Suggestion: Layout

Hello. I recently bought the active speakers “Bose Companion 2 Serie III” and found them to sound muffled as their bass was too strong for my taste. Tried out your app and was delighted to finally have a useful equaliser especially since Windows 11 does not have one.

Some things I humbly wanted to mention that I noticed:

The power on/off button should not jump around so much: You turn off music and the display vanishes (what’s it called), changing the size of the app and the button’s position.

I would rather have the frequency display visible at all times even if it does not show anything.

Second suggestion would be to have that display and the equaliser have the same length so you could tell more easily what changes what. This would mean the little panel on the left would somehow find a different space.

Generally I’d like the app to keep its size at all times and not resizing constantly.

I also have a dark theme for windows and it’s a little hard to tell where to drag that window so maybe different colours to choose from would be great.

That’s it. Like I said before this is fantastic and I am grateful for your work.

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You are right about all of those points, and these are all very useful suggestions.
I’ll make sure they reach the team.
Thank you!

I like these suggestions. I was just thinking it’s time to redesign our layout.

Any thoughts on the On/Off Button itself?

I’m thinking about removing it entirely. It takes up a massive amount of space, and I’m not sure if people are actually turning FxSound on/off often enough to make it so prominent.

Another thought would be removing or reworking the smaller U/I option. Not sure many people are using this either.

@bvijay @doolhoofd what do you guys think?

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I’ve got an idea for keeping the on/off button but making it a lot smaller as well as an idea for where to move the effects. I’ll make a rough mockup tomorrow.

I’ll also share an idea for redesigned mini-mode.

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This, to me, seems like a bad idea, since it has proven useful on many occasions; for example, I’ve recommended the button to multiple users, who were somehow unaware it existed, which actually solved their problem, too.

And this, seems like a better idea. But, don’t make it too small, it still needs to be noticeable.

I personally wouldn’t mind the mini mode being removed, at all, since I never, ever use it.

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Thanks. We’ll keep the On/off button. Maybe we can run a poll to see on the forum to see if anyone actually uses mini mode.

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I think we can move the settings button next to the close button. Maybe add a minimize button too. I know the “x” to minimize has confused people in the past. We can add an expand button too in the same area if we end up keeping the mini mode. But it would be nice to simplify the product by removing the mini mode, especially if we make a Mac version.

I like this change on the UI too as it gives us more room to add EQ bands which seems to be a heavily requested feature.

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I honestly liked the previous layout with the horizontal 0-to-5 sliders a lot more, since the Effects have always been at the very core of what makes FxSound unique and great.
That layout, for me, was near perfect, except for the interface changing size, and the Visualizer disappearing when no audio is played, as pointed out above by @Alekto.
That being said, James, it is, of course, your product, and your call.

There’s plenty of space between the frequency bands though; all that needs to be done in order to add more bands, is make the intervals smaller.

I am also of the same view that the effects slider style should be left as it is as horizontal slider. The three different sliders of different styles helps us differentiate their purpose.
The on/off button can be made smaller. If we are planning to remove mini mode then, on/off, settings and minimize could all be moved to the top left like a tool bar.
Settings button at the top is more intuitive and will be in-line with other applications like browsers which keep the settings button at the top left.
The visualizer area can always be made visible to avoid the size change issue.
The donation link can be displayed in the visualizer area when audio is not playing and visualizer is blank.

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Yes, we can resize the band size to make room for more bands. We can also add a horizontal slider in the equalizer window to fit more frequency bands.

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Ok I think you both make good points on the effects. Let’s leave the effects as is.

And I like your idea @bvijay on moving the settings and on/off button to the top.

I do like @Alekto 's idea of making the EQ and the visualizer the same length. But I’m not sure how to accommodate that if we leave the effects as is.

I’ve always thought it’d be cool to have the visualizer overlayed on top of the EQ.

Here’s an example:

One idea to make this work for us:

  • visualizer overlayed EQ
  • EQ sliders faint and visualizer highlighted when mouse not hovered over
  • EQ sliders highlighted and visualizer faint when mouse is hovered over
  • Maybe some tweaks to the color scheme to help with visibility of sliders?
  • Maybe experiment with different visualizer options in JUCE? Maybe one that goes from bottom up instead of middle out?

I think the main advantages to something like this are:

  • It makes the UI a lot smaller
  • There isn’t empty space when the visualizer isn’t active
  • It could give users a more intuitive idea about what the EQ is doing

Let me know what you guys think.

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Pros:

  • Useful
  • Original
  • Nifty

Cons:

  • Complicates the interface
  • Only worth implementing if you can get it to both look good ànd work flawlessly
  • Never change a winning team
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Let’s test a crude version when we’re ready and see what it feels like.

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Some more user feedback, posted just now:

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