusable, and the factory presets aren't changeable in the UI.
Guitarix is a Tube Amplifier simulation. You may have notice that the default setting is more then moderate. But, as a Amplifier, truly it can boost your input signal over more orders of magnitude.
Those Factory presets are mean to show, what you can do with guitarix, and boost the input signal is part of this.
Indeed, you cant edit the factory presets, but you could save your changes into your own preset bank. Edit the factory presets direct will require root rights, as they are installed in /usr/...
wolftune wrote:We need a totally revamped and improved set of Guitarix presets, if you ask me.


You are welcome to submit your contribution.
ssj71 wrote:I know the preset format changed at least once for guitarix (I think recently too) so that makes it difficult to collect them.
It changed one time, and guitarix include a converter from the old to the new preset format.
There is no difficult in collecting them, we just simply didn't receive any more then you find in the factory sets.
ssj71 wrote:Perhaps just a big button on each project site that says "submit your preset?" Or even built into the software ("submit preset to guitarix team")?

I believe the mod project is basically doing the latter.


The MOD is a commercial Project, I didn't mean it negative here, just the point is, to offer such a service, you need a fast server and web-space, and that needs to be paid. Including this "Submit feature" will be the easy part.
Otherwise, we have a section in our forum to share presets.
wolftune wrote:The autoandimat lead-thin preset takes a -20dB input signal and boost it to clipping level 4dB+ over the 0! Totally awful!
Keep in mind to leave enough Headroom for guitarix amplification, turn down your sound-card amplifier in order to use guitarix.
Necrose-bumping, my answer from Sun Jan 18, 2015 still stands.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by bluebell »

I noticed that many presets are too loud for my environment. So I lowered the volume and saved them. No problem.

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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by AlexTheBassist »

I am ready to provide a bass preset pack when the guitar part is finished. I totally agree with most of posters about default presets, they're insanely unbalanced, and seems they are created by people who don't know jack about real life guitar use, nor about guitar amplification in general. I'm not even speaking about other problems, which are many, like incredibly unusable delay settings and such.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

Please everyone, stick to a constructive middle-ground in this discussion. We don't need either hyperbolic ad hominem (the presets are deserving of criticism but there's no need to make it personal about the authors of the presets) or dismissive defensiveness (the various versions of replies that use a variety of approaches while refusing to acknowledge and learn from the constructive complaints).

The presets can and should be improved. That requires real people putting in volunteer time and healthy collaboration. It's not fair to presume the developers will just fix it on their own nor to tell the critics to just work around it and stop complaining.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

@wolftune I dont know if you are aware that I'm the founder and maintainer of the guitarix project, so let me tell that to you.
However, presets been or not been, at any time a contribution stage. But, at least, all this may be vanish anyway, as the current build system of guitarix requires python2, which will be dropped from support with the 1.Jan 2020. So, I've to develop a new build system within the next day's or, guitarix will be removed from all distributions.

So, as I said, maybe the problem resolve by itself.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by wolftune »

Yes, tramp, I'm aware and also very grateful!

I think your replies here were all within reason. My post today was not directed toward you at all. I don't happen to agree with the idea that demonstrating significant signal boost is appropriate (it's trivial to merely amplify a signal and isn't what makes Guitarix great), but you didn't present that as a justification for ignoring or dismissing the feedback, it was just a reasonable expression of your perspective. Similarly, the workarounds you mentioned didn't have any dismissive language (saying, "here's what you can do" is fine, the problem is when someone adds a message that there's therefore no basis for the concern etc).

In short: workarounds and explanations for the state of things are helpful; insults, hyperbole, or dismissiveness are counterproductive.

Anyway, tramp: I sure hope you can sometime get the updated build going. Guitarix is a key valuable tool! One way or the other, we need to see it maintained. Thanks for all you do!
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tseaver »

@tramp wrote:
the current build system of guitarix requires python2, which will be dropped from support with the 1.Jan 2020. So, I've to develop a new build system within the next day's or, guitarix will be removed from all distributions.
I have a ton of experience porting Python2 to Python2-3 compatible code, and could help with that problem. Is SourceForge still the canonical VCS, or has Guitarix moved to Github?


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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by bluebell »

tramp wrote:@wolftune I dont know if you are aware that I'm the founder and maintainer of the guitarix project, so let me tell that to you.
However, presets been or not been, at any time a contribution stage. But, at least, all this may be vanish anyway, as the current build system of guitarix requires python2, which will be dropped from support with the 1.Jan 2020. So, I've to develop a new build system within the next day's or, guitarix will be removed from all distributions.

So, as I said, maybe the problem resolve by itself.
And we learn again "Don't follow the hipsters". New languages and frameworks come and go. If they don't vanish then new "hip" features make newer versions incompatible to older versions. Hipsters give a shit if users of their stuff have to maintain their projects. Change, change, change ist their game.

Guitarix is really cool. It would be such a pity if the Python hipsters would kill it by simply doing nothing.

If I was an experienced developer I'd try to convert the build system from waf to make (+ autotools if needed). Not cmake, because cmake smells like hipsters.

But I am just an old man ranting …

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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by tramp »

bluebell wrote:And we learn again "Don't follow the hipsters". New languages and frameworks come and go. If they don't vanish then new "hip" features make newer versions incompatible to older versions. Hipsters give a shit if users of their stuff have to maintain their projects. Change, change, change ist their game.

Guitarix is really cool. It would be such a pity if the Python hipsters would kill it by simply doing nothing.
I must admit that it's lately my own foul. Guitarix use waf to build, and the version it use is now over 10 years old. We've made a couple of modifications to the waflib to cover our needs, and that is the reason why I always was to lazy to update to a newer waf version, as I need to modify it as well. Other than that, the waf developers provided a very smooth way to update and keep track with the latest python developments, but I fail, and now it's to late.
As well I must admit that I know about this issue more than a Year now, but hey, what should I say, I fail.
tseaver wrote:I have a ton of experience porting Python2 to Python2-3 compatible code, and could help with that problem. Is SourceForge still the canonical VCS, or has Guitarix moved to Github?
Yes, it's still on SourceForge. Any help/patches would be welcome.
For notice, it's planned to move the build system to meson, which is based on python as well. That means, all waf-scripts needs to be ported to meson.
If you've some experience with meson as well, it would be very welcome. Currently no work is done in that direction.
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Re: Why Guitarix factory presets so awful and loud??

Post by beto »

And we learn again "Don't follow the hipsters". New languages and frameworks come and go. If they don't vanish then new "hip" features make newer versions incompatible to older versions. Hipsters give a shit if users of their stuff have to maintain their projects. Change, change, change ist their game.
Python 3 was released 12 years ago. Is that really hip?
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