**Simple** audio mode is the default, and was the only mode available
up until Nageru 1.4.0. Despite its name, it contains a powerful
audio processing chain; however, in many cases, you won't need to
-understand or twiddle any of the knobs availale.
+understand or twiddle any of the knobs available.
Simple mode allows input from only a single source, and that source
has to be one of the capture cards. (You choose which one by right-clicking
The audio strip contains controls for the processing chain for the audio from
start to end, left to right. Note that by default, everything is enabled;
-if you have a premade audio mix that you are confident that you
+if you have a pre-made audio mix that you are confident that you
want 1:1 into the stream, you can start Nageru with the “--flat-audio”
flag, that instead starts with everything disabled.
is that it gets rid of low-frequency hum and a lot of the background
noise that is not related to the speaker's voice. (If you were
producing music, you'd probably want it there to make room for
-music *under* it, but the you'd want it higher than the default 120 Hz.)
+music *under* it, but then you'd want it higher than the default 120 Hz.)
Next comes a chain of no less than four compressors. They are
based on the same basic structure, but have very different settings,
effects are separate per-bus and the remaining are applied
after the mix. (More on this below.) The mastering section begins
with a **limiter**, basically a compressor with very high ratio.
-It's there as an emergency brake for really loud compressors
+It's there as an emergency brake for really loud sounds
that got through the other compressors—a classic example is a
speaker suddenly coughing, or a very loud bass drum. This prevents
both clipping and blowing out the speakers' ears.
you can use the + button to add a new bus, and the - button to remove
the currently selected one (you select by clicking on it). The up and
down buttons rearrange the order by moving the currently selected bus
-up or down, if possible.
+up or down, if possible. Note that you can create a mono bus by
+assigning the same input channel to the left and right inputs.
Because mappings can be tedious to setup, you wouldn't want to set up
a complicated one every time you started Nageru. Therefore, mappings
in the reverse order; USB cards don't carry any kind of serial number
or other forms of unique identification.
+.. _audio-views:
The audio views
'''''''''''''''
.. image:: images/audio-view-selector.png
-Once multichannel mode is active, a little selector shows up to the right,
-just below the level meters. The arrows (or equivalently, the PgUp/PgDown
-keys on the keyboard) allow you to select between two views:
+Once multichannel mode is active, the audio view selector (up to the right,
+just below the level meters) gains a third option. The arrows (or equivalently, the PgUp/PgDown
+keys on the keyboard) allow you to select between those three views:
* In the **compact audio view** (which is the default), each bus is
represented only by its label, its peak meter (see below) and its
from the full audio view are still in effect, but you cannot see or
interact with them.
- * The **full audio view** contains a lot more controls, but leaves no
+ * The **video grid display** does not have any audio controls,
+ but tries to use as much screen estate as possible on the video channels
+ only. In particular, it can put the channels in multiple rows if that
+ facilitates larger previews, which can be useful if you have many channels.
+
+ * The **full audio view** (only available in multichannel mode) contains a lot more controls, but leaves no
room for the video channels. These are useful when you are doing initial
setup of your mix, or if you want to go back and tune something.
The full audio view will be described in detail in the following section;
.. image:: images/audio-bus-controls.png
-(TODO: fix image)
-
There's one set each of these controls for every bus. The most
important parts of the mix are given the most screen estate,
so even though the way through the signal chain is left-to-right
go all silent.
Then there's the **peak meter** to the left of that. For each bus, unlike
-for the meters used for mastering (see :ref:`audio meters`),
+for the meters used for mastering (see :ref:`audio-meters`),
you don't want to know loudness; you want to know recording levels,
so this is a peak meter, *not* a loudness meter. (There's some holdoff
so you can see the actual peaks over a short period.) In particular,
antics—some speak at a pretty even volume and thus can get a bit of
headroom, while some are much more variable and need tighter settings.
-Finally (or, well, first), there's the EQ section. The **lo-cut** is again
+Nearly at the top (and nearly first in the chain), there's the EQ section. The **lo-cut** is again
well-known from the simple audio mode (the filter is separate for each
bus, the cutoff **frequency** is the same across all buses),
but there's now also a simple **three-band EQ** per bus. Simply ask the speaker
make them sound a little more even on the stream. Either that, or just
put it in neutral, and the entire EQ code will be bypassed.
+Finally (or, well, first), since 1.7.3, there's the **stereo width** knob.
+At the default, 100%, it makes no change to the signal, but if you turn it
+to 0% (at the middle), the signal becomes perfect mono. Between these two,
+there's a range where the channels leak partially over into each other.
+This can be useful if you have a very hard-panned signal (say, two microphones
+that point in diametrically opposite directions), which can sound odd when
+the listener is using headphones. Going further to the left, at -100%, the
+left and right channels are exactly swapped and between -100% and 0% is again
+a reversion with partial leaking. The range between -100% and 0%
+is for convenience only, as you could achieve the same effect by swapping the
+two channels in the input mapping. Note that the entire control is grayed out
+if the signal is provably mono (ie., the same input channel is mapped to both
+left and right).
+
+
.. _midi-control:
MIDI controllers
.. image:: images/midi-controller-setup.png
-(TODO: Write more.)
+There are three types of controls, which correspond to different types
+of MIDI events:
+
+ * **Controllers** map directly to MIDI controllers (the value in the
+ dialog is the controller number), which are continuous
+ values that can take on values from 0 to 127. (Unfortunately, MIDI
+ was made in the 80s, where 7-bit precision was seen as enough.)
+ They are typically used for faders and knobs.
+
+ * **Buttons** are one-shot events that map to MIDI note-on events,
+ and the value in the dialog is the MIDI note number (also from
+ 0 to 127). They are similar to mouse buttons in that they don't
+ have an on or off state (the MIDI note-off events are ignored).
+ A typical example would be a mute button that can be pressed to
+ either mute or unmute a channel.
+
+ * **Lights** are *output* events where Nageru can send feedback
+ to the controller (and by extension, the user), represented by
+ MIDI note-on and note-off events (to turn the light on or off).
+ A typical example would be a mute light, that is on when a
+ channel is muted.
+
+In addition, each event can be *per-bus* or *global*. It can be a bit
+confusing that even the global events can be set once per-bus,
+but this is merely a convenience, allowing you to bind multiple
+physical controls to the same global controller; for global controllers,
+the bus number(s) you use for your mapping do not matter.
+
+The combination of controller type and per-bus/global constitutes
+a **mapping group**, clearly marked and collapsible in the UI.
+
+
+Creating and updating mappings
+''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+Unless you have a reference sheet for your MIDI controller, specifying which
+controller and number numbers the different physical knobs and faders
+emit, inputting these numbers by hand can be a frustrating procedure.
+(Actually, even with a reference sheet, it probably is.) Thus, the preferred
+way is by autosensing; simply select the given mapping with the mouse
+and use the control you want to bind it to, and Nageru automatically
+fills it in.
+
+Also, most devices support many channels, with very similar structure
+in their controller and/or note numbers. Once you've filled out one
+and then started filling out another one, Nageru can guess for you;
+if it thinks it can make a reasonable guess (ie., find a consistent
+offset from its left or right neighbor), the “Guess bus” and/or
+“Guess group” buttons will be clickable. This can save considerable
+amounts of time, although it is advisable to check Nageru's guess for
+at least the first guessed channel. In particular, some controllers
+do not have a consistent offset between channels on all the controllers
+(making “Guess bus” give the wrong answer), just on the controller groups,
+so there, you must limit yourself to guessing only a single controller
+group (using “Guess group”).
+
+Lights currently cannot be learned, so some trial and error is needed.
+(However, if there are buttons associated with the light, a good place
+to start is using the same note number.) However, just like the input
+controllers, they can be guessed once you have all the mapping you want
+for a neighboring bus and partial information about the current one.
+
+
+Controller banks, and UI visibility
+'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+Many MIDI controllers do not have enough faders and knobs for every
+Nageru function you might want to control; some even contain only
+one fader or one knob. Thus, Nageru supports assigning a physical
+control to multiple functions, through **controller banks**.
+If a mapping is assigned to a controller bank, it is only active
+when that bank is active. The act of switching banks is in itself
+an action that can be initiated from the MIDI controller; in fact,
+that is currently the only way to switch them.
+
+A typical example would be having a knob that in bank 1 is assigned
+to gain, and in bank 2 to cutoff (which happens to be a global control,
+as described in the previous section). This way, one can switch between
+the two banks and have both functions accessible from the MIDI controller.
+Similarly, buttons can be reused by assigning them to multiple banks.
+
+Note that when switching banks, the associated controller(s) is
+*not* immediately updated; this happens only when you move the control.
+Otherwise, a bank switch would cause a host of unwanted changes,
+as it is unlikely that you would want the control in the exact
+same position for the two controllers. (There is a similar problem
+when starting up Nageru for the first time, where the controllers
+are not necessarily in the place matching Nageru's startup settings.)
+Some more expensive controllers support *motorized faders*, where
+the host can simply tell the control to move to the right place
+and thus solve the problem, but Nageru does not currently support them.
+
+.. image:: images/highlight.png
+
+To help you know which bank is active (or even that you have a MIDI
+controller connected at all), the currently mapped controller have
+a green **activity highlight**. When you switch banks, the highlight
+also updates—a controller is only highlighted if its mapping is
+active in the currently selected bank. This way, it is easy to see
+which controllers are currently controllable by MIDI, and which ones
+that are not.
projects / nageru-docs / blobdiff